Dance Movie Love

The 80s gave us a lot of cool things – disco, Robert Mapplethorpe, the computer, the internet, neon colours Wham and Boy George to name a few. As I was busy learning my ABCs and getting into grade one towards the end of the 80s I became those 90s kids who were totally and irrevocably influenced and shaped by the “totally bitchin” dance movies of the 80s and the slew of similarly inspired films that continue to be released.

So today I thought, here are my top 7 dance movies and why :

Dirty Dancing : For giving me Patrick Swayzee for my pre-teen fantasies plus tween “dirty dancing” themes parties

Footloose : I’ll be completely honest, the cultural Christian repression thing didn’t translate at all to a 11 year old Indian girl growing up in India, in a family that constantly is breaking out in song and dance and even choreographing their own steps!y reason to love this movie  has to be Kevin Bacons moves! I was so copying them for my own dance numbers!

Flashdance : The big hair, the leg-warmers, the Oh! Wait! It’s actually a dude dancing, Classic 80s!

Grease : What’s there not to love?

Grease II : For it’s ultimate cheese factor and who would have thought this fresh faced all American Michelle Pfeiffer would transform just a year later in 1983 into Elvira Hancock in Scarface – it’s on my list for the sheer weirdness of it all.

Saturday Night Fever : I was definitely too young to have watched it when I did, for the first time, but wow! The clothes, the style, John Travolta and the Bee Gees made me and my generation fall in obsessive lust with Saturdaynights and clubs! It was a much awaited “ritual” of our future selves.

Thanedar : a 1990 Hindi film starting Madhuri Dixit and Sanjay Dutt has a Classic- and I mean “Classic” 80s inspired dance sequence! It is still me and my friends go to dance song! It is just sheer brilliance from composer Bappi Lahri and choreographer Saroj Khan, and mad applause for Javed Jaggrry who was Sanjay Dutt’s dance double. A must watch, catch it here

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=t1iFzqdn71w

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