The Dance Delight in ‘Barbie’ Belongs to the Kens
There’s a gorgeous scene in “Barbie” that isn’t painted the usual pink. It isn’t dripping in plastic or sequins. It’s a dream ballet, stylish and clean, with steps so sleek it lets bodies — Kens, Kens and more Kens — sing.
Unofficially known as the Ken dance, it’s like entering a portal to another world, where moving bodies etch trails of rotating circles and diamonds onto a gleaming surface. It transports you back to the time of Busby Berkeley, when elegant dancers swirled in and out of kaleidoscopic formations.
But the jazzy gist of the “I’m Just Ken” dance isn’t just about staggering patterns or nostalgia for old Hollywood. Plopped into Greta Gerwig’s Barbie universe, the dance is more than a dance: It’s an emotional release. With five leading Kens in front and a sweeping chorus of dancers shuttling behind and around them, the choreography is a passionate expression of selfhood, a tonic that recalls the vitality and athletic grace of Gene Kelly.
It’s odd: In the first half of the film, Margot Robbie, as the lead, Stereotypical Barbie, operates from a body that is restrained — she’s clunky. This makes sense. She lacks joints! But as the film progresses, an everyday movement vocabulary takes over. Barbie glides into a modern, pedestrian body while the men, wooden at first, learn to move expansively. They let go.
Source: The New York Times
