The 15 best dance movies of all time

The songs are by Irving Berlin, the dancing by Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers—so yes, we're in heaven. Of the many Astaire pictures to choose from, 1935's Top Hat is the absolute dreamiest and swooniest. You almost feel you are there, dancing cheek-to-cheek, basking in that Golden Hollywood perfection, held in the arms of a dancing partner always ready to whisk you into a waltz.

Jennie Livingston's 1990 documentary about voguing and the drag balls of '80s New York is an archival document, influential flashpoint and valuable witness to a diverse scene that was far undervalued by the mainstream. Oh, how far we've come: Today, FKA Twigs invites voguing stars onstage to be honored as her teachers, but for much of the last two decades, the trans and gay youth moving dance toward a new, fiercer mode were rendered invisible. Paris is Burning has faced accusations of taking an “anthropological” approach, but watch it and you'll see an unabashed love of the film's subjects and their dancing, art that's still astonishing 25 years later.

No list of dance films could be complete without the jump-in-a-puddle exuberance of Gene Kelly's 1952 Singin' in the Rain. Kelly was a dance proselytizer; he wanted to convince the country that dancing is masculine, athletic, American and cool. As a piece of propaganda, then, this film is a masterwork; as a machine for generating happiness, it's still as well-oiled as it was a half-century ago.

If you have not dance-walked down the middle of a New York street with your knees out and your fingers a'snappin', you have not—I'm guessing—seen West Side Story. In 1957, the Broadway show's conceiver and choreographer Jerome Robbins was at the top of his already-legendary game; when the 1961 film's director Ray Wise had Robbins helm the dancing and musical scenes, the result was eerily ageless. Just watch the opening sequence to see a matchless fusion of shot, movement, architecture and, of course, Leonard Bernstein's irresistible music. This is one to love with your whole heart— when you're a Jet, you're a Jet all the way.

If we learned one thing in the '80s, it's that you do not tell Kevin Bacon he can't dance. If you do, all his adolescent angst might explode into a dance of such fervor and gymnastic abandon, that it would test the limits of what painted-on jeans can allow. Despite Footloose's pop-pleasures, Bacon's rebel Ren really spoke to disaffected teens; Herbert Ross's teen classic perfectly captured the way dance is simultaneously lonely and social, virtuosic and made for the masses. Thus the barbaric yawp for the popped-collar age: Everybody cut footloose!

The great dance-theater genius Pina Bausch died in 2009, leaving a terrible gap in the dance world. Continuing a project he began when she was alive, Wim Wenders made this 3-D documentary, which extends its artistic grasp past the merely archival and into art-making itself. A desperately poignant film, it interweaves testimonials from Bausch's dancers, some of whom had been with Tanztheater Wuppertal for decades, footage from major pieces (notably Café Müller and Kontakthof) and strange elegiac sequences that place the dancers into natural and man-made landscapes, all of which seem to bid their own kind of farewell.

If you haven't seen White Nights in awhile, you might not remember that it's a bewildering constellation of artists: ballet superstar Mikhail Baryshnikov, tap titan Gregory Hines, modern dance choreographer Twyla Tharp and a few other folks—like Isabella Rossellini and Helen Mirren. Some of its continuing joys do come from the exquisite cheese on that 1985 soundtrack—Lionel Richie's “Say You, Say Me” features prominently—but there are wonderful performances to marvel at as well: Any time you get talent like this together, there's inevitable heat and light. You haven't really lived until you've seen the Baryshnikov-Hines ballet-tap duet (please note the use of the slow-mo karate kick), but you may find yourself watching the whole thing with that same level of delight. How did dance defeat the Cold War? Watch and learn.

You know you're good when Beyoncé borrows liberally from you, right? Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker is the ne plus ultra when it comes to contemporary dance; Thierry De Mey's 1997 film of her 1983 work Rosas danst Rosas demonstrated her mysterious, rhythmic, minimalist work could succeed on almost any platform. Even 30 years after its inception, it looks cooler than cool, which may have been why it became an “inspiration” for the Queen Bee's video “Countdown” in 2011.

Channing Tatum is one of the biggest stars in the world; Channing Tatum got his start in Step Up. Somehow, we find a great, almost cosmic, reassurance in that, not least because Tatum really can dance. In Steven Soderbergh's Magic Mike, Tatum's climactic solo has fun, artistry and athleticism—and the film as a whole makes it clear that dance can be a job, a thing in which a dedicated person can excel. (It can also make all the ladies in the club go “EEE!” with excitement.)

In his 1977 film Saturday Night Fever, John Badham took disco mainstream, but he also offered New Yorkers an indispensable guide on how to treat a sidewalk. John Travolta's Tony Manero (those snaky hips! that otter-slick hair!) turned one man's walk into a statement of ownership simply by strutting along to the Bee Gees, letting the music move him—and by extension, anyone who has needed a bit more groove in their daily commute.