Tone Deaf deals only with music, no more evanescences from the kitchen, the old motorcycling days or riffling through Proust (Hey, look at me! For a couple of weeks a year I could pass as an intellectual.) But dance is surely inseparable from music and this is dancing from another – entirely frictionless – world.The musical nobody ever talks about: It’s Always Fair Weather starring Gene Kelly, Dan Dailey and Cyd Charisse. I know, I’ve mentioned it before but it stays with me. Three ex-soldiers, glad to have survived WW2, booze it up in New York before going their separate ways. Each has a grandiose plan: one to become a writer, another an artist, the third to run an haute cuisine restaurant. They agree to a reunion in ten years’ time to report progress.
All fail in quite shameful ways and the rest of the musical is concerned with the compromises most of us face up to in our lives. A downbeat theme which is why IAFW rarely figures on Top Ten lists except mine. I was reminded of it recently when I saw Dan Dailey dancing and realised how different his style is from Gene Kelly’s – so loose, so casual, so conversational.
But the clip I’ve chosen does feature Kelly. Given the nature of YouTube the chances are this sequence is quite well known, even though the context may be comparatively obscure. What makes this clip different are the sub-titles (Clear the strip ad to see them.). In the meantime, click on:
Why can't we all move like this?