Hindsight

The dance number "Cheek to Cheek" from Top Hat (1945)

I actually got to meet and talk with Ginger Rogers about this famous dance number. She had written about the feather dress in her wonderful autobiography, describing how the dress caused problems for the production crew, because after each take they had to sweep the set.  She whispered to me, that the dress was her idea and keeping it in was quite a struggle.  Well, the dress is perfect as is everything else in this magnificent dance number from 1935's Top Hat.  Ginger is with Fred Astaire, of course, and this is arguably one of their best dance sequence of all time!  You have everything here, the Art Deco sets, the over the top orchestration of Irving Berlin's "Heaven."   Fred and Ginger do ballroom, even a little soft shoe, and both making it look soooooo easy.  The control of their bodies is mind boggling.  I remember seeing this film down on the UW campus in the mid-1960s.  I was eight and rode my bike down to Sterling hall for a viewing.  When I got home I pretended my Raggedy Andy was Fred and we danced throughout the house.  My brother Jon John still teases me about this!  Produced during the depression, this scene evokes the escapism aspects of a Busby Berkely musical, pure escapism.   The scene also hints to the desire for film makers to elude the Victorian attitudes forced upon them by the production code, where limits were put on how long a kiss could be, and other forms of censor on what was sexually implied.  However, some  critiques have suggested that through their dancing Fred and Ginger got around all this, and actually provided a sensuality that eclipsed the limits of the absurd "code."  For example, this number, called "Cheek to Cheek"

By the way, Ginger told me that day, that after this dance number, Fred called her, for the rest of his life "Feathers"

Enjoy!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2A4-C-MK-Po