In the 1930s there was this ...

In the 1930s there was this tendency in Hollywood to portray everyone as rich. Even if they were doing a poor man's dance, they were all so nicely clothed, gowned, coiffured. That's why I decided to wear white socks, loafers, T-shirts, and blue jeans. I had a sociopolitical context in front of me: I was a child of the Depression who danced in a way that would represent the common man.
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 Gene Kelly

Quotes from the same author

My mother had gotten a job as a receptionist at a dancing school and had the idea that we should open our own dancing school; we did, and it prospered.
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 Gene Kelly
I wanted to do new things with dance, adapt it to the motion picture medium.
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 Gene Kelly
Things danced on the screen do not look the way they do on the stage. On the stage, dancing is three-dimensional, but a motion picture is two-dimensional.
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 Gene Kelly
When I would create a dance, I wouldn't have the luxury that ballet people do when they take a piece of music and impose a dance upon it. What we did in motion pictures was have a song and within that song try to elaborate. My usual method was to do what a writer does: get a plot.
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 Gene Kelly
I'd studied dance in Chicago every summer and taught it all winter, and I was well-rounded. I wasn't worried about getting a job on Broadway. In fact, I got one the first week.
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 Gene Kelly