Editing Gene Kelly (section)

==Working methods and influence on filmed dance==
When he began his collaborative film work, he was influenced by [[Robert Alton]] and [[John Murray Anderson]], striving to create moods and character insight with his dances. He choreographed his own movement, along with that of the ensemble, with the assistance of [[Jeanne Coyne]], Stanley Donen, [[Carol Haney]], and Alex Romero.<ref name="Billman">{{cite book | last=Billman | first=Larry | title=Film Choreographers and Dance Directors | publisher=McFarland and Company | year=1997 | location=North Carolina | pages=374–376 | isbn=0-89950-868-5 }}</ref> He experimented with lighting, camera techniques, and special effects to achieve true integration of dance with film, and was one of the first to use split screens, double images, and live action with animation, and is credited as the person who made the ballet form commercially acceptable to film audiences.<ref name="Billman" />

A clear progression was evident in his development, from an early concentration on tap and musical comedy style to greater complexity using ballet and modern dance forms.<ref name="Delamater">{{cite encyclopedia | last=Delamater | first=Jerome | title=Gene Kelly | encyclopedia=International Encyclopedia of Dance | volume=1 | pages=38–40 | publisher=Oxford University Press | location=Oxford | year=2004 }}</ref> Kelly himself refused to categorize his style: "I don't have a name for my style of dancing ... It's certainly hybrid ... I've borrowed from the modern dance, from the classical, and certainly from the American folk dance—tap-dancing, jitterbugging ... But I have tried to develop a style which is indigenous to the environment in which I was reared."<ref name="Delamater" /> He especially acknowledged the influence of [[George M. Cohan]]: "I have a lot of Cohan in me. It's an Irish quality, a jaw-jutting, up-on-the-toes cockiness—which is a good quality for a male dancer to have."<ref name="Thomas" />

He was heavily influenced by an African-American dancer, [[Robert Dotson]], whom he saw perform at [[Heinz Hall for the Performing Arts|Loew's Penn Theatre]] around 1929. He was briefly taught by Frank Harrington, an African-American tap specialist from New York.<ref>cf. Hirschhorn, pp. 25, 26: "What impressed Gene was the originality of the man's [Dotson's] dancing, as it was quite unlike anything he had seen before. The tricks Dotson was doing were absolutely fresh. He went back to see that act a few times and admitted pinching several steps for his own use ... Just as he had done with Dotson, Gene made up his mind to 'steal' as much as he could from numerous touring shows ... both Fred and he were absolutely shameless when it came to pilfering, and very good at it."</ref> However, his main interest was in ballet, which he studied under Kotchetovsky in the early 1930s. Biographer [[Clive Hirschhorn]] writes: "As a child, he used to run for miles through parks and streets and woods—anywhere, just as long as he could feel the wind against his body and through his hair. Ballet gave him the same feeling of exhilaration, and in 1933, he was convinced it was the most satisfying form of self-expression."<ref name="Hirschhorn" />

He studied Spanish dancing under Angel Cansino, [[Rita Hayworth]]'s uncle.<ref name="Hirschhorn" /> Generally speaking, he tended to use tap and other popular dance idioms to express joy and exuberance—as in the title song for ''Singin' in the Rain'' or "I Got Rhythm" in ''An American in Paris'', whereas pensive or romantic feelings were more often expressed via ballet or modern dance, as in "Heather on the Hill" from ''Brigadoon'' or "[[Our Love Is Here to Stay]]" from ''An American in Paris''.<ref name="Delamater" />

[[File:Kelly in rehearsal.jpg|thumb|Kelly in rehearsal with [[Sugar Ray Robinson]] and assistant [[Jeanne Coyne]], his future wife in the [[NBC]] ''Omnibus'' television special ''Dancing is a Man's Game'', 1958]]
According to Delamater, Kelly's work "seems to represent the fulfillment of dance–film integration in the 1940s and 1950s". While Fred Astaire had revolutionized the filming of dance in the 1930s by insisting on full-figure photography of dancers, while allowing only a modest degree of camera movement, Kelly freed up the camera, making greater use of space, camera movement, camera angles, and editing, creating a partnership between dance movement and camera movement without sacrificing full-figure framing.<ref name="Delamater" />

Kelly's reasoning behind this was that he felt the kinetic force of live dance often evaporated when brought to film, and he sought to partially overcome this by involving the camera in movement and giving the dancer a greater number of directions in which to move. Examples of this abound in Kelly's work and are well illustrated in the "Prehistoric Man" sequence from ''On the Town'' and "The Hat My Father Wore on St. Patrick's Day" from ''Take Me Out to the Ball Game''.<ref name="Delamater" />

In 1951, he summed up his vision as: "If the camera is to make a contribution at all to dance, this must be the focal point of its contribution; the fluid background, giving each spectator an undistorted and altogether similar view of dancer and background. To accomplish this, the camera is made fluid, moving with the dancer, so that the lens becomes the eye of the spectator, ''your eye''".<ref name="Billman" />

Kelly's athleticism gave his moves a distinctive broad, muscular quality,<ref name="Delamater" /> and this was a deliberate choice on his part, as he explained: "There's a strong link between sports and dancing, and my own dancing springs from my early days as an athlete ... I think dancing is a man's game and if he does it well he does it better than a woman."<ref name="Thomas" /> Caron said that while dancing with Astaire she felt like she was floating, Kelly danced close to the ground.<ref name="hattenstone20210621">{{Cite news |last=Hattenstone |first=Simon |date=June 21, 2021 |title='I am very shy. It's amazing I became a movie star': Leslie Caron at 90 on love, art and addiction |language=en |work=The Guardian |url=http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2021/jun/21/i-am-very-shy-its-amazing-i-became-a-movie-star-leslie-caron-at-90-on-love-art-and-addiction |access-date=June 22, 2021 |archive-date=June 21, 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210621204949/http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2021/jun/21/i-am-very-shy-its-amazing-i-became-a-movie-star-leslie-caron-at-90-on-love-art-and-addiction |url-status=live }}</ref> He railed against what he saw as the widespread effeminacy in male dancing, which, in his opinion, "tragically" stigmatized the genre, alienating boys from entering the field: <blockquote>Dancing ''does'' attract effeminate young men. I don't object to that as long as they don't dance effeminately. I just say that if a man dances effeminately, he dances badly—just as if a woman comes out on stage and starts to sing bass. Unfortunately, people confuse gracefulness with softness. [[John Wayne]] is a graceful man and so are some of the great ballplayers ... but, of course, they don't run the risk of being called sissies.<ref name="Thomas" /></blockquote> In his view, "one of our problems is that so much dancing is taught by women. You can spot many male dancers who have this tuition by their arm movements—they are soft, limp, and feminine."<ref name="Thomas" /> He acknowledged that in spite of his efforts—in TV programs such as ''Dancing: A Man's Game'' (1958) for example—the situation changed little over the years.<ref name="Thomas" />

He also sought to break from the class-conscious conventions of the 1930s and early 40s, when top hat and tails or tuxedos were the norm, by dancing in casual or everyday work clothes, so as to make his dancing more relevant to the cinema-going public. His first wife, actress and dancer [[Betsy Blair]] said: <blockquote>A sailor suit or his white socks and loafers, or the T-shirts on his muscular torso, gave everyone the feeling that he was a regular guy, and perhaps they, too, could express love and joy by dancing in the street or stomping through puddles ... he democratized the dance in movies.<ref>Blair, p. 176</ref></blockquote> In particular, he wanted to create a completely different image from that associated with Fred Astaire, not least because he believed his physique did not suit such refined elegance: "I used to envy his cool, aristocratic style, so intimate and contained. Fred wears top hat and tails to the Manor born—I put them on and look like a truck driver."<ref name="Thomas" />