SATURDAY NIGHT FEVER and the Contemporary Dance Film

This thesis traces the advent and development of both "High Concept" Hollywood industrial practice and the relation thereto and key role played in such by Dance Movies. Beginning with SATURDAY NIGHT FEVER, then tracing its innovations through FLASHDANCE, FOOTLOOSE, DIRTY DANCING, and SAVE THE LAST DANCE, this thesis also provides a preliminary unifying genre theory of Dance Movies and their evolution from a hybridized sub-genre of sports films and the Hollywood Musical to a more fully-formed, unique, freestanding generic status. I also explore and delineate cross-promotional marketing-- specifically between the music and film industries, and the key personalities and pioneers in each field. The thesis therefore examines a key nexus of socio-cultural and industrial factors in shaping the type of films and music made and marketed during a key transitional point in film and pop music histories in the late twentieth century and its continually felt reverberations today.