History Main / DancingIsSeriousBusiness

* Pat Benatar's ''Love Is A Battlefield''. Pat and the other taxi-dancers force the sleezy pimp-like Guido who runs the dance hall to back off through the power of dance. Or something...

* Baz Luhrmann's ''Strictly Ballroom'' takes a tongue-in-cheek approach to this trope by having everyone treat a professional dancing competition with the same level of seriousness most people reserve for wars, deaths in the family, and epidemics.

* ''TheyShootHorsesDontThey?'' is based on actual exploitative dance contests during the Great Depression.

** This is why, for example, novice hula dancers were secluded until they learned the moves correctly and could perform the ritual dances perfectly.

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* ''BillyElliot'' qualifies as this at the point where the striking miner father almost becomes a scab for the money to send Billy to ballet school.

->''Parody of this trope from FamilyGuy''

->''Girl: I'm rich and you're poor, but lets dance together!''
->''Guy: Society won't like it.''
->''Girl: (grabbing him dramatically) I don't care!''
-->''Parody of this trope from FamilyGuy''

* PrincessTutu is made of this. Angry wili ghosts trying to take your boyfriend with them into death? Monster crows trying to destroy the city? [[ArsonMurderAndJaywalking Helpless baby birds falling out of their nests?]] Then it's time to ''dance your goddamn heart out.''

* When trouble strikes (such as a prisonwide blackout), prison guard Bailey is compelled to do the [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UcHWh2JUIOs Panic Dance]] as passed down in his family for generations. Why? Because someone has to.

* ''TheyShootHorsesDon'tThey?'' is based on actual exploitative dance contests during the Great Depression.

* The video for ''Dark Blue'' by JacksMannequin features a dance marathon. It lasts [[spoiler:over 47 days]] before [[spoiler: [[TearJerker couple 55 loses.]] [[MindScrew And then]] [[DownerEnding they jump]] [[DramaBombFinale off the pier.]]]]

** Parodied on ''FlightOfTheConchords'' with "Bret's Angry Dance." When the band breaks up, the only way to vent his frustrations is by dancing masculinely in a warehouse. Unlike Bacon, Bret McKenzie is a trained dancer, so he did the heavy lifting and heavier dancing himself.

''Girl: I'm rich and you're poor, but lets dance together!''
''Guy: Society won't like it.''
''Girl: (grabbing him dramatically) I don't care!''

-->''Girl: I'm rich and you're poor, but lets dance together!''
-->''Guy: Society won't like it.''
-->''Girl: (grabbing him dramatically) I don't care!''
''Parody of this trope from FamilyGuy''

* The video for Katy Perry's ''Hot & Cold'' features a bride who is left at the altar. She, and some other spurned brides, arm themselves with baseball bats, corner him... and then break into dance.

* ''C Me Dance'' is about a girl whose faith in God is apparently dependent on her ability to dance. When she can't dance due to some rare blood disease, she loses faith. Her father prays that she returns to Christianity and regains the strength to fulfill her dream of dancing. God apparently not only obliges by making her better, He makes her gift of dance so great that people who see her dance apparently have religious epiphanies and convert to Christianity instantly! Satan, upset by her ability to bring people to God that easily, then aims all his evil energy at preventing her from dancing. It should be noted that this film '''''is not a parody or a comedy'''''; they were trying to be serious. Quite clearly, DancingIsSeriousBusiness.

*** The question really comes down to where the line falls between well-choreographed but very stylized fight scene and a dance scene is choreographed to look look like a stylized fight is.