"I just dance."

Warning, this post is going to be silly. There seems to be some confusion on the topic of roller-skating in film. While this is by no means a scholarly look, I thought it might be fun to do a brief overview of roller skate dances in classic film. The common misconception is that the first filmed tap-dance on roller skates came in 1955 with Gene Kelly's film, "It's Always Fair Weather." This is not the case.  Based on a quick stint of film-research on the topic, I think that the first scene in a film that could possibly constitute someone "dancing on roller skates" came in 1916 with Charlie Chaplin's film, " The Rink ."  The skating stuff comes right around 10:45. I have not watched enough copies of this film to know which has the best restoration, but this one seems passable, if without a score.  What he does here is an absolutely incredible combination of skating, dance, physical comedy, and fight choreography. There ...

When you do musical theatre, you hear about Fred and Ginger. I was first introduced to them as a teenager and basically, all I knew was that they were old, did movies in black and white (at the time a scary concept for me) and that they danced. My family and I used to be a part of this film club that was run by our local paper's film critic. He decided that Top Hat was a worthwhile film to show on the big screen and somehow I ended up sitting in the audience. When I figured out which one was Fred Astaire I was underwhelmed. That's it? That odd-looking man? He looks a bit like a stick bug... Even when he did his first dance ("Fancy Free" the sand dance) I didn't get it. Then he danced with Ginger. That's when it clicked. Thus began my love of dance films, old films, and of course, Fred Astaire. About the Dance: This is hands-down my favorite Fred and Ginger dance, maybe because it is the one that made me fall in love with Fred. One of the th...