Vince Gray, Muriel Bowser, and Other DC Notables Dance for the Wizards

If you’ve ever wondered what Mayor Vince Gray, DC Council members Jack Evans and Muriel Bowser, and local sports magnate Ted Leonsis look like dancing to Pharrell Williams’s “Happy,” it’s your lucky day. The Washington Wizards uploaded such a clip Sunday evening, trying to energize the team’s fan base ahead of Game 4 of the NBA Eastern Conference semifinals against the Indiana Pacers.

Since the Wizards’ first-round success over the Chicago Bulls, fans have popularized a hashtag, #dcrising, to celebrate the team’s success. (It was only a year ago that the Wizards were among the NBA’s lowest dregs.) Add the enduring popularity of Williams’s song, the dance-filled music video for which has been replicated thousands of times on YouTube, and the Wizards had a cute promotional idea in the bag, and possibly something to make everyone forget the franchise-low 63 points the team scored last Friday.

The dance video didn’t do the trick, as only hours after the video went up, the Wizards blew a 19-point lead in the third quarter to lose to the Pacers, who are now up 3-1 as the series heads back to Indianapolis. Still, at least we have this video. Now entrenched in YouTube’s archive is footage of Gray, Bowser, Leonsis, and other local luminaries getting down to a song that won’t leave the pop charts.

But no one featured in the video compares with the Wizards jersey-clad Evans dancing down the Pennsylvania Avenue cycle track. Enjoy the GIF:

Benjamin Freed

Staff Writer

Benjamin Freed joined Washingtonian in August 2013 and covers politics, business, and media. He was previously the editor of DCist and has also written for Washington City Paper, the New York Times, the New Republic, Slate, and BuzzFeed. He lives in Adams Morgan.