There’s nothing like a good promenade, waltz, or even a barrage of bombastic dance moves when watched on TV or film. Movies like Dirty Dancing, Saturday Night Fever, Flashdance, has long held a hallowed place in moviedom. Heck, there are several television shows airing now that center around dance and dance competition. The combination of music and dance moves does something special within the human experience, and it doesn’t matter if there’s direct participation or indirect; seeing, hearing, and feeling the music and watching whomever dance is always electrifying and brings an intense enjoyment. Nothing could be more true of the latest dance sensation captured in Netflix’s streaming hit series Wednesday and Jenna Ortega’s “Wednesday Waltz” took over not only the dance floor, but the small screen and continues to be all the craze via social media platforms like YouTube and TikTok.
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Jenna Ortega’s dance as Wednesday Addams is a defining moment for both the actress and the character. How Jenna Ortega portrays Wednesday Addams in Tim Burton’s vision for the character and show is intrinsically important in the culmination of this specific dance scene. Without the context and understanding of the character of Wednesday, the dance itself doesn’t carry the same weight or evoke the same meaning, which in turn affects the mood and atmosphere of the scene and the experience viewers get when they see Wednesday slay the dance floor. And Jenna Ortega captures the identity of the character within every frame of the dance. Ultimately, the mix-bag and melting pot of dance moves that the actress puts on display is nothing short of riveting as the character of Wednesday lets loose, in her own way, to the song “Goo-Goo Mucks” by The Cramps.
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However, comparisons have already been made to the 1960s television series, The Addams Family, where a younger Wednesday Addams, portrayed by Lisa Loring, also dances but with Lurch, the family manservant/butler, as she tries to teach him a new dance move.
The two iterations of the same character dancing holds some similarities, but the major difference lies in how the character of Wednesday is portrayed by each actress: the younger Wednesday in the 1960s sitcom has a childish bounce to her where Netflix’s iteration attempts to capture a darker, brooding, hyper-aware young woman coming into her own as she continuously seeks independence from her family and everyone else.
In Episode Four of the hit Netflix series, Wednesday, the titular character and her classmates attend the annual Rave’N Dance where Wednesday cuts a rug with her date and normie, Tyler. This particular part of the episode and series has become something of a phenomenon, with TikTok videos going viral and fans of the show re-doing the “Wednesday Dance,” as it now has been dubbed.
While the dance sequence is something to rave about, if anyone knows anything about the show, a lot of the luster that the scene and dance moves are receiving is not just about the dance; it is also about the lure of the character of Wednesday, her singularity, her reclusive nature, her monotone syllabic speech, and the oddity by which she carries herself with no remorse or apology toward not meeting social expectations. So, when the character of Wednesday dances, it is purely her, unadulterated and primally the essence of the character of Wednesday Addams. And viewers, fans, all identify with the individualism of Wednesday Addams and how Jenna Ortega portrays her overall and in the crescendo of this dance-moment for Wednesday.
But aside from the show’s eclectic plot and the exquisite characterization that engenders viewers and fans, Jenna Ortega’s embodiment of Wednesday Addams is what makes the show, and particularly this dance-moment, special. However, interestingly enough, according to the actress, there was no long-form choreography for the Wednesday dance. Rather, it was something that she pulled together a couple of nights before, knowing that she had to shoot that scene in the coming days.
In addition to putting the dance together on her own, drawing some influence from Goth Club, Siouxsie and the Banshees, and other iconic 80s band and dance videos, Jenna actually filmed the scene under the duress of COVID, not knowing that she actually had tested positive; they were literally waiting for the test results as she filmed the dance!
With that being said, there’s quite a bit of backstory that usually goes into making any television series or movie work. Getting a peek behind-the-scenes, hearing the tales and anecdotes that pull the curtains back on the suspension of belief, gives fans of the content a better understanding of the process and what it takes to make magic happen, and that’s the case here with Jenna Ortega and how Wednesday’s dance came to be. Needless to say, television history has been made with Wednesday, the show becoming Netflix’s second most popular show of all-time, and undoubtedly, Episode Four, “Woe What A Night” will always be heralded as one of the small screen’s best dance sequences.
