Love N' Dancing

...

Do I actually need to say anything about this movie?  You should be able to imagine a 95% accurate version of the film just from the poster.

Let's start at the beginning.

Carleton has a termual (that's once a trimester) tradition called the Library Silent Dance Party.  The idea is that a few days before the last Friday of the term, an email starts being forwarded around to pretty much every email list on campus.  It contains a link to an mp3 and instructions to download it, put it on your music listening device of choice, and show up to the first floor (aka the Monastary Quiet floor) of the library at 11pm on Friday.  Then when all 200+ people have shown up, some pre-designated leader silently counts down on his fingers.  When the countdown ends, everyone presses play.  Thus begins a dance party in the most quiet location on campus.

 

The LSDP moves through the library, slowly making its way up the floors.  After the break 30 minutes in, it generally beings to move around campus like an ooze, engulfing building after building of innocent by-standers trying to study for finals.  It's probably the single coolest thing I've ever done at Carleton.  And college is pretty cool, and Carleton is pretty cool for a college.  In the middle of it, you just feel connected to all these strangers in a totally awesome non-creepy way.  Like, you're just dancing with people.  It's great.

...

So midnight comes around this past Friday night, and everyone's leaving the LSDP.  Of course, after an hour of such an experience, you can't just go home and go to bed.  As tired as you are, your energy level is through the roof.  I didn't know what to do, but eventually I went to get smoothies at the snack bar with a bunch of Social Dance Club people.  That got us a decent ways, but after the smoothies were gone, what then?  I mean, watching a movie is always on the table, but...

I made the mistake of making a comment about how all the things in life that make me feel amazing are slowly converging to dance.  Swing dance club, social dance club, contact improv, the LSDP... All these things just make me feel unbeatable in a way that not much else ever has.  I say this comment was a mistake because I was in the presence of one Kendra, who immediately demanded that we spend the rest of the evening watching Love N' Dancing. 

A few organizational shenanigans later, I found myself along with several other dancers in Kendra's apartment with the opening to what looked like Dirty Dancing all over playing itself in front of me.  How had it come to this?

The plot was exactly what you expect.  Early on, I made a comment about how the girl was going to take off her big glasses, let down her hair, and rapidly become a ridiculously good dancer.  Not only did all of these things happen, but later during a crisis her friend says to her (I shit you not):  "Girl, you're wearing contacts.  You've let your hair down.  You're happy.  Why do you think this is?"

And Kendra goes "Dancing".  And the friend goes "Dancing".

It was brutal to sit through, though I admit the dancing was awesome.  Now that I actually dance a lot, I can appreciate that sort of thing in bad dance movies.  I also spent an unreasonable amount of time marveling at how the director had hid the cameras in a dance studio where all the walls were mirrors.  Let me just say that there were some very conveniently place pillars and many clever angles.  I made a point of it to ruin every moment possible with yet another technical comment.

Still, no matter what I may say about this movie's quality, the dancing was great.  And like Kendra, I wish I could do this.  Still wasn't worth being up until 3am for.