59 Of The Hands-Down Best Movie Dance Scenes

“Ten year old me desperately wanted to be able to move like that. 27 year old me still does, but is more realistic about it.”

“I love the diner dance scene. Aretha just tears it up in her pink bedroom slippers.”

“Also they even lay the groundwork for the group dance scene choreography. When asked about changing the final dance, Swayze says he’s been working on something with the staff and demonstrates the basic move of the group dance.”

“I was about to post Make 'Em Laugh. Donald O'Connor was brilliant in this scene. Apparently, he needed three days of bed rest after shooting this.”

“Beetlejuice, the dinner scene. The reason 90% of the people born in the last 40 years know the Banana Boat song.

"Day-O!"

Never looked at shrimp cocktail the same afterwards.”

“Fred Astaire himself said the Nicholas Bros with Cab Calloway in Stormy Weather was the greatest dance sequence ever filmed, and I agree.”

“We’re knights of the Round Table. We dance when we are able…”

“That scene alone made me watch the movie almost every day for months. I was introduced to the movie in summer, and I was still so obsessed by winter, my family got me Christmas gifts centered around it.”

“The dance off scene in Guardians of the Galaxy between Ronan and Peter Quill. It's so dumb that it's amazing.”

“Very few people, if any, will get it, but they are spectacular dancers, and if even one person asks where it's from and watches it, you've done the world a favor.”

“We roam around the forest looking for fights!”

“Do you think this style is recalled in all the recent buzz on the Wednesday dance scene? To be honest, I'm not watching the TV show but the clips I've seen remind me a bit of the Jack Rabbit Slim dance scene vibe in a way.”

“I was gonna say the diamond dogs/satine intro/can can thing from moulin rouge, but then I remembered the Spectacular Spectacular scene after that, so I'd just like to nominate that whole movie because almost the entire thing is just ridiculous and over the top. O and the tango scene! Such an unexpectedly good movie for me.”

“You mean the audition dance or the water bucket scene? Both are iconic 80’s… But for me Beales in the water bucket Scene is #1.”

“Billy Elliot, the whole movie, but my favorite dance is the one he does for his father. It’s amazing.”

“A hidden gem of a movie. Love that scene and my beloved Heath Ledger may he R.I.P.”

“The Mambo Dance from the original West Side Story is magical. The music, the colors, the cinematography, and Rita fu*king Moreno’s electric energy. Probably my favorite scene in any musical.”

“The opening dance in Austin powers is genuinely some of the best filmmaking I’ve seen.”

“One of the most unique dance scenes I’ve ever seen. So perfectly in character.”

“I was 8 at the time, but I still remember my mum dying of laughter throughout the whole scene. Pretty much every year now, she just tells me to put that scene on from the movie, she still laughs hysterically.”

“Me and a friend were bored and decided to go see a movie, which happened to be right after it came out. It had to be its first day. We had no idea what this movie was about or anything. It was such a weird movie to have zero expectations because it was funny in parts I wasn't sure it was trying to be funny and then the movie just kind of ended without any real story. I came out of there so baffled by it, but I remember that dance scene being hilarious.”

“That scene is so great, I love that the filmmakers didn’t sacrifice the historical accuracy by having them actually dance alone (huge social no-no for the time period) but instead showed that they were so focused on each other it was like there was no one else in the room.”

“The opening with Roland Petit's “Le Jeune Homme et La Mort” alone is an incredible adaptation of the piece for cinema. The original piece too, on its own, if you haven’t seen it is shocking. You don’t even have to know much about dance.”

“Chick chick a boom!”

“Between the intense chemistry Banderas and Zeta-Jones had, and James Horner's excellent tango music it really is one of the best dance scenes in film.”

“'But that night, fate was on my side.' (Guy stabs the guy she's dancing with in the back... The funniest part of it is that for a few seconds, Julie Hagerty's character mimics the other guy while he's trying to pull the knife out.)”

“The semi-fascistic mockery of modern dance that is White Christmas's "Choreography." Their additional wistful celebration of a dude who performed in blackface during another number is also pretty wild, considering the "choreography" makes it seem like they are donning sacrificial masks of Rosemary Clooney and offering her to the sun atop a ziggurat.”

“Titanic. Is it a bit cliché? Sure. Is it also really fun and cute? Hell yeah.”

“You can bet your a*s whenever Tequila comes on I’m doing that arms in front, arms in back move.”

“Terrific scene. It captures an almost indescribable emotion perfectly.”

“I don't know if it'd be considered dancing but as a teenager, I loved the choreographies of 'Bring it On'.”

“The three way dance in Romy and Michelle's High School Reunion. It's so cute the way they include Romy and the song choice is perfection.”

“Everyone at the fantasy prom drops everything to do a choreographed routine to The Rockefeller Skank… DJed by Usher. Absolute peak 90s!”

“It keeps popping into my head from time to time. Maybe it's the 'life is sh*t, but let's dance anyway' vibe it's got going. It just warms the soul.”

“While probably not a proper dance scene, the wedding scene in Coming to America. First off the like minute and a half of high intensity well choreographed dance, but the added love of the absolute apathy of everyone in the audience who's acting like this is the equivalent of the priest coming into mass.”

“Save the Last Dance when Julia Stiles character goes to the dance club and embarrasses herself so bad. I love that scene cause I can’t dance either.”

“Moonrise Kingdom on the beach. Anderson is so good at capturing the sensations of childhood, and these two play it perfectly too. A scene that says it all for the whole movie, which makes it magnificent.”

“I really do like the scene in RRR with the English snobs putting down the Indians and then getting schooled in a dance-off. And yet, still not the most insane thing in that movie.”

“Laurie and Jo’s dance outside the party when they first meet in Greta Gerwig’s Little Women is just perfect. Silly, warm, joyful, one-sided romantic tension. Delivered so perfectly.”

“There's a dance scene in A Single Man with Colin Firth and Julianne Moore. The song playing is Green Onions by Booker T. and the M.G.'s. It just feels like such a natural dance moment and it's so sweet and wholesome.”

“Jennifer Lopez and Richard Gere in Shall We Dance. It’s not special, I don’t have any feelings for either actor. But I loved the music of the film and it was made in my city.”

“They put in all that work to get to that point and they killed it (considering their talent level). It was cute and then De Niro telling him to go chase the girl made it a good ending.”

“One of my favorites is the one in 500 days of summer. I feel like it catches that feeling after a first kiss or night with someone you’re really into.”

“Intro to Peacemaker. The choreography is oddly robotic, yet fluid added with a banger of an intro song it is one of the very rare times I actually watch the intro.”

“Something Borrowed is one of my favourite romantic comedies and they do a dance to Push It by Salt-N-Pepa that I love.”

“That dance scene at the house party was just epic.”

“Ironically i didn't see the film but the dance sequence in La La Land looks pretty good.”

“A good bad movie, but this comes out of nowhere to break the tension.”

“Honorable mention for Stifler's dance off in American Wedding. You haven't lived until you've seen Sean William Scott tearing it up to 'Maniac.'”

“Climax opening dance scene! And the other dance scenes after with the camera filming from the top. Spectacular!”

“Just watched this last night on Criterion Channel! What a scene. Also that song… Such a banger haha.”

“Kevin McHale as Artie Abrams on Glee. He was actually the only former professional performer in the original cast and was part of a failed boy band. He only had one chance to show off his dance moves on the show, and he straight up killed it.”

“I’m a big fan of unexpected dance scenes in movies. This one and the dance in Booksmart are my favorites.”

“Denise Richards dancing with a stuffed Jesus in Drop Dead Gorgeous, absolutely hilarious. Kills me every time.”

“The dance scene in Palm Springs with Andy Samberg & Cristin Milioti is great! So dorky & a great vibe.”

“There’s so many good scenes mentioned here - anything Fred and Ginger especially - but something about JCVD cutting a rug and then messing some punks up is just beyond anything I’d ever seen before. Truly a magical scene.”

“Obscure, but there’s a really good movie called “Before I Disappear,” and there’s a very cool dance sequence in a bowling alley briefly, I always loved that scene.”

“So I galloped into a wooded glen, and after punch-dancing out my rage and suffering an extremely long and very painful fall, I realized what has to be done.”

“Most of my faves are mentioned like Grease school dance, and Napoleon Dynamite... But for good measure, I'd like to throw in the quick dance scene in Da 5 Bloods.”