Astaire Unwound (ceiling dance from Royal Wedding)

This video shows how Fred Astaire’s famous “dance around the room“ was filmed by Stanley Donen in the 1951 movie “Royal Wedding“ (now in public domain). To see a detailed account of how this video was made, visit . While the actual filming of this number was apparently entirely undocumented, Donen recreated the effect in 1986 for Lionel Richie’s “Dancing on the Ceiling“ music video. I’ve posted a behind the scenes look at that here: