{"id":439057,"date":"2026-05-21T22:47:12","date_gmt":"2026-05-21T22:47:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/439057\/"},"modified":"2026-05-21T22:47:12","modified_gmt":"2026-05-21T22:47:12","slug":"dancing-robot-falls-on-stage-during-billie-jean-routine-in-china","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/439057\/","title":{"rendered":"Dancing robot falls on stage during Billie Jean routine in China"},"content":{"rendered":"

A staff member rushed in as the machine lay motionless, lights still flashing around it, and dragged the robot offstage.<\/p>\n

As the clip spread across social media, viewers were quick to make fun of the performance.<\/p>\n

\u201cGo home, robot, you\u2019re drunk,\u201d wrote one commenter on X.<\/p>\n

\u201cWow, the new Michael Jackson movie looks terrible,\u201d joked another.<\/p>\n

\"StaffStaff had to drag a dancing robot offstage after it failed to emulate the King of Pop. Photos \/ Eren Chen<\/p>\n

Both the robot and the staff member were wearing shirts bearing the slogan \u201cFuture Era\u201d \u2013 the name of a robotics store in Shenzhen, the southern Chinese technology hub that is home to tech giants including Huawei, Tencent and DJI.<\/p>\n

The store, which opened last year, bills itself as the world\u2019s first commercial robotics outlet and regularly hosts showcases featuring humanoid robots and robotic dogs. The robot seen dancing was a Unitree G1 model, according to the Daily Mail.<\/p>\n

The store\u2019s robots can be hired by the day for between 5000 and 20,000 yuan (roughly $1250 to $5000), reported the South China Morning Post.<\/p>\n

Although the robots are still learning to dance, they are quickly becoming an important part of the Chinese economy.<\/p>\n

British bank Barclays said China\u2019s ageing population and low birthrate will mean 37 million fewer workers<\/a> over the next 10 years. It estimated that more than 20 million of those jobs would be performed by humanoid robots.<\/p>\n

The bank released a report this week saying humanoids are forecast to become a US$200 billion ($340b) market by 2035.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A staff member rushed in as the machine lay motionless, lights still flashing around it, and dragged the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":439058,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[74,92638,430,607,7502,55414,2837,8532,156,8231,42343,15248,78,54179,67069,32515,5494,224372,111,139,69,15438,90,6777,5149,11393,2838,5433,196752],"class_list":["post-439057","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-after","tag-billie","tag-celebrities","tag-china","tag-dancing","tag-dragged","tag-during","tag-ended","tag-entertainment","tag-event","tag-failure","tag-falls","tag-in","tag-jacksons","tag-jean","tag-machine","tag-michael","tag-midroutine","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-offstage","tag-on","tag-performance","tag-robot","tag-robots","tag-routine","tag-stage","tag-tumbled"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/439057","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=439057"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/439057\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/439058"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=439057"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=439057"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=439057"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}