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Spontaneous Choreography: Difference between revisions
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We've all seen [[Crowd Song|Crowd Songs]]. A crowd of random people spontaneously burst into a choreographed song and dance number. A pair of red fire trucks pull in from opposite ends of the street and start spraying arcs of water over the crowd to make a rainbow. A flock of animated sparrows flying overhead decide to drop down and whistle a melody. The [[Big Bad]] might even wander out of his lair to do a little number with a cute kid. But how is this possible? Spontaneous Choreography is the ability for fictional characters to tap into a pseudo-hive mind and perform amazing choreography with little to no practice.
It is not restricted to the [[Crowd Song]] either. Sometimes, the dance has been planned in advance, for instance in a school-sponsored dance competition, but the heroes have had no time to practice while on their adventure. No problem, just huddle up for a few seconds, and you have an instant dance routine.
It might not even be a dance. Ten seconds left in double overtime? No problem, let's go for that trick play we've only practiced once. It's bound to work. And it always does.
In short, this trope is for anything that has all the trappings of a crowd song, but without the crowd and not always with a song.
Compare [[Summon Backup Dancers]], where the participants/dancers in question are called from out of sight.
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== [[Film]] ==
* From ''[[Not Another Teen Movie]]'': "[[Lampshade Hanging|Who would've guessed that everyone in school was a professional dancer]]?"
* ''[[Spider-Man (film)|Spider-Man 3]]'': Peter's dance routine at the jazz bar
* ''[[Footloose]]'' where they do a similar whole school dance and everyone can dance despite being from a town/county where dancing is illegal.
* Bollywood films generally have dance numbers that work like this trope. There are several in ''[[Bride and Prejudice]]''.
* Animated example: In ''[[The Return of Hanuman]]'' musical sequence "Aasman Ko Chhukar", tourists, pirates, animals, even ''the Statue of Liberty'' dances.
* The opening of ''[[Hair]]'' features a Crowd Dance.
* In ''[[Ferris Bueller's Day Off|Ferris Buellers Day Off]]'', Ferris manages to get an entire street dancing to "Twist and Shout".
* [[Woody Allen]]'s ''Everyone Says I Love You'' has this for pretty much all of its musical numbers (whether the dancers/singers be jewlery store clerks, hospital nurses or even ghosts), though the main singers are intentionally not the best singers in order to add a bit of realism to the numbers.
* In the ''[[Blues Brothers]]'' film, the crowd outside the music store breaks out into spontaneous dance once Ray Charles starts up ''Shake A Tail Feather''. But then, it's Ray Charles, so its sort of expected.
* Lampshaded in ''[[Enchanted]]'', as Robert is [[Only Sane Man|the only one who finds it odd]] that everyone is spontaneously dancing and singing in the middle of Central Park.
* ''[[Alvin and the Chipmunks|Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel]]'': After escaping Ian, the six chipmunks arrive at the singing competition. After a quick huddle, they break out into a perfectly choreographed dance routine that none of them had ever done before.
* ''[[Clerks|Clerks II]]'' had one of these with that Jackson 5 song.
* ''[[Sister Act|Sister Act 2]]'' also had one in that the kids had been practicing a big traditional choral presentation, but then at the last minute when faced up against a big-time school that did the same thing better than they could have, turn it into a mixed-style free-for-all version of the same basic song. Note that the accompanying music also keeps up with the different style changes, even though they just decided to do it this way a few minutes prior.
* In ''[[The Mask (film)|The Mask]]'', the title character and Tina do a dance number together in the club without any practice. [[Justified]] because of the Mask's magical abilities.
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== [[Literature]] ==
* [[Lampshade Hanging|Lampshaded]] in Terry Pratchett's ''[[Discworld]]'' novels. Specifically, Captain Carrot is the kind of heroic protagonist with such charisma that, in his girlfriend's words, if he chose to start singing some sort of song like "My town" half the people in the street would join in and dance with him despite not possibly being able to know the dance steps.
== [[Live Action TV]] ==
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* In ''[[Community]]'' episode [[Community/Recap/S1 E14 Interpretive Dance|Interpretive Dance]] Britta and Troy are able to pull off an improved dance duet seamlessly.
* Justified in ''[[Kamen Rider Den-O]]'', where making people spontaneously start breakdancing is explicitly stated to be one of Ryutaros' powers. {{spoiler|He got it from the [[Big Bad]], who can also do it.}}
* Norm MacDonald lampshades this in a ''[[Saturday Night Live]]'' [http://snltranscripts.jt.org/96/96fcobras.phtml sketch].
{{quote|'''Gangleader:''' Whoa, whoa, whoa! What the hell is this? ''imitates "Cobra" hand motion'' What are you doing?
'''Colin:''' We're being Cobras.
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== [[Western Animation]] ==
* Used and [[Lampshade Hanging|lampshaded]] in ''[[Futurama]]''. During Fry's holophoner concert, the Robot Devil interrupts and takes the musical on an entirely different course. Nevertheless, everyone, even the crowd, is able to stay perfectly in tune. Lampshaded when Zoidberg sings, in tune with the beat no less, "I can't believe everybody's just ad libbing!"
* Takes a more realistic turn in [[Total Drama Island|Total Drama World Tour]]. While they don't dance in every song, the times that they do it's very simple and predictable so the other contestants would be able to catch on(like Alejandro holding Bridgette's hand in 'Before We Die' prompted everyone to make a big circle by holding hands,) or in songs like Leshawna's 'Sisters' the other two dancers aren't in-time with each other so it looks more real.
** TDWT does do this quite well. There are even times where you can see the contestants looking at each other so they can suddenly think of moves (like Lindsay and Bridgette in 'Come Fly with Us.' Other times, in 'What's Not to Love?' Courtney said before the song started that she was going to dance in the song, so Owen, D.J., and Leshawna just took after her.
* Played with in an earlier episode of ''[[The Simpsons (animation)|The Simpsons]]'', where the whole town joined in on a salesman's song about the benefits of having a monorail. Homer sang on after the song ended, and immediately realised his mistake.
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[[Category:Older Than Feudalism]]
[[Category:Spontaneous Choreography]]
[[Category:Scenes]]
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