It’s Been 25 Years Since ‘Romy & Michele’s Chaotic Dance Scene

Don’t freak out, but it’s actually been 25 years since the cultural reset that was Romy And Michele’s High School Reunion. 

And you know what that means. That means that it’s been 25 years since the dance. You know the one. Best friends Romy (Mira Sorvino) and Michele (Lisa Kudrow) decked out in candy-coloured dresses with 1997 written all over them, launching into a three-person dance sequence with a glowed up Sandy Frink (Alan Cummings).

There’s so much to love about this scene. Cyndi Lauper’s 1983 classic ‘Time After Time’; Romy hamming it up with her pirouettes and tour jetés; and all three characters’ steely-eyed commitment to the most absurd dance sequence you’ve ever seen. Oh, and we would be remiss not to mention Heather, played by Janeane Garafalo who — mid-dance — treats us to a momentous eye roll before storming off in in disgust.

Shockingly, director David Mirkin wasn’t always sure that the scene would make the cut. “I had no idea whether I was even going to keep a dance sequence in the movie because it didn’t have a meaning to me,” he told Bustle in 2017, adding that the idea was “polarising” during testing.

“When you do something different and strange like that, there’s going to be a lot of people who react very negatively to it initially,” he says. “Over time, people were surprised at how they could appreciate how silly/funny/stupid it was.”

The sequence comes after Romy and Michele relieve themselves of the black suits they wear to the reunion in at attempt to conform to cultural mores around what it means to grow up. After reverting to their usual wardrobe, the brightness of their outfits clash with the beige that surrounds them: the popular girls who struck to the script are now burdened by pregnancy, mortgages, and shitty husbands.

In all its absurdity, the dance reflects a kind of refusal — a refusal to leave girlhood behind for the mundanities of adulthood. As Sam Cohen writes, “I loved girlhood but never wanted to mature into womanhood… I could see that adulthood was not just boring but exploitative, that the adults around me had stopped inquiring, were passively working in service of the perpetuation of a wildly inequitable and earth-destroying world.”

What also tends to be brushed aside amid the forward march towards adulthood is friendship, which is sometimes seen as paling in significance compared to the all-important project of romantic love. Michele’s insistence that Sandy dance with both her and Romy — while culminating in an undeniably ridiculous scene  — is an ode to female friendship, and all the joy and levity it contains.