A non-dancing time

One thing that I wanted to ask about is why you like dancing in your films so much?

Whit Stillman: [...] It’s the fact that we’re living in a non-dancing time. It’s strangely a non-dancing time. Dancing has been really important throughout so many periods of history, and it’s also sort of central to traditional social gatherings and forms, supposedly very advanced and sophisticated. Modern day doesn’t really have [it], it just doesn’t really exist. You see film, films that I love, [like] Rene Clair’s Under the Roofs of Paris, and people are just dancing all the time. They go to the restaurant and they’re dancing; a bar and they’re dancing; go home, they’re dancing; and dance, dance, dance, dance.

Sous les Toits des Paris, René Clair, 1930 [♫]

Damsels in Distress, Whit Stillman, 2011 [♫]