Is there anything cooler than the impromptu dance sequence in Jean-Luc Godard's 1964 Bande à part (Band of Outsiders)? Sami Frey, in his lean suit, finger snaps and shuffles like the king of hipness and Anna Karina has this seductive goofy naivete about her.
In today's culture, it seems like synchronized dance steps occur as periodic fads (e.g. the macarena, the hustle, Gap ads with hep-cats swing dancing, Michael Jackson's zombie dance from Thriller), appropriate for large group ritualization (frat parties, prison, aircraft carriers, weddings), but the great age of "knowing the dance" appears to be gone.
NYCTV (broadcast channel 25 in the New York City area run by the city) used to have a show called "City Classics" featuring old documentaries and news reports from the municipal archives. Among the treasures, my favorite was Portable Ladders (1957, produced by WNYC), a comprehensive and exacting lesson for firefighters (wearing spats, I might add) of how to raise three different sizes of portable ladders (left foot on the first rung, hands moving up in standard alternating fashion, the "butt man" pivots as the men on the runners move up the ladder hand over hand...). The script of this educational film is amazingly explicit: no detail is spared, even when the procedure remains unchanged from ladder to ladder. What is more: there is no latitude for individual variation (lives depend on the firefighter performing these gestures mathematically); the writers have thought about the best way that this is to be done and the student must learn this method (one thinks of the mechanized gestures of gun loaders on WWII battleships). There is also this Boy Scout-esque ethic of preparedness that seems to permeate pre-sixties culture (one of NYCTV's other treasures is a Civil Defense post-nuclear attack how-to triage video): one must train and practice these gestures everyday to serve the greater community in a possible time of crisis.
Both ethics -- exacting education of "correct" technique and constant preparedness for catastrophe -- have disappeared for the most part. People dance, cook, play guitar, write their letters, polish their shoes and shave (generally) without referencing detailed (left hand, right hand, small loop, two teaspoons) instructions that have been presented as the objectively "best" way to accomplish these tasks. It's all latitude, self-expression,DIY, fuck the rules...
A couple of years ago I saw two films that prominently feature late nineteenth-century ballroom dance sequences (particularly the Mazurka): the 1963 film by Luchino Visconti The Leopard (based on Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa's novel Il Gattopardo) and Alexander Sokurov's 2002 one-continuous-shot Russian Ark. Despite my DIY-punk heart, I actually found these massive group dances to be mesmerizing, and one of the reasons for this was the notion that this dancing public was not passively watching a spectacle produced for them, but participating and creating the spectacle themselves. Furthermore, unlike the waltz, tango or twist, the Muzurka sequences in these films go beyond the couple dance, and become massive groups working together in precision. This cog-ness of the individual should normally disturb me: a culture in which both man's work environment -- think of Charlie Chaplin tightening cogs at the factory in Modern Times (1936), the soulless insurance office in Billy Wilder's The Apartment (1960), or Björk working the metal press in Dancer in the Dark (2000) -- and pleasures are formalized and mechanical can, I imagine, be a culture easily coerced into boot-step marching and huge Nuremberg rallies... but one has the impression that, for the individuals in these group dances, any "aporia" of the modern that one might feel is mitigated by one's sense of collective participation. They seem to be having a great time.
Which makes the dance sequence in Bande à part so perfect (for me). The small group of three avoids the pitfalls of the soulless mega-group, and given that these outsiders are cutting a rug in the middle of a cafe - their communal and participatory becomes rebelliously fun.
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