John Travolta Wows With a Fun Dance Tutorial for James Corden & Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Proving He’s Still Got It
Like all legends, John Travolta has truly matured like fine wine. The 65-year-old demonstrated that he still has the moves when he offered a playful dance lesson to James Corden. Corden began the segment by asking the English power couple Aaron and Sam Taylor-Johnson about the time they dressed up as John Travolta and Uma Thurman’s Pulp Fiction characters for Halloween. Sam and Corden then praised the classic film, which includes an iconic dance scene featuring Travolta and Thurman.
Corden then invited Travolta to lead a dance lesson. In his prime, Travolta dominated the dance floor in roles like Grease and Saturday Night Fever, and he proved to everyone watching that he hadn’t lost his ability to shake a tail feather. Travolta taught the other three several dances, including the twist, the swim, the hip shaker, the mashed potatoes, and last but not least, the Batman. It was a simple segment, but Travolta’s charisma completely made it a fun watch.
Travolta conducted his dance class on The Late Late Show with James Corden in an episode that was uploaded on December 5, 2019. The feel-good segment was quite popular on Corden’s YouTube channel, attracting 18.9 million views. Fans loved seeing Travolta back on the dance floor and left comments such as “The man’s still got it – you never lose class” and “John Travolta should be declared as a national treasure. Love the guy, so nice, iconic, resilient and positive.”
The dance scene between Travolta and Thurman in Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction is one of the most iconic moments in cinema. In the film, Travolta plays the career criminal Vincent Vega, who is tasked with entertaining his boss’s wife Mia Wallace, portrayed by Thurman. The duo stops by a venue where Mia insists on joining the dance competition, and they dance to Chuck Berry’s “You Never Can Tell.” The moves Travolta showcased on Corden’s show are featured in the original scene.
The Corden segment revealed some interesting facts about Travolta’s role in creating the dance scene in Pulp Fiction. The leading man explained that “Quentin was dead set on both of us doing the twist, which is a very fun dance, but it’s limited in how long one wants to watch someone doing the twist.”
Travolta continued, saying, “So I said to Quentin, when I was growing up there were novelty dances, like the swim and the Batman. I said ‘maybe we should widen the spectrum on this.’” After seeing Travolta’s novelty dances, the director was convinced and then the classic dance scene was born.
