My name is Christopher Brand.

We are professional dancers and choreographers.

Way are gonna be discussing the dance sequence in Pulp Fiction.

Hope Fiction was made in 1994.

Director was Quentin Tarantino.

There's a lot at stake in here.

They are this gangster and a gangster's wife on this very odd date.

So in this scene were actually at Jack Rabbit Slims, which is a 19 fifties style restaurant.

There's a dance contest, and they specifically do the twist way.

Now.

The twist was made famous in the sixties.

It was a dance craze.

Chubby Checker made it famous.

He was on the Dick Clark's show, and from there it became this big sensation.

There are a lot of variations that came out of the twist that we do see in this scene, of course, the twist, also known as bad to see.

I guess it's like mimicking his mass monkey.

I swear dance.

If you don't dance improv.

We always talk about yes, and and they're doing a lot of yes, and because this is totally improvised.

So if John starts to do the Batman and Emma's gonna like yes and it with not only ah, Batman, but like an open palm.

It's sort of like her own version of this sort of move, and that continues to happen throughout.

And oftentimes with dance, we play with mirroring.

So that's exactly what they're doing.

They're just sort of marrying each other, like when she would put our hands on her hips and moved toward him.

There's a moment he's only doing the twist here.

But then when they switched back, he puts his hand on his belly and starts to sort of like mimic this sort of like pan placement on the body.

With the tension is building.

We see that even in the choreography, this, like whole and push facial expressions, is also choreography.

Their faces are like death staring each other down.

There is no expression.

It's very serious, but they're doing like incredibly silly movements.

I find the juxtaposition of their seriousness and the lack of play on their faces versus the play, and their body is really interesting Tow watch.

So there's definitely influences that we see in the Pulp Fiction dance sequence.

Tarantino talked a lot about the band of outsiders.

In fact, he even called his production company, Band Apart, so he definitely had a lot of respect for that film and guards work.

They do this amazing dance sequence in a cafe.

It's totally out of contacts out of nowhere.

The three of them just start this dance, and Quentin Tarantino love that he loved the odd placement of it in the context of this dance sequence in Pulp Fiction is really similar, like you have a bunch of criminals doing oddly placed dance number theory.

Clinton wanted Thio do some of that sort of cat like feel like Fallon prowling kind of movement with the fingers and the opposing.

There's one shot in the Aristocats from where she does the little hand on the hip and are up so like mimicking that sort of like body shape in the choreography in Fellini's eight and 1/2.

Structurally, when in Visually, you see Maur of pulp fiction in that shot simply because they're literally there's a moment of a man and a woman doing a twist facing off, you can see maybe a hair of similarities to the bandwagons girl Hunt ballet, where Centuries and Fred Astaire are dancing again.

You have the sort of gangster and this female character being very dead Pam in the face and very serious.

That tone is in this sequence and Pul fiction, but then they're doing this twist, and it's more lighthearted and silly, but they're they're performing it as if they're in this serious girl.

Hunt Ballet did in bandwagon Quentin Tarantino.

He said it himself.

He steals from every film he watches, so he is a true passion for what he does.

And I think any great artist steals, but you steal and you make it your own and make it special to you.

And he does this very, very well.

Throughout the scene, we can see that UMA Thurman's character is definitely the one in control.

As an actor, you're you're deciding how your character walks.

Talks.

Breathes, of course, would translate into choreography.

And I think the way she performs the twist is embodying that character.

She has these painted red nails, and she's always doing these like little finger movements, and her bob took the cut of her hair.

She really makes use of that by like flipping her head a lot, and then she's like doing this.

I don't even know what this move is.

I call it like a pretend salsa.

She explores it in a different way that John Travolta's character explorers the same move, and he seems like a little timid to like really, really get into it until there's this really sweet moment where he starts to do the jerk.

You start to see that he is enjoying this a little bit, but he's still very careful to bring it back to this sort of like safe space.

He's just trying to figure her out on is trying to both please her and make sure she has like and okay night because that's his boss's wife, right?

The previous guy was thrown out of a window.

Stakes are high stakes Travolta's character.

It's almost like the dance and privately in their own sort of like living room space, even though they're in the dead center of this restaurant with people watching this entire time.

I think it's just this, like time out from the intensity, but they're developing a likeness for each other.

You're able to tell the story by adding in a day and sequence to communicate it, so I think this is a moment of pure body language.

I mean, this is a motion picture.

I mean, that's what they call.

There's kind of a story being told when you think about all the shots, because it starts off the cameras really far away and you see them take off their shoes and they make their way to center stage.

And then there's a shot of them full, and you see the people around and they're dancing.

And then, as as it continues to go on, I think one of the last shots of their feet is the panned out of them doing the twist.