And now for something completely different...
Once upon a time, there was a song, and a dance, and a video...and I totally missed them. It was the autumn of 1981. MTV was brand-new. And a band called Adam and the Ants released "Prince Charming", with its very own associated dance, supposedly written because the music did not lend itself to standard nightclub/disco dancing (Wikipedia). The single record, shown at left (click to enlarge) claimed to be
Introducing the new Dance Craze "The Prince Charming"
Apparently the dance achieved some level of popularity, at least in the UK, but I wasn't aware of it or of Adam Ant at all until his big hit "Goody Two-Shoes" the following year. In fact, I don't even recall ever hearing the song until a friend's recent repost on Facebook of the Victoria & Albert Museum's display of Ant's Regency-inspired costume, shown at right. That caught my eye for sure, and I went looking for the video, which turned out to be a gender-swapped Cinderella story, with Ant as Cinderella and two drag stepsisters. Ant's fairy godmother (English actress Diana Dors) transforms his clothes into that outfit -- he literally becomes Prince Charming, singing the line "Ridicule is nothing to be scared of" and dancing. Good for him!
One of the comments on my friend's Facebook post was from someone who'd never gotten the dance. Getting dances is what I do, so I thought I'd record this odd little piece of social dance history for posterity.
The dance consists of a series of four arm movements or poses:
"Choreographer Stephanie Coleman explained that each hand movement in the Prince Charming dance had a meaning (in order: Pride, Courage, Humour, Flair) each representing an element of Adam Ant's personality." (Wikipedia)
Specifically:
- Pride: right arm up, bent at elbow
- Courage: left arm up, bent at elbow, arms crossing at wrists
- Humour: arms down, pointed out at a slight angle angle
- Flair: right arm raised and curved behind while left arm thrusts forward as if with a rapier
Here are stills from the video illustrating them:
And you can see the sequence danced by Adam Ant himself starting here:
Unfortunately, on the second repetition, the video cuts, and after that the dance is offset by one position -- it's now matched to the music 4-1-2-3 instead of 1-2-3-4. Poor editing!
While doing the poses, the dancers step forward one step per pose (right-left-right-left) and quickly rock back and forward again in place, shifting weight from foot to foot. The count is 1&2, step-rock-rock, similar to one of the steps in the Lulu Fado. This is most clearly visible in the second repetition on the video above, when Ant is seen from behind. In the transition from pose four back to pose one, the right arm sweeps forward and completely around in a circle. Sometimes the right arm stays in place through the second pose, but sometimes the dancers move it down or out and bring it back up. This seems to just be a bit of style variation.
At the very end of the dance, Ant does the final pose with his left arm bent, but I think that is just because he was approaching the camera closely.
Interestingly, there is another version of the dance in which the fourth pose is reversed, as danced by the fairy godmother and members of her fairy chorus, a group of shirtless black men in white, here and by the fairy chorus alone here. I love the arm flow of these dancers, with their arms coming down after each pose and sweeping back up. Pose three is taken with the arm extended more dramatically at a higher level. And they don't walk forward in the version in the second link; instead, they do a sexy hip swivel as they hit each pose. It's easy to see who the professional dancers were in this video!
Here are still photos of one of the fairy chorus doing this variant sequence of poses:
Interestingly, if you go back to the embedded video above and watch to about 3:18, you can see some of the fairy chorus on the left side of the screen still doing the version with pose four reversed, in mirror image to Ant and the extras!
So, that's the Prince Charming. I'll have to make some occasion to dance it...
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