Lindsay Kemp (May 1938 - August 2018)

The first image after the opening titles in Jarman’s Sebastiane is a close up of Lindsay Kemp’s beglittered and thickly made up face as he performs a dance, I believe, in honor of Priapus.  This was my introduction to his work.  It looks like no representation of Roman Dancing that I had previously seen and was probably much closer to the truth of it.  Lindsay Kemp died on Friday (24 August) in Livorno, in Tuscany; he was eighty years old.  In the pictures above he looks in good shape but strangely older than his thirty seven years at the time.  RIP

the Balloon Dance

Stanley Donen directed and choreographed this number from, his film, Give a Girl a Break (1953) for Bob Fosse and Debbie Reynolds.  It’s known as the Balloon Dance.  I’ve placed the images in reverse order in tribute to Donen’s shooting and editing method.  Much of the sequence was shot in reverse motion in order to create certain magical effects, such as balloons magically appearing out of thin air and dancers making impossible leaps.  He then intercut it with footage shot in conventional forward motion, but so smoothly one is halfway fooled by the illusion of continuity.   One is drawn in even more forcefully by the athletic dancing. 

Alter Ego Dance

Stanley Donen & Gene Kelly choreographed and directed the Alter Ego dance sequence in Charles Vidor’s Cover Girl (1944).  Donen worked on it for over a year, which included the editing.   I think it served as a kind of model for later dance sequences they made together, such as Singin’ in the Rain (1952) and I like myself (It’s always fair Weather, 1955).