When Randy Duncan was growing up on the West Side, he loved to watch the acrobats perform on “Bozo’s Circus.” Gradually, he learned to mimic the movements — stretching every day until his legs could do the splits. He pulled off some tumbling moves, too, and seriously considered a career as a contortionist.
Then he saw “West Side Story.”
“Needless to say, I did not become a contortionist,” Duncan recalls. “Once I saw that, I said, ‘Yeah! There you go! That’s what I want to do. I want to dance, I want to sing, I want to be in musicals.’ That is what changed my life and made me become a dancer.”
Duncan, 42, is hardly the first impressionable mind or limber body to plunge into the dance world after seeing a single movie. Fred Astaire, Ginger Rogers and Gene Kelly forced countless families to convert their kitchens into dance floors in the ’30s and ’40s. After 1980’s “Fame,” Duncan recalls, “so many young people were coming to dance studios and signing up for classes.”
Duncan hopes “Save the Last Dance,” the hit inner-city Chicago drama for which he choreographed the ballet scenes, has the same effect. (Fatima, Duncan’s one-named colleague, handled the hip-hop scenes.) After viewing the movie, Nancy Teinowitz, associate artistic director of the local Joel Hall Dancers, saw “teenagers practicing dance steps in the lobby, giggling and being excited about the art form they had never experienced.”
Actually, “Save the Last Dance” star Julia Stiles hadn’t experienced ballet since she studied it briefly as a kid. So in late 1999, Duncan brought her to Chicago for a month of four-hour training days. “By the end of it,” recalls Duncan, who’s also a choreographer for the Joffrey Ballet and a dance teacher at the Chicago Academy for the Arts High School, “she had muscles she didn’t know she had.”
For “Save the Last Dance,” Duncan tried to completely ignore “West Side Story,” “Fame” and the other classics replaying endlessly in his head. “One of the things that may have slightly come to mind was ‘Flashdance.’ It was basically about a girl [Jennifer Beals’ Alex, like Stiles’ Sara] auditioning to get someplace,” he says. “But as far as the choreography was concerned — no, not at all. I really didn’t look at other dance films. I looked at the story.”
MEMORABLE DANCE MOVIES
“All That Jazz” (1979). A musical version of Fellini’s “8 1/2,” and in all its phantasmagorical, hip, crackling glory, it may be director-writer-choreographer Bob Fosse’s best picture.
“An American in Paris” (1951). Gene Kelly had danced his way to the top of MGM’s — and Hollywood’s — heap by the time he made “An American in Paris,” and the picture’s huge critical and public success cemented his rank as dance king Fred Astaire’s only peer.
“The Band Wagon” (1953). This classic was the product of a musical dream team: producer Arthur Freed, writers Betty Comden and Adolph Green (“Singin’ in the Rain”) and director Vincente Minnelli. And then there’s Fred Astaire paired up with Cyd Charisse. Dance heaven.
“Fame” (1980). The story of eight teens growing up in arts school was the first major movie to show dance, from ballet to disco, as a form of employment rather than as ballroom or street fantasy.
“The Red Shoes” (1948). A 15-minute ballet scene would never fly today — unless, as in “Save the Last Dance,” you marry it with hip-hop. But it’s perfect in an adaptation of Hans Christian Andersen’s love-vs.-success fairy tale.
“Saturday Night Fever” (1977). The John Travolta tale of escaping work to dance in a white leisure suit underneath a glittery ball became one of the top movies of all time — and epitomized the peak of the ’70s disco craze.
“Singin’ in the Rain” (1952). “Gotta sing! Gotta dance!” Gene Kelly exults in perhaps his greatest movie; he dances with an umbrella, climbs up a wall and swings around a lamppost in filmdom’s most memorable depiction of dancing joy.
“Top Hat” (1935). Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers guffaw through this early comedy of cheap laughs and goofy facial expressions, but every time they clasp hands, they define the elegance of sleek ballroom dancing.
“West Side Story” (1961). Co-director Jerome Robbins presented dance as a macho, masculine expression of gang loyalty — and still left room for the slow-dancing romance.
“White Nights” (1985). Not the greatest thriller ever, but a rare chance to view the hunky Russian ballet legend Mikhail Baryshnikov plus a tap-dancing Gregory Hines.
NON-DANCE MOVIES WITH GREAT DANCE SCENES
“The American President” (1995). Michael Douglas’ White House waltz with Annette Bening proves that some U.S. presidents can woo single women and make it look elegant. Sadly, they’re fictional.
“Bamboozled” (2000). Spike Lee’s commentary on blackface showcases some of Savion Glover’s finest big-screen tap work.
“Blues Brothers” (1980). Even the most boisterous of Baptist churchgoers don’t do the kind of cheerleader flips John Belushi did down the aisle in this flick. But it still looks cool.
“Diner” (1982). The spontaneous scene between two drunk guys, a stripper and a boogie-woogie pianist sets the bar pretty high for future cinematic pre-wedding celebrations.
“Last Tango in Paris” (1973). There is actual tango in this classic, although the title refers to the creepy psychological dance Marlon Brando and Maria Schneider do throughout the film.
“Pulp Fiction” (1994). So what was that dance Travolta did with Uma Thurman? The coked-up barefoot twist? The paunchy gangster frug? Any way you slice it, it’s unforgettable.
“Scent of a Woman” (1992). OK, blind men can tango (as Al Pacino did with Gabrielle Anwar). But who knew they did it so very well?
“Swingers” (1996). When Jon Favreau unleashes his hidden jitterbug expertise on Heather Graham in the climactic scene, he almost singlehandedly sparked the late ’90s swing revival.
“Titanic” (1997). Leonardo DiCaprio introduces Kate Winslet to Irish jigs in steerage — and glosses over centuries of socioeconomic disparity in the process.
“Witness” (1985). What else did you expect a cop (Harrison Ford) and an Amish woman (Kelly McGillis) to do in a barn? They dance, of course.
— Steve Knopper and Michael Wilmington
LOCAL DANCERS’ FAVORITE MOVIES
Gerald Arpino, artistic director, The Joffrey Ballet of Chicago: ” `The Red Shoes’ — because of the story line of this girl who had to decide between her personal life and her career. That’s what most of the artists have to deal with at some point. I’m going through it now with one of my dancers — she’s being tormented with a husband and a child and no time. Oh, she has seen `The Red Shoes.’ We cried together.”
Nancy Teinowitz, associate artistic director, Joel Hall Dancers: “When I saw “The Turning Point,’ I was a young dancer in New York trying to make it. It was really inspiring. I would go to class in New York and see some of the dancers who were in the film in class, and that was really exciting.”
Dardi McGinley Gallivan, artist-in-residence, Columbia College: ” `White Nights’ made a big impression on me — just the reality of what [ballet legend Mikhail] Baryshnikov had gone through and sort of seeing it played out. [Tap specialist] Gregory Hines is just very open and can relate to anybody. Seeing the two styles come together was pretty interesting.”
Sandi Cooksey, performer, Hubbard Street Dance Chicago: “It drives me crazy when [dancers aren’t] portrayed accurately, but I think it’s a difficult thing to do so I’ve become more tolerant. `All That Jazz’ — [the fact that it is realistic is] perhaps one of the things that made me really like it. It was a very real situation, as disturbing as that might seem.”
