The Hyperion Chronicles

Can I get some Back-Up here?

Last night—for reasons I’m still not sure off—Kaida asked me what was the best dance sequence in a movie. We quickly qualified that to be non-musical, because it’s hard to compare a movie that happens to have a dance sequence with one where that’s all they do.

As befitting a great question like that, I was taking my time, going over the various candidates in my head, when Kaida suddenly blurts out, “Hands down, it’s the final scene in DIRTY DANCING.”

I digested that for a moment, before coming back with, “I don’t think that can be the best dance scene of all time, WHEN IT’S NOT EVEN THE BEST DANCE SCENE IN THE MOVIE!”

I want to make this clear; I am not denigrating the final scene. It is iconic, memorable, has good music, that great line (“Nobody puts Baby in a Corner!”), and gives us a happy ending, making all the chicks happy. No one is more thrilled than I that they managed to give us a good ending.

That said, there is a superior scene: where Baby is invited by Johnny’s cousin to the staff quarters, and sees all the kids doing the dirty dancing. (If the movie had any guts, they’d have been black kids, but oh well: another universe, perhaps.)

Three reasons this scene is superior:

1) It’s unexpected. We don’t know it’s coming, and we make a journey of discovery along with Baby, sort of feeling what she feels.

2) The dancing is better, featuring more people and more real. In the final scene, we have just Baby and Johnny doing a dance we’ve already seen them practice in a montage, and then everyone at the end, which is sweet but somewhat hokey. In the first scene, young good-looking teenagers (well, twenty-somethings playing teenagers, but you get the idea), are crawling all over each other. This brings us to the third and most important point.

3) Whereas the final scene is about as a sexy as a Lawrence Welk marathon, the first scene is hot Hot HOT! Think about it. In the final scene, we have to endure that ridiculous South Pacific homage, or whatever that is (only slightly sexified by the hula dancing of Baby’s sister). Then Baby and Johnny get to dance, which is great, except it is 12000 times hotter in the earlier montage, when Baby is not wearing very many clothes. That montage was smoking. Finally, you have all the old people involved, which just kills any lingering sexy.

On the other hand, that scene where Baby discovers the people dancing? NOTHING BUT SEXY.

Why do I make a big deal about this? Simple. Women may go on and on about how romantic dancing is, and I’m sure they are right, but dancing itself is a mating ritual. Advanced foreplay, without ever having to touch naughty bits or see them either. In other words, dancing does not exist without the sexual element, and as the final Dirty Dancing scene contains very little sexiness, I do not see how it can be the best dancing scene in the movie, let alone of all time.

Apparently, others disagree.

I called Bear up to ask him, and he asked his woman Boo Boo. She immediately took Kaida’s side, and is no longer talking to me.

Therefore, I ask you, the gentle reader. I have my top ten list all done, but before I post it, you have a chance to weigh in here. Is the final scene from DIRTY DANCING a better dance sequence than earlier in the film? And does either scene deserve to make it into a Top 10 list of Dance scenes from all time?

Let your voice ring out.

Hyperion
November 30, 2007