Dance scene from Band of Outsiders
From Godard’s 1964 film Bande à part, or Band of Outsiders. Not design except in the larger sense, but it’s in the favourites category thanks to my friends Maxwell and Hadley who made about thirty of us learn this sequence for an art event a couple of years ago. We were calling it The Madison but apparently it’s not a faithful rendition of that dance. It’s better.
Tags: 1964, 60s, Band of Outsiders, Bande à part, clip, dance, favorite, favourite, French New Wave, Godard, Jean-Luc Godard, video, youtube
May 23rd, 2009 at 12:41 pm
This is what I learnt as Madison at that time. It did not stay in fashion long enough to let us dance properly. It was followed by another — was it “Letkis”, the rather stupid version of a Finnish folk dance named “letka jenka”? Look out for that if you work for the Ministry of Silly Dances.
May 23rd, 2009 at 5:41 pm
That’s interesting! It seems that everyone refers to this dance as The Madison, but I just looked up the Madison on Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madison_(dance) and it says this:
“In a famous sequence in Jean-Luc Godard’s 1964 film Bande à part (Band of Outsiders), the main characters engage in a dance, which is not named in the film, but which the actors later referred to as the ‘Madison dance’.[8] The music and choreography are, however, unrelated to the Madison.”
Whatever it’s called, I like it. I looked up the other dance you mentioned, and is this it?
or
May 23rd, 2009 at 8:42 pm
that is so great. it would have been wonderful to see this at that art event:)
i now want to go down to video ezy and rent that film.
May 25th, 2009 at 1:06 pm
A nice slab of French cinema. I think I too will go out and get hold of a Godard movie, or maybe I’ll just sigh a lot and stare out of a cafe window.
June 2nd, 2009 at 2:25 pm
During the 1960′s there was many differences between an original american or english dance and the interpretation of continental Europe. When chubby Checker came to Paris, with the title of the Inventor of the Twist, the french youth disliked coz’ he doesn’t dance properly the twist. The dance of the Godard movie IS a madison… in french acception.