Dancing Medvedev a hit with American Boy

Russian leaders are developing something of a reputation for making a spectacle of themselves in public. Following in the footsteps of Boris Yeltsin and Vladimir Putin, the latest to do so is president Dmitry Medvedev.

In the 1990s Yeltsin became known as something of a party animal thanks to his habit of getting down at the drop of a hat, or vodka bottle, and once even stormed the stage at an official function to conduct a brass band.

Last year, former KGB agent Vladimir Putin, already well known as a hunting, shooting and fishing kind of guy, was filmed on stage at a charity event crooning Blueberry Hill and playing the piano for an audience including Gerard Depardieu, Goldie Hawn and Kurt Russell.

Now Dmitry Medvedev has stepped into the limelight thanks to footage of him (above) strutting his stuff to the 1990s Russian dance hit American Boy at a university reunion.

The YouTube clip of the president shows him kicking up his heels and shaking a tailfeather, albeit in a rather stiff and awkward manner. It quickly went viral on the video-sharing website. He can be seen to the right of his rather more flamboyant friend in the clip (above).

Medvedev later gave some context to the footage by tweeting: "We are rocking at a student university reunion. The dances\music—they fit in with the past."

The song American Boy is fitting as the president is seen as rather more pro-Western than Putin, who is expected to challenge him for the presidency in 2012.

The tune was a hit in 1990 when the old Soviet Union was disintegrating. It tells the story of an unhappy Russian girl who wishes an American boy would take her away, and struck a nerve with the public at the time. It was performed by Russian dance group Kombinaciya whose other hits included Russian Girls, Accountant and Two Slices of Sausage. ·