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...at least if your name is Fred Astaire.
I love me some Donald O'Connor, and Gene Kelly is marvelous. I love Jimmy Cagney and Bill Robinson and Savion Glover and many other tap-dance greats new and old. But I have a special slice of my emotional dance floor reserved for Fred Astaire. And today's Times had a piece that reminded me of a couple of numbers I hadn't seen in years. Look at "Nice Work if You Can Get It" from Damsel in Distress!
He's not only good--and good with his whole body, top and bottom--and not only is he having fun (and he knows what he's doing with those drums; he was a drummer in his spare time) but he manages to comment with his dancing on what he's doing, and how. Astaire could make an okay partner look brilliant, and a brilliant partner into a dream, but it's his solo work in which he gets to editorialize. Here he is in A Damsel in Distress, doing drunk and heartbroken and angry...and breaking hella glass, as my daughter would say:
His sway, before he even really begins to dance, just kills me.
Bonus: Astaire on What's My Line.
I've got such a crush.
I love me some Donald O'Connor, and Gene Kelly is marvelous. I love Jimmy Cagney and Bill Robinson and Savion Glover and many other tap-dance greats new and old. But I have a special slice of my emotional dance floor reserved for Fred Astaire. And today's Times had a piece that reminded me of a couple of numbers I hadn't seen in years. Look at "Nice Work if You Can Get It" from Damsel in Distress!
He's not only good--and good with his whole body, top and bottom--and not only is he having fun (and he knows what he's doing with those drums; he was a drummer in his spare time) but he manages to comment with his dancing on what he's doing, and how. Astaire could make an okay partner look brilliant, and a brilliant partner into a dream, but it's his solo work in which he gets to editorialize. Here he is in A Damsel in Distress, doing drunk and heartbroken and angry...and breaking hella glass, as my daughter would say:
His sway, before he even really begins to dance, just kills me.
Bonus: Astaire on What's My Line.
I've got such a crush.