Forty years ago this month, Bruce Springsteen’s classic hit “Dancing in the Dark” climbed to No. 2 on the Billboard Hot 100. Around that same time, a music video for the song was shot that featured Springsteen performing the tune in concert and inviting a young Courtney Cox from the audience to come onstage and dance with him.
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Now, Cox has paid tribute to her iconic cameo by sharing a hilarious video on her social media pages of her recreating her famous, somewhat awkward dance moves from the “Dancing in the Dark” clip.
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In her video, Cox is shown wearing a blue zip-up hoodie as she tentatively tries to dance to ’80s synth pop group Bronski Beat’s “Smalltown Boy,” which is playing in the background. While she’s doing this, a caption is seen on the screen that says, “Asking my mom how she danced in the 80’s.”
Unable to get into a groove, Cox then shakes her head and rips off the hoodie to reveal she’s wearing a Born in the U.S.A.-era Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band T-shirt, as the background music changes to “Dancing in the Dark.” The Friends star then starts doing the memorable, swaying dance she did with the Boss in the original video. As the clip ends, a scene from the actual “Dancing in the Dark” video is shown, which features Cox wearing basically the same T-shirt as she is in the new clip.
Cox’s video is accompanied by a note that reads, “1980’s dancing…in the dark.”
About the “Dancing in the Dark” Video
The “Dancing in the Dark” music video was directed by Brian De Palma and was filmed on June 28 and 29, 1984, at the Saint Paul Civic Center in Saint Paul, Minnesota. On the first night, staged footage was filmed for the clip. On the second night, De Palma captured performance footage of what was the opening date of Springsteen and the E Street Band’s Born in the U.S.A. Tour.
[RELATED: The Story Behind How “Dancing in the Dark” by Bruce Springsteen Came to Be]
Bruce and the band performed “Dancing in the Dark” twice during the concert so De Palma could get all the footage needed for the video. Cox was a fledgling actress when she was hired to appear in the clip.
As Springsteen recalled in his 2016 memoir, De Palma introduced him to Cox before the shoot and told him to pull her up onstage at the end of the song and dance with her.
“So a baby-child Courteney Cox takes her cue, while I white-man boogaloo and daddy-shuffle my way to the number two spot on the Billboard charts,” Springsteen wrote. Until Brian told me later he’d chosen [Cox] from a casting call in New York City, I thought she was a fan! (A star was born … make that two!)”
More About “Dancing in the Dark”
“Dancing in the Dark” was the lead single from Springsteen’s hugely successful Born in the U.S.A. album. It was the first of seven Top-10 singles released from the album, and Springsteen’s highest-charting Hot 100 hit ever.
In 1985, the “Dancing in the Dark” video won an MTV Video Music Award in the Best Stage Performance category.
Meanwhile, actor Alfonso Ribeiro has admitted that Cox’s moves in the “Dancing in the Dark” video were partly the inspiration for his Fresh Prince of Bel-Air character’s famously dorky dance “The Carlton.”
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