Film Review

By Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat

That's Dancing!
Directed by Jack Haley, Jr.
MGM Home Entertainment 01/85 DVD/VHS Documentary
G

Here is a feel-good movie that celebrates the craft and art of dancing as it has been presented on the screen in more than 100 different motion pictures and short subjects. Hosts Ray Bolger, Mikhail Baryshnikov, Liza Minelli, Gene Kelly and Sammy Davis Jr., cover the turf through six sections: The Berkeley Years, The Great Stylists, The World of ballet, The Golden years of the Movie Musical, The Best of Broadway, and The Future.

This is an ideal family film that fills in all the phases which preceded the dancing in Saturday Night Fever, Fame, Flashdance, and Michael Jackson's videos. That's Dancing! is about the beat that put bodies in motion from tap to ballroom to disco to break dancing.

Everyone will have his or her favorite sequences: ours include the six performances by the inimitable Fred Astaire, the Berkeley Dancers in "Lullaby of Broadway" from Gold Diggers of 1935, Shirley Temple and Bill "Bojangles" Robinson in The Little Rebel, Gene Kelley and Donald O'Connor in Singin' in the Rain, James Cagney in Yankee Doodle Dandy, and Cyd Charisse in Silk Stockings.

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by Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat