Category Archives: Dance

Dance

Gene Kelly’s Dance Scene in Singin’ In The Rain (1952)

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2011’s mul­ti­ple award-win­ning movie, The Artist, was an homage to the Hol­ly­wood of the late 1920s dur­ing its dif­fi­cult tran­si­tion from silent movies to the “talkies”, and very good it was too. It wasn’t the first movie to find its inspi­ra­tion from that time, how­ev­er: 1952’s Sin­gin’ In The Rain, right­ly regard­ed as one of the great­est Hol­ly­wood musi­cals of all time, also tells the sto­ry of silent movie stars caught up in that tran­si­tion to a new era. It also hap­pened to con­tain one of the most famous dance sequences ever per­formed: Gene Kelly’s joy­ous rou­tine as a loved-up dream­er on a rain-soaked side­walk.

The sto­ry of the film’s mak­ing is an inter­est­ing one and on the sur­face may well have result­ed in a mish­mash of songs and ideas; the movie start­ed out as essen­tial­ly a van­i­ty project for MGM pro­duc­er Arthur Freed. Freed had spent the 1920s as a lyri­cist, writ­ing songs for talkies with Nacio Herb Brown. By the 1940s, he was head of his own MGM unit, and want­ed to cre­ate a musi­cal from his own back cat­a­logue (his song Sin­gin’ in the Rain had in fact already been used in the movie The Hol­ly­wood Revue of 1929). Bet­ty Com­den and Adolph Green were hired to write the screen­play and, real­is­ing that the songs were very much of their era, “it occurred to us that rather than try to use them in a sophis­ti­cat­ed, con­tem­po­rary story…they would bloom in some­thing that took place in the very peri­od in which they had been writ­ten”. The tran­si­tion from silent to sound thus pro­vid­ed the most appro­pri­ate — and as it turned out, per­fect – vehi­cle for Freed’s songs.

Don Lock­wood (Gene Kel­ly) and Lina Lam­ont (Jean Hagen) are a glam­ourous on-screen cou­ple who are also hyped by the stu­dio as hav­ing an off-screen romance, although in real­i­ty Don bare­ly tol­er­ates Lina and Lina only con­vinces her­self of the hype due to her own self-impor­tance. They are embark­ing on a new silent movie but their pro­duc­er realis­es late on that he has no choice but to con­vert it to a talk­ing pic­ture, due to the suc­cess of (real-life) movie The Jazz Singer. The pro­duc­tion is beset with dif­fi­cul­ties, of course, where­from much com­e­dy ensues, and Don falls for cho­rus girl Kathy Selden (Deb­bie Reynolds).

Gene Kelly’s famous umbrel­la-twirling dance scene took three days to film, and despite run­ning a 103°F fever for the whole peri­od, he achieved a piece of cin­e­mat­ic his­to­ry. Mod­est as ever, he would attribute the number’s suc­cess to the crew, musi­cians, and com­posers. Upon the movie’s release in April 1952 audi­ences flocked to see it and, despite being large­ly ignored by the Oscars (unlike The Artist), it was a tri­umph. Get a load of Kel­ly’s charm and appeal in his famous scene here…

Dance

Fred Astaire’s Revolving Room Dance Sequence in Royal Wedding (1951)

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The rotat­ing movie set is a great exam­ple of how moviemak­ers can cre­ate cin­e­ma mag­ic. An ordi­nary stage is sus­pend­ed with­in a steel gim­bal, like a box wedged into a wash­ing machine drum, and then amaz­ing effects can be achieved, where­by actors can be shown to appear to defy grav­i­ty. This has been use­ful for hor­ror movie mak­ers (Jeff Gold­blum lurk­ing on the ceil­ing in The Fly; JoBeth Williams being para­nor­mal­ly rolled up the wall to the ceil­ing in Pol­ter­geist; Aman­da Wyss in the dream sequence from Night­mare on Elm Street…) and the tech­nique was also impres­sive­ly employed by Stan­ley Kubrik in a remark­able scene from sci-fi clas­sic 2001: A Space Odyssey. In this scene, a crew mem­ber is shown run­ning around the hub of the space­craft, its rota­tion pro­vid­ing arti­fi­cial grav­i­ty for his exer­cise; in real­i­ty, he is essen­tial­ly run­ning on the spot with the entire set rotat­ing beneath his feet. Here’s a brief clip:

Back in 1951, how­ev­er, direc­tor Stan­ley Donen used the tech­nique to superb effect in musi­cal com­e­dy, in the MGM movie Roy­al Wed­ding, which show­cased the tal­ents of the suave Fred Astaire. Astaire had already retired once, back in 1946, before being lured back into the movie busi­ness to replace the injured Gene Kel­ly in East­er Parade (1948). Roy­al Wed­ding is set in Lon­don at the time of the wed­ding of Princess Eliz­a­beth and Philip Mount­bat­ten, and fea­tures songs by Bur­ton Lane and Alan Jay Lern­er; how­ev­er, it was of course the dance rou­tines that make it stand out.

In one of his solos, You’re All the World to Me, Astaire dances on the walls and ceil­ings of his room (long before Lionel Richie scored a hit with that con­cept!). The idea had actu­al­ly occurred to Astaire him­self, years before, so it must have been par­tic­u­lar­ly reward­ing for him to per­fect this clever illu­sion. Let’s check out the scene both as seen by the movie audi­ence, along­side the “how it’s done” ver­sion.

Fred Astaire
Fred Astaire
Dance, Music

Camille Saint-Saëns’ The Swan (1886)

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Charles-Camille Saint-Saëns was born in Paris in 1835 and raised by his wid­owed moth­er and his great-aunt, who intro­duced the young Camille to the piano and gave him his first lessons. The boy was a real prodi­gy, demon­strat­ing per­fect pitch at the age of two and giv­ing his first pub­lic con­cert at five. Over the course of his long life Saint-Saëns was incred­i­bly pro­lif­ic: after writ­ing his first sym­pho­ny at 16 he went on to write four more, along with five piano con­cer­tos, three vio­lin con­cer­tos, two cel­lo con­cer­tos and some 20 con­cer­tante works.

Nor were his tal­ents lim­it­ed to music. He was pro­found­ly knowl­edge­able about geol­o­gy, botany, lep­i­dopterol­o­gy, and maths, and his celebri­ty allowed him to enjoy dis­cus­sions with Europe’s finest sci­en­tists.

Of all Saint-Saëns’ aston­ish­ing out­put, though, the most famous is undoubt­ed­ly The Car­ni­val of the Ani­mals, com­posed in 1886. He hadn’t con­sid­ered it a seri­ous piece at all and in fact wor­ried that it might dam­age his rep­u­ta­tion. He needn’t have wor­ried. The 13th and penul­ti­mate move­ment of The Car­ni­val of the Ani­mals, The Swan (Le Cygne), became acclaimed world­wide as The Dying Swan after 1905 when it was chore­o­graphed for leg­endary bal­le­ri­na Anna Pavlo­va, who per­formed it about 4,000 times.

The leg­end of the “swan song” grew from the pop­u­lar belief among the ancient Greeks that the mute swan is silent until its final moments of life, at which point it sings the most beau­ti­ful of all bird­songs. Saint-Saëns cap­tures this idea in the music…and here we see bal­le­ri­na Uliana Lopatk­i­na effort­less­ly evok­ing in dance the grace­ful­ness of the ani­mal (almost entire­ly en pointe) and the heart­break of its demise. Beau­ti­ful.

 

Dance, Music

Sergei Prokofiev’s Dance of the Knights from Romeo and Juliet (1935)

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Sergei Prokofiev’s Dance of the Knights, also known as The Mon­tagues and Capulets, comes from his bal­let, Romeo and Juli­et. It’s an emo­tion­al­ly charged piece of music, with strong horns and wood­winds lay­er­ing over a pow­er­ful melod­ic line played by the strings. Prokofiev’s dark and brood­ing pas­sages send chills up the spine and cre­ate a won­der­ful­ly dark atmos­phere, pre­sum­ably to express the ten­sion between the rival fam­i­lies of the Mon­tagues and Capulets. No won­der it’s used in film and tele­vi­sion so often; not least, of course, in the BBC’s The Appren­tice.

Like the orig­i­nal play Romeo and Juli­et, the sto­ry of Sergei Prokofiev and his famous bal­let with the same title is filled with betray­al, strug­gle and untime­ly death. After the Rev­o­lu­tion, Prokofiev had left Rus­sia with the offi­cial bless­ing of the author­i­ties, and resided in the Unit­ed States, Ger­many, and Paris, respec­tive­ly, mak­ing his liv­ing as a com­pos­er, pianist and con­duc­tor. He was lured back to the Sovi­et Union in 1936 with promis­es of lucra­tive com­mis­sions, but the bureau­crat who com­mis­sioned Romeo and Juli­et was exe­cut­ed, as was the Cen­tral Com­mit­tee flunky who approved the bal­let’s orig­i­nal hap­py end­ing (Prokofiev had orig­i­nal­ly changed Shake­speare’s trag­ic end­ing but this evi­dent­ly did not go down well with the Russ­ian author­i­ties!). The author­i­ties then exiled Prokofiev’s first wife to the Gulag, and in 1938 con­fis­cat­ed Prokofiev’s pass­port, deter­min­ing that he need­ed “ide­o­log­i­cal cor­rect­ing” from too much West­ern influ­ence.

Despite all this inter­fer­ence, how­ev­er, what comes down to us today is an icon­ic piece of musi­cal dra­ma, with Dance of the Knights being the stand­out piece. We watch it here per­formed by La Scala Milano, as the Capulets strut their stuff on the dance floor. Great cos­tumes too!

Sergei Prokofiev
Dance

The Nicholas Brothers’ dance performance in Stormy Weather (1943)

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All the dance greats of the twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry, from Fred Astaire to Michael Jack­son, have cit­ed the Nicholas Broth­ers as huge inspi­ra­tions for their craft. Fayard and Harold Nicholas were born (in 1914 and 1921 respec­tive­ly) to musi­cian par­ents who played with the reg­u­lar band at Philadelphia’s famous Stan­dard The­ater. Con­se­quent­ly, the broth­ers, who would sit in the the­atre whilst their par­ents were work­ing on stage, got to wit­ness most of the great Afro-Amer­i­can per­form­ers, jazz musi­cians and vaude­ville acts of the times.

The old­er broth­er, Fayard, taught him­self how to dance, sing, and per­form by watch­ing and imi­tat­ing the pro­fes­sion­al enter­tain­ers on stage and first per­formed along­side his sis­ter Dorothy as the Nicholas Kids. Lat­er, Harold joined, and when Dorothy opt­ed out, they became the Nicholas Broth­ers. They per­formed a high­ly acro­bat­ic and inno­v­a­tive dance tech­nique known as “flash danc­ing”, incor­po­rat­ing ele­ments of tap, acro­bat­ics and bal­let.

As word spread of their danc­ing tal­ents, they became famous in Philadel­phia and their career real­ly took off in 1932 when they became the fea­tured act at Harlem’s Cot­ton Club, per­form­ing with the orches­tras of Cab Cal­loway and Duke Elling­ton. Harold was 11 and Fayard was 18. Spot­ted by Sam Gold­wyn, they were invit­ed to Hol­ly­wood and their movie career began.

Their per­for­mance in the musi­cal num­ber Jumpin’ Jive (with Cab Cal­loway and his orches­tra), fea­tured in the movie Stormy Weath­er, is con­sid­ered by many to be the most vir­tu­osic dance dis­play of all time. It’s cer­tain­ly won­der­ful to watch.

Nicholas Broth­ers in flight