Donnie Darko's Sparkle Motion - "Notorious"
More serious than a man in a creepy rabbit suit
I first saw Donnie Darko at a midnight screening of the director’s cut at a cozy cinema in my college town in 2004. It’s a movie practically made for college kids to dissect with other college kids, so that tracks. However, I do NOT recommend that your first viewing be at midnight, or that it be the director’s cut, even if you are under 25 and think you can handle it. I fell asleep at some point and the movie made even less sense than it usually does.
What I DID remember though was the shining glory of a middle school dance troupe called Sparkle Motion wiping out the competition at the school talent show to Duran Duran’s “Notorious.”1 The outfits! The dramatic stares! Even the audience in the movie is blown away!
It’s tricky to only think about the dance performance in this video since the scene cuts between the talent show and **23-year-old-spoiler** Donnie (Jake Gyllenhaal) burning down the home of motivational speaker Jim Cunningham (Patrick Swayze) because his imaginary(??) rabbit friend told him to. Try to ignore the arson part, I guess?
MAN don’t you just want to put on some red lipstick and whip your hair around in a very serious way?? Even now I’m feeling that tingle of joy that made me create a semi-ironic Sparkle Motion appreciation Facebook group back in 2004 that apparently still exists despite me being the only member. I swear there were other members 20 years ago! I suppose you could say I now doubt their commitment to Sparkle Motion.
I love the decision to start in shadow. It builds anticipation and lets us all fully take in the giant Sparkle Motion banner with the questionable L placement:
The seriousness of these 7-to-10-year-olds is what really seals the deal with this dance. They do not smile ONCE. This girl especially is nailing it right up top:
But we have to hand it to Daveigh Chase as Samantha Darko for giving us Cool Focused Dancer Face all the way through:
Fun fact: Daveigh Chase went on the play the terrifying girl who crawled out of the well in The Ring, so apparently Donnie Darko was just a warmup. She was a serious kid! And now she’s 33! We’re all old!! Samantha Darko is rocking a very similar look to me in the late-80s, with the long hair in a scrunchie (see: my logo). I wonder if Rose Darko had to sew her costume together the way my mom had to sew mine. Thank you, Mom!
The audience here is so good. They are all immediately on board with Sparkle Motion—as they should be! This lady is even bopping along with their little scoot scoot jumps (yep that’s a professional dance term):
Then we get to this perfection, which is the newest way I want to enter a room:
Yes, that would mean actually going backwards before going forwards into the room but I can’t think of a better way to make an impact. Try it at your next job interview and tell me how it goes!
Now time starts to slow down and we see a lot of Donnie sloshing gasoline around Jim’s home, which is important for the plot, but a tragedy for Sparkle Motion’s performance. We’re missing important moves! There is some good slo-mo ponytail work, but I want more! Luckily we see them come together perfectly for the ending:
The crowd goes WILD. This is where I think we must have missed some crucial bits of choreo while Donnie was arsoning. Yes, these kids are great, but everyone gives them a standing ovation and these ladies are acting like Simon Le Bon himself showed up and backflipped off the Sparkle Motion banner:
It’s the classic movie trick where something astounding is happening off camera and we are meant to believe it’s astounding solely from the audience’s reaction.2
(Meanwhile, Donnie is burning this painting3 and I’m not mad because it’s terrible and doesn’t look anything like Jim Cunningham/Patrick Swayze:)
And then we have this ICONIC POSE which I need on a t-shirt. Forget all the t-shirts with Donnie or Frank the rabbit on them—Sparkle Motion are the real heroes of this movie and they deserve more merch:
The judge is so blown away she takes off her glasses in wonderment:
(Again, did we miss a Simon Le Bon backflip or something??)
The girls walk off triumphantly and we all know in our hearts they’ve won, even if it’s not official yet, and they’re headed to LA for… some bigger competition I think? I need to rewatch this movie.
The big dance recital I had at age six (to Paula Abdul’s “Straight Up”) was right around the time this movie was set, which I think is why this scene speaks to me so much. Mine wasn’t a competition (I don’t think?) but it was the first time I remember being on a stage and having that fluttery-heart feeling of needing to nail something for an audience. I wasn’t lead dancer the way that Samantha Darko is here, but I DID get to stand on the backs of two girls and put my arms in air triumphantly like a tiny Olympic champion.
I’ve had a few occasions to dance for an audience as an adult and they have mostly stressed me out. I lose all sense of what my body is doing when I can no longer see it in a mirror. FEELING it in my body and not just watching it? That’s next level. Maybe someday I’ll get back there.
By the way: this would be another excellent group Halloween costume! The outfits are like a more modest, more comfortable version of the American Apparel skater dresses of yore without the creepster connotations. I would probably still need my mom’s help to make it though.
Happy almost-summer, my dancing queens! See you next month with more sweet moves.
Love and jazz hands,
Molly
Fun fact: apparently this scene was actually shot to “West End Girls” but they couldn’t get the rights! That one is also a great serious-face song but a very different vibe.
The best example of this being this scene in Wet Hot American Summer, of course.
Kind of like how Jake Gyllenhaal burned the legacy of Patrick Swayze in real life by playing the Patrick Swayze role in a totally unnecessary remake of Road House, which is a perfect movie that has absolutely no flaws and should be encased in glass at the Smithsonian!!