Seniors Network

 
Something to Dance about

'Tis Autumn as the song says, Saturday night TV schedules Something to Dance About, by Mr Irving Berlin, whose magical music mantle has a great deal to do with dance.

In 1954's White Christmas film Danny Kaye cruises round, smooth as silk: The Best Things Happen While You’re Dancing. This might have been written for the world's No. 1 Dancing Man - Fred Astaire, he even chanted I Wanna Be a Dancing' Man a quarter-of-a-century into his spectacular dancing career 011 stage and screen. Hence his must you dance plea: Change Partners, and in Easter Parade the superb: It Only Happens When I Dance with You. From that same score an amusing Couple of Swells - Fred and Judy Garland; while with Blue Skies partner Bing Crosby: In us you see A Couple of Song and Dance Men. Tip Toes, more like Top Toes!

One of Fred's many other bests he strutted twice, first with sister Adele Astaire on stage; re-vamped, fashioned for 1954's M-G-M extravaganza The Band Wagon, dancing divinely with the just as divine Cyd Charisse in the perfect Arthur Schwartz classic: Dancing in the Dark.

In between all this a doubling-up, so to say, of a triple title: Shall We Dance? Title question of the George and Ira Gershwin - Astaire /Rogers 1930s shipboard romance, and the adored Rodgers and Hammerstein 1959 wonder: The King And I where Gertrude Lawrence invites Yul Brynner on to the ballroom floor: so to Deborah Kerr in the still shown (DVD) 20th Century Fox film.

Staying at the top of Tin-Pan-Alley, Cole Porter no less, and a song literally thrown away in a Broadway show Jubilee in 1935. Discovered in the file by arranger Jerry Gray for the stunning Benny Goodman Band, that arrangement from 1938 still being played today, immortalising once and for all the beautifully tempered, Begin the Beguine. Cole Porter later gave Can-Can Broadway force.

When it comes to tropical fare you just cannot beat Ravel's Bolero - given new life through the skate/dance of Torvill and Dean. Britain has a small share of this I dance craze: Teach Me To Dance Like Grandma, and still burning bright, Dance Little Lady both come from the pen of the Master - Noel Coward; Noel's theatrical companion - in that they worked London's West End at the same time - Ivor Novello and his fabled The Dancing Years, which brought Leap Year Waltz!

I am not forgetting two other Dance Kings, both originating on Broadway. Composer Richard Rodgers, without doubt the Great White Way's Waltz King - heed here The Carousel Waltz; later with lyricist Stephen Sondheim the captivating Do I Hear A Waltz?

And in the 1930s on a visit to London working with impresario C.B. Cochran, and terrific lyrical partner Larry Hart, on the show Evergreen, for stunning star Jessie Matthews, ingenious, Dancing on the Ceiling. Then a star dancer the world still loves: Gene Kelly, Singin' In The Rain whatever the weather and partnering shimmering, dazzling Cyd Charisse in the Gotta Sing, Gotta Dance invigorating sequence from the Broadway Rhythm interlude of the film Singin' In The Rain.

You will not forget the energetic tip top Terpsichore in and of West Side Story, A Chorus Line and No, No, Nannette, precision, pep, personality still recalled. Another dancing Duo in the much neglected show Ballroom, and the should be standard: I Love to Dance Every Single Dance While I’m Holding You in My Arms. A terrific twosome, wish it were heard more! Never Do a Tango with an Eskimo pleads A1ma Cogan, while fuzzy voiced Hermione Gingold and gruff as a Billy Goat - Gilbert Harding prove once and for all YouCan’t Tell a Waltz from a Tango.

Which is better, Foxtrot, Quickstep, Palais Glide all dance delights, I Could Have Danced All Night fairly spins to My Fair Lady success sung by Julie Andrews; Waltzing In The Clouds does similar for Deanna Durbin in Robert Stolz Spring Parade, and if you have not heard the Glenn Miller AEF Orchestra version of Strauss' The Blue Danube, you have a treat in store!

This has been a sort of Come Dance with Me, you may recall it was Mario Lanza who introduced and popularised same in his film The Seven Hills of Rome, but who gave it Grammy Status? None other than Frank Sinatra. Frank had his own share of dancing dividends: best of all better even than Come Dance With Me (find this on a Capitol CD of the same name), on that album, (LP number Capitol LCT 6197 ) exquisite, poignant, a little bit on the sad side - and why not - here at the end of our Saturday night hop - the very, the positive, ring down curtain time: it's The Last Dance.

 Copied from Greater London Pensioner - Article by  Neil Stevens -