Never Gonna Dance
Jan. 25th, 2012 04:34 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dorindalamardeuse and movies_michelle posted awesome movie-dancing clips today, which is something I can always get behind. And there are tons of clips out there, but I wanted to toss this one up (very sorry, no embedding):Never Gonna Dance, Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, from Swing Time.
It's a breakup dance, where the star-crossed lovers, Penny and Lucky, must part and go back to the people they are supposed to marry. (The dancing doesn't start until halfway through the clip, but I love the whole scene/song, so.) It starts out with them so still, these forlorn figures on a gigantic gleaming set. And then, once she comes downstairs, their gloomy body language keeps inevitably turning into dance, like they can't help it, it just bursts out between them--walking sadly hand-in-hand slowly draws them gracefully into each other's arms, and later Lucky's impassioned head-shaking becomes his whole body moving side-to-side, which becomes both of them moving in mirror-image across the floor.
And the final climax at the top of the stairs! With the SPINNING and the TWIRLING! And that frozen moment when she has spun back into his arms and it seems like they might stay together right now! But no, the music takes her and she goes, leaving him watching after her at the edge of the room, lost.
I tell you. The choreography (Astaire + Hermes Pan) and the performance, it's one of my favorites. Kind of ballroom, kind of ballet, a touch of modern--and a dance scene with an intense emotional arc to it. Mmmmm good.
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