Having The Time Of Their Lives *Weekend Open Thread*

Yesterday morning on HLN, the host, Robin Meade, had a clip of a newlywed couple doing the “Dirty Dancing” dance to the iconic tune,  “I Had The Time Of My Life,” performed by Jennifer Warnes and Bill Medley.

Ironically, just the day before, this song was playing in the grocery store when I was there. I caught myself thinking, as people around me were singing it, that it is a really good song. So when it came on the tee-vee, showing the couple doing the dance made famous by Jennifer Grey and Patrick Swayze, I had to go look it up to see if I could find the entire dance by the couple.

Well, I only found a little clip of theirs, but turns out a whole bunch of newlyweds have performed this dance to “I Had The Time Of My Life,” and yes – did the lift, too. Here are my two favorites. The first one has the original dance up in the corner, and you can see how well this couple, Kevin and Elodie, did in matching Grey and Swayze:

Wasn’t that great? They did such a good job.

This was my other favorite one. I like how they show the couple, Terra and Drake, learning the dance. Here’s theirs:

Fantastic, wasn’t it? Of course, I now have the song stuck in my head.

One of the things I love about the dance in particular is when all the people join in near the end. I don’t know why it is, but i just love when there are the big group dances like that. And it can be just about any kind of music from Country Line Dances to popular music like the one above.

One of my favorite scenes from the movie, “Ella Enchanted,” is at the end of the movie. You guessed it – it’s a big group dance:

Isn’t that fun? Just makes me smile (and yes, Anne Hathaway and Minnie Driver did their own singing. Both of them are singers in addition to acting.).

And since I mentioned Country Line Dancing, you know I have to share some of that style, too. It’s kind of like Irish step dancing, only in cowboy boots. I like that the dancers in the video below have such a wide age range:

What fun, right? If I was just a few years younger…

Oh, sure, I used to dance back in the day before my knees were total crap.  Of course, I am of a certain age in which Disco was the dance du jour, and I loved it. Still love it, for that matter. I mean, really- how can you NOT love a Disco dance like this one:

How much fun was that? Like I said, I am from a certain era, so I understand if others aren’t as enthusiastic about this form of dance, but it makes me tap my toes and smile, so there you have it.

But if Ballet is more your thing, another style I love, here’s a pretty cool group dance featuring ballerinas dancing to a pop song from the Ballet movie, “Center Stage”:

Can you believe all of the pointe work these young women did? Wow, really impressive.

Heck, all of these forms of dancing are impressive, and all take a great deal of talent, from the newlywed couples to the pros. I love it all, and just marvel at their abilities.

I hope that these videos made you tap your feet some too, and maybe help get a spring in your step. And good luck getting some of these songs out of your head. I still have them stuck there, but I guess it could be worse!

That’s it for me. Feel free to share more dancing, or news stories or whatever else is on your minds. After all, this is the Weekend Open Thread. Have at it!