Dance in Film · 1965
The Sound of Music (1965)
Robert Wise's adaptation of the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical, distributed by 20th Century-Fox. Its one substantial dance sequence is a Ländler, danced by Maria and Captain von Trapp at the villa party after he finds her teaching the steps to his son Kurt.
The Sound of Music is a 1965 dance musical centred on Historic Gilded Age Ballroom. For dancers, it's a chance to see the style performed on screen — the phrasing, partnering, and musicality that the same dances carry onto a real floor.
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Dance styles featured
The dance sequences in The Sound of Music
1 sequence — what is danced, by whom, and where to find it.
Maria and the Captain dance the Ländler
LaendlerDanced by Julie Andrews; Christopher Plummer · Choreography Marc Breaux; Dee Dee Wood
Two people who have not admitted anything to each other arriving, at the end of a turn, close enough that neither can pretend.
The Ländler is a courtship dance built on turning under a held hand, and the film uses that structure literally: the figures keep bringing the pair face to face and then turning them apart, so the choreography does the work the dialogue cannot. Wikipedia records that the routine followed the traditional Austrian folk dance rather than inventing a screen version of it, which is what makes this usable as a record of the style and not just of the film.
Watch this sequence · This sequence is on YouTube as a standalone clip.
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