To watch reruns of American Bandstand, Dick Clark's 30-year milk-fed grooveathon currently airing weekdays on VH1, is to wonder whether the sexual revolution ever actually occurred. The network is showcasing Bandstand episodes from 1975 to 1985. They remain transfixing, not so much for the musical acts--the ABBAS and the Sheila E's--but for the constrained, robotic movements of the voluminously coiffed dancers who orbit each other so stiffly, their smiles as synthetic as the Qiana on their backs. This was the decade of gettin' down? In funky town? Somehow most of these young men and women manage to dance without ever moving...
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