Pour me a glass of vino rosso, sit me in a comfortable chair and ask me what my favourite film is.
Truth is I don’t care much for films. I get bored quickly; fidgety – even quicker. So the thought of sitting through most films leaves me cold. But favourite films – that’s a different matter.
As I swirl the wine around in the glass, pretending I know what I am doing – I’m letting it breath, right? – I will look up, with a dead straight face and say: “Either The King and I or An American in Paris”.
Obviously there is a love for the Star Wars or Godfather series, but there is something magical that keeps drawing me back to the mesmeric dance moves of both Yul Brynner and Gene Kelly. It’s the notion that two achingly-cool men could somehow look even better, as they moved across a dancefloor/stage/set – without any hint of campness shattering the illusion.
I first realised that I had found an icon in Kelly when watching films like “Singing in the rain” or “On the town”. Even as a child I understood the notion that men like women, want to be with women – might have to do something to impress women. Whilst I was still perfecting farts or play-punching, then running off from any girl that might have shown an interest – Kelly was showing me what I should really be doing. Jumping off a castle set, turning over a sofa and tap dancing his way in to the hearts of every woman he came across.
Brynner was different. Brynner was not just swagger cool; he was moody cool as well. Mean eyes staring out from under a bald head added an element of fear to him in “The King and I”, that I wanted to replicate. He doesn’t dance as much as Kelly, but then when he does – he bounds and glides effortlessly across the floor. It is of a time. I am clearly of the wrong time.
I must have watched “The King and I” a hundred times or more. I owned the soundtrack to “An American in Paris” – but I never did dance like my two favourite movie stars.
I once saw an advert for dance classes in the church hall when going to cubs. I looked at the people going in to the class – mainly girls or boys I didn’t talk to at school. As I stood in the door way in my hair shirt and woggle, I realised that was no place for me. Could you imagine the ridicule? I mean, the only men you saw dancing on TV were Lionel Blair or Wayne Sleep, and they never really seemed to capture the hearts of women, in quite the same way Kelly or Brynner did.
If only Billy Elliot had been written in the ‘80s.
As I got older I tried to dance whenever the opportunity arose. The ‘90s were great for making an exhibition of yourself through the latest nightclub dance trends. I may not quite have perfected the swan dive to caterpillar move, but the side shuffle in to Running Man was how I owned the floor – Keith Flint had nothing on me. Unfortunately the years passed, the pounds increased and the joints deteriorated. The last time I did the Running Man was at my mate, Neil Quigley’s wedding. I woke up the following day unable to bend my leg – spent a week off work with a Meniscus tear.
Never again I told myself. Well, not until the next time.
It is a shame I felt constrained by the machismo of youth. By the fear of being ridiculed for trying out something that didn’t involve a ball, a shout, an uncomfortable pair of shorts. Who knows, I could have been the next Gene Kelly – had the strut of the next Yul Brynner – but then, other than through the work of Baz Luhrmann, dance scenes in movies no longer seem to have that same wow factor as they did in films like “West Side Story”.
Ah well. At least in my head I have Sister Sledge asking why I am, indeed, the greatest dancer – but even then I concede that in terms of hopping around to music with Lauren, she’s the only one with a future on the stage.
My dancing days are behind me. My hobbling in to a pointy shuffle days are all that lie ahead.
Hmm… maybe I should focus on my role as an android in a western style, amusement park instead?