Um... happy ending can't catch me but this one is tragic- as tragic as a great dancer collapsed and died of his own athletic routine at a young age when he was supposed to be famous because of his impressive choreography.
Bolero the film
Setting at the time around WWI, with the story went like lovers separated, lover got married, lovers rejoined, lover died, plus some Latin dancing from time to time, and a valentino-like man, and a beautiful lady... enough reasons for me to watch when I read about the plot. However, as I blogged previously in Rumba, old movies were hard to find, I could only watch a bit of it and could only imagine things myself. And that made me want it even more.
Bolero the dance
Bolero is an interesting dance, if danced in international style, its timing is 4/4, with a tempo of 24 bars pm, it is a slow Latin dance as slow as rumba. Slow doesn't amuse me, what interested me is its body position. Unlike most of the Latin dance (international style) I have learnt, it requires a body position that the couple keeps touching from knee to ribcage, head facing left and counter-balancing each other. It looks more like ballroom. I also find the timing very intriguing, in international style it is 4/4, in Spanish 3/4, but in Cuban 2/4. The movie went with Ravel’s Bolero so it’s 3/4.
Bolero the dance scenes
I am learning to appreciate the old-fashioned dance style. I know international dances have been undergoing huge changes to become the elegant form they are today, so when I watched them dancing I tried not to see them nowadays’ real dancers. If footwork doesn't count, I think Raft and Carole's Bolero is better than their Rumba. Lifting was not as sharp and strong as our dancers but they were not professionals so that’s acceptable, so, not much to say.