Ryan Gosling Recalls Kid Dance Competitors Were Like the Twins From ‘The Shining’
A video of a very passionate pre-teen Ryan Gosling dancing his heart out in a kid dance competition went viral and he said the world of competitive dance is “competitive” and “vicious.”
Of course, he was joking – somewhat. But Gosling doesn’t have a lot of love for the throwback video and joked he was “old enough to know better” to be involved in the competition. He recalled one team of dancers who not only got competitive with him, they terrified him for more reasons than one.
Ryan Gosling joked that the world of kid dancing competitions is ‘cutthroat’
Gosling was all business in the throwback video that continues to circulate. He recalled being up against dancers who reminded him of the twins from the horror film The Shining.
“It’s a cutthroat business, I had to get out,” he joked on The Graham Norton Show. “I was on some kind of a Canadian Star Search and I somehow made it to the finals. And my main competition were these two twins who were tap dancers and they were dancing to Phil Collins ‘Two Hearts.’ And they had big heart-shaped bows, and they were just they were the ones to beat.”
“So I remember wishing them luck and going on stage, and I was getting ready to start with dancing to ‘Everybody Dance Now,’ by C+C Music Factory of course,” he continued. “And I’m getting ready to start, which is how you started a winning dance number [showing his dance pose]. And I look up into the just off stage and the two twins are standing. There are like the twins from The Shining. And then just going like this [giving him the finger]. So I was like ‘Alright this means war.’ So I just shimmied my way all the way to that tiny little trophy.”
The dance costumes were his idea
Gosling was the only boy in a group of girl dancers. “That was the gimmick,” he deadpanned. “They let me dance there for free because I was a guy. Because if you had a guy, you would win.”
He danced at the Elite Dance Studio and joked when asked for his age at the time. “Old enough to know better,” he said. Gosling is seen front and center rocking a purple and silver costume in the throwback video. Cameras captured his expression as he watched his pre-teen self dancing his heart out. He went from cringing to laughing.
Gosling also commented on his costume. “I wish I could say someone said, ‘Here you have to wear this,'” he joked. “That was my idea. I thought ‘I have a vision for this number.’ I call it silver Hammer pants. I don’t think we gave them enough of a shot. We gave up with Hammer. But I think we should have kept them going.”
Ryan Gosling put his dance moves to use in ‘La La Land’
While he joked about his childhood dance days, Gosling put those early moves into play in the film La La Land. Cinematographer Linus Sandgren revealed how the filmmakers shot Emma Stone and Gosling‘s memorable 6-minute sunset dance.
“We found a very remote spot — a paved road with no streetlight,” he told The Hollywood Reporter. “We wanted to shoot it in one take to give the audience that sense that it was happening for real. To do that, we had to shoot on a crane. There were 27 different marks on the crane to hit, and the actors had to hit their marks as well.”
The moment was filmed in only two takes when the sun hit the right spots. “This scene was meant to be a very romantic moment after the party. And we wanted to take the real location and make it more dreamlike — blues and magic hour with green streetlights,” he added.
