While you may know him best from his early days on American Idol, in 2005, Simon Cowell started the “Got Talent” empire with British comedian and talk show host Paul O’Grady.
If you’re a fan of reality talent competitions, you’ve likely seen America’s Got Talent or Britain’s Got Talent, which involves much more than just singing. Performers can do just about anything they want to try to impress the judges and move on to the next round.
With Got Talent Global, which officially launched in 2006, the rest of the world got the opportunity to show off as well, with spin-offs in lots of countries – as well as the entire continent of Africa.
Africa’s Got Talent had one seriously amazing performer during their second season in 2017. In fact, from the moment Strauss Serpent stepped onto the stage, people couldn’t stop talking about the Congolese contortionist.
Each of his performances left the audience especially stunned (and wondering how just someone moves their body like that!).
Since he won that year’s competition, they made a mashup video of his greatest hits (which you can see below).
The video begins with his audition, where Serpent thoroughly creeped out the judges.
Serpent can move in some mysterious ways and while the first few moments of his routine looks like a mashup between the robot dance and something out of Michael Jackson’s late-80s dance playbook, things quickly took off from there.
I mean, can we just talk about what’s going on here? We think Serpent might be a nickname from the looks of this.
His flexibility isn’t the acrobatic type – just the type that makes you think he might be missing a few bones somewhere.
And his second performance was more of the same. His flowing moves – some of which also come straight from street mimes – give off that Michael Jackson vibe once again.
Except Jackson could never do this:
Elbows aren’t supposed to bend that way!
It truly looks like someone photoshopped his head onto his body. But that’s just the way he moves.
It’s also surprising that he won the competition when the judges kept making faces like this:
Needless to say, you should not try this at home.
We wouldn’t even know where to start if we wanted to try this.
That gruesome move left one of the judges running for cover.
It’s hard to watch and yet you can’t really take your eyes off the young man, so we feel the judges’ pain here.
Strauss Serpent’s third performance involved props and other actors – so you know things were about to get weird and even more theatrical.
His helpers in the semi-final round were dresses as surgeons and Strauss himself comes out on a stretcher.
But he wakes up like something created by Dr. Frankenstein!
Let’s face it – it’s totally ok if you freak out when you see this move:
But the judges aren’t so sure about this performance.
We knew those doctors were going to get involved in something crazy at some point! Yikes!
The audience could just never get enough of the man’s wacky talent and they went nuts after every single performance. And to be fair, the judges often gave him standing ovations as well, even if they were a little weirded out.
After Serpent won the competition, he went on to audition for France’s Got Talent the next year. He made it to the finals on that show, even earning a Golden Buzzer with his audition.
Be sure to scroll down below and watch those moves in action – but don’t be afraid to look away!
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