Dance in Film · 1951
An American in Paris (1951)
Gene Kelly stars in Gershwin's musical masterpiece, climaxing in a 17-minute ballet sequence inspired by French art.
An American in Paris is a 1951 dance musical centred on Ballet, Musical Theatre Dance, Tap Dance. For dancers, it's a chance to see these styles performed on screen — the phrasing, partnering, and musicality that the same dances carry onto a real floor.
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Dance styles featured
Where to watch: Streaming (various)
The dance sequences in An American in Paris
10 sequences, 8 with a timestamp — what is danced, by whom, and where to find it.
Danced by Leslie Caron · Choreography Gene Kelly
Leslie Caron introducing Lise as five incompatible personalities, including the censor-challenging dance with a chair.
Caron's five miniature solos contradict Henri as quickly as he tries to define Lise: the exciting woman, the shy girl, the modern adventurer, the absorbed reader, and the irrepressibly happy dancer all occupy separate costumes and movement worlds. The montage saves its sharpest provocation for the chair-dance facet, then replaces it with another Lise before any single pose can become the character.
Stream or rental only — the timestamp is for when you have it playing. The MC2 catalogue's 113-minute reference copy gives 00:09:55–00:12:38; a named 1080p Blu-ray subtitle file aligns with that interval, but commercial rental editions may shift.
Danced by Gene Kelly; Oscar Levant; Georges Guétary; Café Huguette patrons and staff · Choreography Gene Kelly
The café's elderly and heavier women becoming Kelly's poised waltz partners during the 'emperor' gag.
At Café Huguette, Jerry and Henri turn Adam's attack on jazz into a mock-Viennese pageant, using the café entrance as a proscenium and pulling workers and patrons into the refrain. Kelly first partners an elderly woman, then takes over from Henri after a heavier café worker collides with him; the supposedly unlikely partners suddenly execute the waltz as part of the number's grand mock-imperial finish. That transformation makes Jerry's dancing seem capable of discovering performers in the neighborhood rather than importing a chorus from outside it.
Stream or rental only — the timestamp is for when you have it playing. The MC2 catalogue's 113-minute reference copy gives 00:14:16–00:18:13; a named 1080p Blu-ray subtitle file aligns with that interval, but commercial rental editions may shift.
Danced by Gene Kelly; Parisian children · Choreography Gene Kelly
The French children shouting 'I got' on Kelly's cue while his feet finish the lesson in tap.
Wearing a baseball cap on the Montmartre street, Kelly converts an English lesson into tap by pointing at the children for every 'I got' and supplying the rest of Gershwin's lyric with his feet and voice. When one boy eagerly takes another child's cue, Kelly answers with a cocked eyebrow and a playful headlock rather than stopping the number. The child's embarrassed grin preserves the unschooled timing that makes this Pied Piper lesson feel shared instead of drilled.
Stream or rental only — the timestamp is for when you have it playing. The MC2 catalogue's 113-minute reference copy gives 00:26:36–00:30:20; a named 1080p Blu-ray subtitle file aligns with that interval, but commercial rental editions may shift.
Danced by Gene Kelly; Oscar Levant · Choreography Gene Kelly
Kelly tap-dancing on top of Oscar Levant's piano while Levant continues to accompany him.
Jerry bursts into Adam's cramped garret after arranging his date with Lise and turns the apartment's limited floor into a vertical tap route. Levant keeps playing while Kelly climbs onto the grand piano itself, so the instrument becomes both the source of the accompaniment and the platform striking back beneath Jerry's shoes. The dour pianist's fixed seat makes Kelly's furniture-crossing exhilaration look even less containable.
Stream or rental only — the timestamp is for when you have it playing. The MC2 catalogue's 113-minute reference copy gives 00:46:17–00:50:05; a named 1080p Blu-ray subtitle file aligns with that interval, but commercial rental editions may shift.
Danced by Gene Kelly; Leslie Caron · Choreography Gene Kelly
Kelly and Caron's moonlit duet beneath the Seine bridge, staged against MGM's immense Notre-Dame cyclorama.
On the artificial Seine quay, Kelly sings against a one-hundred-foot Notre-Dame cyclorama before he and Caron slip beneath the bridge into restrained ballet steps. The complete song-and-dance uses only five shots, allowing their barely touching phrases to travel through the enormous soundstage without cutting the courtship into fragments. The scale of the painted riverbank consequently makes Jerry and Lise's caution feel private rather than small.
Stream or rental only — the timestamp is for when you have it playing. The MC2 catalogue's 113-minute reference copy gives 00:55:54–00:59:43; a named 1080p Blu-ray subtitle file aligns with that interval, but commercial rental editions may shift.
Danced by Georges Guétary; chorus-girl ensemble · Choreography Gene Kelly
Guétary ascending the pink staircase as its individual steps ignite beneath him and chorus girls fill the tiers.
A curtain parts behind Guétary to reveal an immense pink revue staircase, with lavishly costumed chorus girls arranged as its living ornament. Each tread lights as Henri climbs and later goes dark before flashing again, so the set literally draws the upward path promised by 'a new step ev'ry day.' The chorus's symmetrical descent turns his solo ambition into a Folies-Bergère-sized public image.
Stream or rental only — the timestamp is for when you have it playing. The MC2 catalogue's 113-minute reference copy gives 01:00:18–01:02:54; a named 1080p Blu-ray subtitle file aligns with that interval, but commercial rental editions may shift.
Danced by Gene Kelly; Georges Guétary; Oscar Levant · Choreography Gene Kelly
Oscar Levant trapped between two jubilant suitors, juggling cigarettes and coffee while Kelly taps through their shared mistake.
At Café Huguette, Jerry dances and sings while Henri answers in song, whistles, and hums, each man congratulating himself on the love of the same woman. The four-shot number keeps returning to Adam between them, where Levant lights two cigarettes, drops one into his coffee, and nearly drinks it as the duet grows sunnier. Kelly's taps therefore play against a silent counter-rhythm of Adam's accumulating panic.
Stream or rental only — the timestamp is for when you have it playing. The MC2 catalogue's 113-minute reference copy gives 01:20:24–01:23:11; a named 1080p Blu-ray subtitle file aligns with that interval, but commercial rental editions may shift.
Danced by Gene Kelly; Leslie Caron; dance ensemble · Choreography Gene Kelly
The wordless painter-to-painter journey through Paris, especially Kelly as Chocolat, Caron as Jane Avril, and the returning red flower.
Jerry picks up Lise's red flower and his sketched gate floats away into a Dufy-styled Paris; the city then repaints itself through Renoir, Utrillo, Rousseau, Van Gogh, and Toulouse-Lautrec across the 33-shot ballet. Kelly moves from straw-hatted hoofers and gendarmes into the dark fountain duet with Caron, then reappears as Chocolat opposite her Jane Avril. When the red flower returns at the Place de la Concorde fountain, the sixteen-minute fantasy closes on the object that opened Jerry's pursuit rather than on another painted spectacle.
Stream or rental only — the timestamp is for when you have it playing. The MC2 catalogue's 113-minute reference copy gives 01:35:58–01:52:15; the dialogue-free span begins after the last cue in a named 1080p Blu-ray subtitle file, but commercial rental editions may shift.
Embraceable You introduction
Dream BalletDanced by Leslie Caron; ensemble · Choreography Gene Kelly
Caron introduced through sharply differentiated dance personas rather than explanatory dialogue.
Editing and production design move between physical space and a heightened performance world without losing the dancers' bodily through-line. The choreography externalizes thought through scale, repetition and contrast, so the sequence lands as an argument made in movement.
Love Is Here to Stay
Contemporary BalletDanced by Gene Kelly; Leslie Caron · Choreography Gene Kelly
The Seine-side duet and its quiet, low-pressure intimacy.
The framing stays close enough to catch breath, eye-line and lead-follow negotiation, then widens when the partnership needs spatial room. Small weight shifts and pauses carry as much force as the larger figures, which makes the dance register as a live relationship rather than decoration.
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