Dance, Magic Dance
Put on your red shoes and read this newsletter like no one is watching.
A quick heads up—I think this is going to be quite a large post because of the number of videos attached, so it may cut off on email and be best viewed online.
Have I got a fun rabbit hole for us to shimmy our way down today!
We are diving deep into dance on screen!
I had the idea for this newsletter in late 2023, when after watching Strictly Come Dancing I found myself looking up the old movies and musicals that inspired some of my favourite dance routines. Which led on to watching those movies, and then a documentary, and then a TV dramatisation. And then broader still, any time a brilliant dance came up in something I was watching I would note it down. Never knowingly not collecting interconnections.
Over a year’s worth of gathered dance scenes later, and I realise I have way too much to share in one newsletter. On reflection, the dances I want to talk about fall into two groups—dance stories and dances as storytelling. By which I vaguely mean, musicals and films and TV shows that are about dancing/music/choreography, and those that aren’t predominantly about that, but include a dance to tell us more about the characters and/or move the plot along.
Today we are delving into the latter category.
Buckle your shoes, limber up and let’s dance!
The romance dance
First stop on our tour of screen routines is a genre that after reading my Austen-themed newsletter a few weeks ago, you might have gathered is dear to my swoon-loving heart. The dance of love.
Period dramas are veritably bursting with them. There is always a ball to be readying oneself for, and obviously as this was the only time our unmarried youngsters were allowed to touch each other, these dances inherently convey a lot of anticipation and tension, and the opportunity to finally, wordlessly communicate those deeply brewing feelings.
Austen’s more recent big screen iterations seem to lean into this viewer-enticing device perhaps more than the books and true-to-page TV adaptations. Joe Wright’s 2005 Pride & Prejudice certainly offers us a tension heavy meeting on the dance floor of Darcy and Elizabeth, only then to be topped in intensity by Knightley completely giving himself away in a gorgeous dance with Emma in Autumn de Wilde’s 2020 adaptation (currently on iPlayer).
Bridgerton (Netflix) took the traditional period drama dance and (as they have with most elements of the show) well and truly turned it up to 11. Taking the old quadrille at the Assembly Rooms and raising it to perfectly choreographed pop video routine in beautiful palaces filled with beautifully dressed beautiful people. No matter how gloriously OTT, these dances retain their role in the storytelling. Colin and Pen’s wedding dance where the crowd disappeared around them was gorgeous. And any time Kate and Anthony get together on the dance floor someone (I suggest Lady Danbury) needs to be on hand with a fire blanket. The teaser for season 4 that dropped last Friday suggests that we need not fear a lack of key dance scenes next time round. Masked ball (and masked Benedict), ahoy!
But despite my enduring love of a Regency romance, the period drama dance scene that tops them all for me takes us off to the grandest ballrooms of Tolstoy’s Russia. Andrei and Natasha’s waltz is truly tough to out romance.
Here’s Tolstoy’s description of this life-changing dance in War and Peace:
Prince Andrei liked to dance and, wishing to rid himself quickly of the political and intellectual conversations with which everyone addressed him, and wishing to break quickly this vexatious circle of embarrassment caused by the presence of the sovereign, had gone to dance and had asked Natasha because Pierre had pointed her out to him and because she was the first pretty woman his eyes fell on; but as soon as he put his arm round her slender, mobile, quivering waist, and she began to move so close to him and smile so close to him, the wine of her loveliness went to his head: he felt himself revived and rejuvenated when, catching his breath and leaving her, he stopped and began to look at the dancers.
And here are James Norton and Lily James bringing it beautifully to life for the BBC’s 2016 adaptation (iPlayer).
Friendship and the group dance
One of my favourite examples of a group of characters coming together to dance is from the exceptional (and criminally undermentioned) My Brilliant Friend (Sky Atlantic/Now). A story that takes our characters over decades of their lives across four seasons (and books, of course), retains at its heart the powder keg of a Neapolitan neighbourhood where the story began for them all. In season one, when Lila and Lenù and their friends are teenagers, the political and tribal tensions of the elder siblings and adults around them have already penetrated their world. There is a party, potentially an opportunity to heal rifts and come together, but the boys are distrustfully lining the margins of the room, ready for a fight. Until unexpectedly Pasquale starts a dance to the fantastic Nessuno by Mina and one by one the group joins in. It’s a brilliant moment that has stayed with me, and I’m disappointed not to be able to find a better quality video to share than this one.
I can’t resist a second example in this category and that’s the BBC’s wonderful Ghosts (iPlayer) line dancing to Achy Breaky Heart. For me Ghosts sits head and shoulders above most sitcoms as it combines the humour and clever writing, with an enormous dose of heart. I’m an absolute sucker for a ‘found family’ and this particular dance scene comes as a moment of relief and togetherness after a reflective day assuming one of them was going to be moving on (or erm, ‘sucked off’). The Captain (my absolute favourite character) thinking he might not be around much longer, finally tells the other ghosts how he died. It’s sad and it’s lovely, because he finally lets them all in, allows himself to be vulnerable, shows them that they matter to him. And in this uniting moment they all agree to join in the line dance routine they’ve been ducking out of all day. It’s just gorgeous—silly and simple and says so much.
The weird, unsettling dance
Sometimes dances on screen are designed to unsettle us in some sense. This could be a strange dance in the context of a strange film, or to demonstrate the strangeness of the character within a very different, straight, conventional setting.
Andrew Scott’s dancing entrance as Lord Merlin in the BBC’s 2021 adaptation of The Pursuit of Love was pretty unforgettable. An avant garde neighbour of the upper-class Radlett family arriving with his ‘set’ to disrupt in the best possible way, this weird dance (helped no doubt by the very Andrew Scottness of Andrew Scott) simply comes off as being incredibly, irresistibly cool. We are all Linda.
But often the weird dance in an inappropriate environment is intended to unnerve. And boy did Severance do this to perfection in season one, episode seven ‘Defiant Jazz’. The miserable office workers of the sinister Lumon Industries complete a team target and are rewarded with a ‘Music Dance Experience’. The opaque and always underlyingly menacing boss suddenly gets his groove on. The music and weirdness rise together—it doesn’t end well. I recently heard this scene referred to as Lynchian in an interview—exactly that level of unsettling. It’s brilliant and it sticks with you.
Filmmaker Yorgios Lanthimos has to take some kind of award for commitment to the inclusion of weird dance scenes in his unconventional films. In last year’s Poor Things (Disney+), Emma Stone and Mark Ruffalo’s dance moment was incredibly clever at telling the story of the two characters. Stone embodying through Bella’s awkward movements the childlike feeling of being drawn to express yourself to music for the first time. Ruffalo perfectly captures Wedderburn’s desire to be part of Bella’s enjoyment of discovering the world, while also taking charge of how she discovers it and ultimately controlling her.
This wasn’t Lanthimos’s first bizarre dance hurrah though. The scene with Rachel Weisz and Joe Alwyn prancing about to entertain Olivia Colman’s Queen Anne in 2018’s The Favourite (Disney+) really is something else. Bonus points for having Colman’s incredible face acting to watch as well as the dance.
The dance fight
There can only be one winner in this category and his name’s Ken (and so am I) in 2023’s cinema-saving blockbuster, Barbie. Not satisfied with box office domination, who can forget everyone’s favourite fragile blonde, Ryan Gosling, riding the wave of his kenergy all the way from ‘beach’ to the Oscars stage last year. One word to describe the genius comedy phenomenon that is I’m Just Ken—sublime.
The final scene breaking free dance
Where better to end our dance through this newsletter together than the final scene. The ‘freedom’ dance. The hero (or indeed antihero) concluding our journey with them by showing us through dance that after enduring all the challenges and making it through the obstacles, it’s time to celebrate. Be free. Nothing epitomises this better than one of the most talked about movie scenes of 2023 (and catalyst for Sophie Ellis Bextor’s renaissance), Barry Keoghan (cough) letting it all hang out to Murder on the Dancefloor at the end of Saltburn (Amazon Prime). Oh my!
I’ll save your blushes and not include the actual clip here, because I do actually have a more favourite representative of this category. The finale of The Great (Huzzah!) (Channel 4). This series is witty and clever, irreverent and often fairly filthy, but repeatedly capable of a sudden rug pull that takes your breath away by being deeply surprisingly moving. Supported by an incredible cast (particularly looking at you, Douglas Hodge), Elle Fanning and Nicholas Hoult as Catherine and Peter are so damn good. But after three series and all the sex, drama and death you could possibly imagine, this final scene was unexpected and brilliant. It took us away from the plot, the machinations, all that had come before and left us with just Catherine (utterly enhanced by the out-of-context hair and music choices), letting rip. What a showstopper!
As you can probably tell, I’ve thoroughly enjoyed revisiting so many favourite dances and thinking a little harder about what makes them special and what they add to the story being told around them. There were many more I could have included, but this newsletter is already approaching the length of the unwieldiest of congas.
You know what’s next! Please share your favourite dance scenes on screen. What have I woefully failed to include here? And any dance film or show recommendations I can watch to research for my second part?
In the meantime.
Keeeeeeeeeeeeeep dancing!
(Sorry. It had to be done.)
Only just got to this but what a joyful read. The Bridgerton dance extravaganzas do it for me every time 💃🏼
James Norton as Prince A, oh my. And I loved all the dancing scenes, the one at the ball, obvs, but also Natasha joining in peasant dancing around Christmas. The new Bridget Jones, which is brilliant, has some dancing where mature women are just going for it, which I love to see.