How to dance like Gre­ta Gerwig

As far back as Gre­ta Ger­wig can remem­ber, she’s always want­ed to be a dancer. It start­ed as a teen in Sacra­men­to. The actor-turned-direc­tor was a diehard bal­le­ri­na with ambi­tions of study­ing musi­cal the­atre at NYU. Even though she pirou­et­ted into dia­logue-dri­ven movies, her child­hood pas­sion is still reflect­ed in the Gin­ger Rogers wannabes she reg­u­lar­ly plays. Pick a Ger­wig role at ran­dom, and chances are you’ll find her jump­ing around to the stereo.

Best of all, there’s a DIY qual­i­ty to Gerwig’s chore­og­ra­phy. She may not be the most tech­ni­cal­ly gift­ed dancer, but her moves are infec­tious, sin­cere and always in sup­port of the char­ac­ter. She intro­duces Lola Kirke’s Tra­cy to New York’s nightlife in Mis­tress Amer­i­ca (“That was real­ly fun when we were danc­ing!”), and she rolls up to the club in sup­port of a for­mer flame in Eden. All with­out men­tion­ing an aunt in Paris.

Gerwig’s upcom­ing direc­to­r­i­al debut, Lady Bird, is being billed as a semi-auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal com­ing-of-ager set in Sacra­men­to, so expect plen­ty of scenes of Saoirse Ronan dis­cov­er­ing her­self on the dance floor. With that in mind, here’s a handy guide on how you too can get down like Greta.

It’s sad­ly obvi­ous why Frances remains an under­study: her moves are too rigid and unnat­ur­al. Away from the stu­dio, though, she springs to life. Look at when she’s impress­ing cute boys on a whim (“Before you go, show us anoth­er dance!”) or prac­tis­ing mid-con­ver­sa­tion head­stands. Or, in a nod to Mau­vais Sang, when she sprints and spins through New York to David Bowie’s ​‘Mod­ern Love’. It’s like dress­ing for the job you want – if you’re twirling ²⁴⁄₇, no one can deny you’re a dancer.

In the open­ing min­utes of Mike Mills’ film, we see Ger­wig pogo­ing around to Talk­ing Heads in her bed­room, instant­ly mak­ing her the most like­able char­ac­ter. As a bond­ing exer­cise, Mills made the cast dance to songs their char­ac­ters would adore. ​“Every­one felt fool­ish,” Ger­wig has said of the expe­ri­ence, ​“but then it made every­one feel con­nect­ed.” That explains why, lat­er on, she com­piles a mix­tape for her ado­les­cent pal; in a beau­ti­ful mon­tage, they rock out to the cas­sette and he’s left under­stand­ably smitten.

Do the Sam­bo­la! In Whit Stillman’s screw­ball com­e­dy, Ger­wig enthus­es that tap danc­ing can cure sui­ci­dal urges, but it’s her inven­tion of the Sam­bo­la that tru­ly brings peo­ple to their feet. As her eccen­tric char­ac­ter puts it: ​“Dance crazes enhance and ele­vate the human expe­ri­ence, bring­ing togeth­er mil­lions of peo­ple in a joy­ous cel­e­bra­tion.” Basi­cal­ly, it’s the offline ver­sion of going viral, and even the most unco­or­di­nat­ed can play along.

The YouTube Music Awards may be a strange cor­po­rate cash-in, but it did give us a live music video with Ger­wig leap­ing through cor­ri­dors and mim­ing to Arcade Fire in a for­est. Despite her ner­vous per­sona, she’s a pro in the spot­light and it’s def­i­nite­ly her chore­og­ra­phy – the air-punch­ing, for instance, reap­pears in 20^th Cen­tu­ry Women. Direc­tor Spike Jonze described it as cap­tur­ing ​“this sort of strange mix of melan­choly and hurt and joy”. A per­fect sum­ma­tion of Gerwig’s dance philosophy.

There’s often an emo­tion­al naked­ness to Gerwig’s rela­tion­ship with music, and it’s com­mon that her char­ac­ters only reveal their inner selves when they stop yap­ping and start danc­ing. In the stand­out scene of Maggie’s Plan from direc­tor Rebec­ca Miller, she pri­vate­ly slinks along to The Spe­cials’ ​‘A Mes­sage to You, Rudy’ in her kitchen while Travis Fim­mel mas­tur­bates in the bath­room. A minute lat­er, she freezes in hor­ror when he walks in on her mid-swing. Some­how, that sce­nario is more embarrassing.

Much of Alice Bagnall’s will-they-won’t‑they dra­ma scru­ti­nis­es the awk­ward ten­sion between Ger­wig and Olly Alexan­der, with both too afraid to con­fess any roman­tic feel­ings. That all changes when Alexan­der perch­es at the piano and Ger­wig adjusts her body to what­ev­er tune he’s play­ing. It all goes nice­ly enough until she kicks off her shoes and socks; sud­den­ly, each ges­ture is wrought with emo­tion and she opens up her mum­blecore soul. All it took was going footloose

What is so endear­ing about Gerwig’s drunk­en danc­ing in Green­berg is that it’s to Paul McCartney’s ​‘Uncle Albert’. Half-cry­ing and prepar­ing for a hos­pi­tal vis­it, she’s found her com­fort song – so what if it’s an annoy­ing nov­el­ty track? In con­trast to Ben Stiller’s iner­tia, it’s Ger­wig – young, ani­mat­ed, unashamed of her McCart­ney fan­dom – who sings in clubs and dis­plays ambi­tions, and yet she too is weighed down by sad­ness. In 30 sec­onds of danc­ing, she says more about her­self than most char­ac­ters do in an entire film.