Lena’s Music, 25/07/1979:
Flick Colby’s Ruby Flipper dance while Lena Martell sings Forever in Blue Jeans
Lena Martell covers a Neil Diamond song that Legs & Co. had danced to on Top of the Pops only fourth months earlier: so it seems only logical that they recycled some of the costumes, and choreography. Lulu is still in her denim “baby doll” outfit, Rosemary is still a denim bunny girl: but Patti has switched from her old-lady costume to the denim schoolgirl outfit that Sue wore originally. One possible reason for the change is the three male dancers outfits: eschewing individual outfits, all three guys are in more-or-less identical denim top hat & tails. I think Patti’s old lady outfit would have knocked the whole thing off balance visually.
For fans of dance groups, performances where the dancers share the stage with the artists tend to be frustrating, as the cameras (understandably) linger on the artist, at the expense of the dancers screen time: this routine being a typical example.
Choreography is fairly pedestrian here, but then so is the middling tempo of this song. Without the staircase set from TOTP for visually variety the whole performance, Lena’s and dancers, is, as is unfortunately true for most of the “Lena’s Music” clips we’ve seen, lacking in sparkle.
Thanks to Andeebee for the youtube post.