Monday, August 8, 2011

Face the Music and Dance

I was doing some exploring this evening on songs, and dancing, and dancing to songs, and I inevitably wound up looking at dozens of clips of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. I have my mom to thank for a great appreciation of old movies.

Here's Fred Astaire doing "We Saw the Sea" from Follow the Fleet. I sing this all the time, but people just give me looks askance. Pshaw. It's funny.

And Fred and Ginger doing "Never Gonna Dance" from Top Hat.
Embedding disabled, but still, watch it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wXT0e6HWndQ

Fred Astaire singing "Let's Face the Music and Dance." I love this song. And to think they originally said of FA "Can't act, can't sing, can dance a little." It's just the song, no video to speak of:

...And Ginger Rogers singing "Let Yourself Go," another one I often sing. It starts about 54 seconds in (the beginning is instrumental). Video is a slideshow of pictures from the dance of the same title, but really you're better off just watching them dance. Unfortunately there's no singing though in that version.

Some days I wish I had tv solely so I could watch Turner Classic Movies. I miss that.

2 comments:

Megan said...

I have tv and I *don't* have TCM. Teh lame.

LP said...

Fred and Ginger! Before TCM, before video recorders, I used to se my alarm to get up at 2:00 am and watch their movies, which for some reason seemed to be the only time they showed them. Now THAT is teh lame.

One of these days I'm going to buy the dvd set of all their movies, then I won't have to rely on TCM or anyone but myself. In the meantime, here's one of my favorite dances of theirs. Dance in film can be an expression of joy, of seduction, of anger, but imo no other dance I've seen (including that sequence in "Singing in the Rain") tracks so well and so poignantly the story of a failed relationship. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wXT0e6HWndQ

And here's "Let Yourself Go", the dance: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y1FjlVsZ-mk

And Fred and Ginger clowning (another favorite, because it's so rare): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q37pZ6Fi3VY

And finally, another of my favorites (a serious dance with the added bonus of Spanish subtitles!): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DyfqW6td-yA

My word is "loodled", which is sort of how I feel after watching all these vids.