After the exceedingly strange Michael Jackson died recently, I was reminded by a sage friend that Jackson had revived dance after a long drought, for a new generation. And I shook my head in grudging respect; he was right. The Musical, which practically dried up in the 80s was displaced to consumable single songs and dance numbers (music videos). And a new, unaware generation applauded every expansion of that format by MJ, not knowing he was traveling already-covered ground, inching ever closer to the full length movie musical. Jackson did restore respect and cachet to dance. He is not so different from Astaire.
Carefree offers a comic turn from the tap dancing couple, and in a rare move Ginger pursues Fred this time. Rogers is funnier than usual in this one. It's quite short and at the 50 minute mark a dance number erupts called "the Yam." After I saw the exhilarating number "Pick Yourself Up" in Shall we Dance I had the feeling the team could not possibly do better, and trailed off watching their movies with maybe five to go. What great fun to stumble across this, and be reminded of the exalted place jubilance occupies in the world of dance.
The Yam number starts quite corny, and then Astaire and Rogers begin traveling around all the rooms and obstacles in a multi-room restaurant. I love that the scale of the number keeps growing (in terms of couples), and that you don't know where they're heading next. At a time when the grotesque failings of society are glaring, the fantasy presented in musicals that some parts of society function so well that they occasionally function almost as syncopated machinery is very pleasing. The Yam is pretty cool ...in a way that a thousand dancers around a phony Venice lagoon inside a gigantic soundstage is just not. That's about spectacle, I watch A & R because the focus is on dance. The movie is blessedly free of the usual climactic love dance (which is always lame) seen in their other movies.
Carefree offers a comic turn from the tap dancing couple, and in a rare move Ginger pursues Fred this time. Rogers is funnier than usual in this one. It's quite short and at the 50 minute mark a dance number erupts called "the Yam." After I saw the exhilarating number "Pick Yourself Up" in Shall we Dance I had the feeling the team could not possibly do better, and trailed off watching their movies with maybe five to go. What great fun to stumble across this, and be reminded of the exalted place jubilance occupies in the world of dance.
The Yam number starts quite corny, and then Astaire and Rogers begin traveling around all the rooms and obstacles in a multi-room restaurant. I love that the scale of the number keeps growing (in terms of couples), and that you don't know where they're heading next. At a time when the grotesque failings of society are glaring, the fantasy presented in musicals that some parts of society function so well that they occasionally function almost as syncopated machinery is very pleasing. The Yam is pretty cool ...in a way that a thousand dancers around a phony Venice lagoon inside a gigantic soundstage is just not. That's about spectacle, I watch A & R because the focus is on dance. The movie is blessedly free of the usual climactic love dance (which is always lame) seen in their other movies.