"Staying Alive" Dance Pose

A Stock Parody and Stock Pose, when somebody dances in fiction, they're likely to mimic John Travolta's iconic pose from Saturday Night Fever, with their arm stretched out and hand pointing toward the sky. When licensed music is allowed, it's usually combined with "Staying Alive" by The Bee Gees — except for Saturday Night Fever itself in which Travolta dances to "You Should Be Dancing".

Dancing Royalty might pose like this. Related to the Gratuitous Disco Sequence. Compare "Risky Business" Dance.

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Examples:

Film

• In Airplane!, during Ted Stryker's flashback about how he first met Elaine, before dancing with her, he throws his jacket off and strikes the pose, only for someone to throw the jacket back at him.
• Chicken Run is supposed to take place in The '50s, but that doesn't stop the rats Nick and Fetcher from striking the pose during "Flip, Flop, and Fly."
• Willard (Chris Penn) strikes this pose during the final prom scene in Footloose.
• Rowan subjects a large group of police and soldiers to this at one point during Ghostbusters (2016). The credits revisit the scene and turn into a dance number while he knocks them out of alignment with his moves.
• Bigfoot is seen doing it in the background on A Goofy Movie, listening to "Staying Alive" on a Walkman, no less.
  • In the sequel, everyone does it during the disco scene.
• Tony P. does the move in Mystery Men, while dancing the Hustle in the Disco room. A couple of the other Disco Boys do it while fighting the Mystery Men; it seems to be not just a dance for them but also a part of their martial arts style.

Live-Action TV

• In The Goodies parody of Saturday Night Fever, Tim Brooke-Taylor adopts this pose, then admits he doesn't know what dance move comes next.
• On Married... with Children, Al's Let's Get Dangerous! catchphrase was "Let's rock." When the show moved to Saturday nights for its final season, Al was in commercials saying "let's disco" and doing this.
• The Jason Alexander episode of Muppets Tonight included a clip of him with Miss Piggy on Muppet Bandstand. At one point he throws her into the air and has time to do an elaborate solo routine before she comes down, including the Staying Alive pose and drenching himself with water in a Flashdance parody.
• John Travolta did this himself in an opening monologue on Saturday Night Live, referencing his various roles while saying he's not going to do that including Welcome Back, Kotter, Urban Cowboy, Look Who's Talking; and of course Saturday Night Fever.
  Travolta: It's just fun to have a new film like Pulp Fiction and forget about the old ones. What is that? Is that a light? points upward in this fashion
• Starman: In "One for the Road", the alien title character, Paul (played by Robert Hays), is a chaperone at a school dance. At first he refrains from dancing when invited by one of the teachers because he doesn't know how, but when dragged onto the dance floor he soon picks it up (as he tends to do with skills and languages). As he gets into it, he briefly adopts the "Staying Alive" Dance Pose Hays famously parodied in Airplane!.

• In a game of "Superheroes" on the American edition of Whose Line Is It Anyway?, Colin Mochrie does this while playing "Disco Boy."

Music

• The Sesame Street Fever album cover◊, which mimics the design of the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack album cover with Grover as John Travolta and Ernie, Bert, and Cookie Monster as the Bee Gees.

Print

• Newspaper comics: There's a Garfield strip where Jon does this at a party. The disco ball then falls on his head.
  Jon: *strikes pose* BOOGIE! BOOGIE! BOOGIE! *ball falls on head*
  Garfield: Let's boogie on home. I'll lead.
• MAD: Alfred E. Neuman strikes the pose on the cover of an issue spoofing Saturday Night Fever.
• In one of his Star Trek memoirs, William Shatner included a picture of himself as Captain Kirk inadvertently striking this pose, with a snarky caption.

Professional Wrestling

• Disco Inferno, of course.

Video Games

• Crash Team Racing Nitro-Fueled: Ami's hologram in Slide Coliseum does this move.
• A couple of 70s song routines from Dance Central feature both the pose and the full move as dance moves. Aptly, the move is called "Fever".
• In the GBA and DS versions of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, Harry can strike this pose during the Yule Ball dancing level.
• The "I Will Survive" dancer from Just Dance 2014 does a version of the pose.
• Junpei Iori of Persona 3 fame performs this exact pose when he finishes the last shadow in an enemy party.
• The cover for Persona 4: Dancing All Night shows the Investigation Team, minus Rise, pulling this pose.
• The dancing zombie in Plants vs. Zombies does this move, which summons four other dancing zombies to join him.
• In Rayman Origins, the Magician pulls this pose during the dance party in the final level.
• The way in which Iku Nagae of Scarlet Weather Rhapsody brandishes her spell cards looks a lot like the pose, leading to a lot of doujinshi associating her with disco.
• In Space Station Silicon Valley, Dan Danger poses as such in the "Heroes for Hire" ad.
• WarioWare: Smooth Moves: The cats and dogs representing the player's lives in the Jimmy T. and Jimmy P. stages.
• World of Warcraft: the dance animation for the male human is this dance, for reasons known only to Blizzard. Of course it does kind of fit with the overall derpiness of the male humans in the game (one of the few games that violates the general principle that male characters always look better than female ones). It often features prominently in machinima productions due to being so iconic and adorkable. As many of the villains either are humans, or have a human form (such as Deathwing, a dragon): there is much comedic potential for this dance in machinimas. It's particularly funny given the propensity of armor models to clip through each other due to this being a game made in the early 2000s. The large shoulder pads that male humans have, usually go through their head when they go for the pointing pose. Hilarity Ensues.

Visual Novels

• Done by Amanda and Kathy both when they have a jukebox party at the start of Daughter for Dessert to fend off boredom.

Webcomics

• In El Goonish Shive, Dan does this while trying out the "dance" emote in the MUD that he plays.
• In Erfworld, prince Ansom did this while coordinating his army dance-fighting against the enemy thriller-dancing zombies. (It Makes Sense in Context)

Western Animation

• The Backyardigans do a version of the pose during "Quest for the Flying Rock".

• Futurama: In the episode "Less Than Hero", Fry adopts this pose when he becomes the retro-themed superhero Captain Yesterday.
• My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic:
  • Spike dances like this at the end of the episode "Party of One".
  • In the IDW Friends Forever issue 8, there's a bear at Whinny Land striking this pose.
  • It's one of the standard dance moves in the Enterplay mobile game.
• The Patrick Star Show: In "Pat-a-thon", Sandy briefly does this pose after activating her automatic snail dancing machine.
• In the Ready Jet Go! episode "Moon Circus”, Carrot assumes this pose when he does his famous flip.
• The Simpsons: Disco Stu, as his name implies, does this often, even during a Civil War reenactment.

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