Blood Brothers - Dancing

Dancing is nearly always associated with self expression; sometimes dancing reflects love, sometimes happiness, and sometimes the dance can express the sadness you are feeling. This essay will examine how the dancing in ‘Blood Brothers’ can symbolise hope and signifies security and pleasure that never lasts.
Dancing is the first thing we hear Mrs Johnstone sing about, as she describes he life before she got married, when she first met her husband whilst out dancing. She then mentions dancing yet again when she finds out that her and her family are moving away from their life and she dances with a picture of the Pope with Mickey and her other children around her “We’re startin’ all over again”. Furthermore Mrs Johnstone, yet again, mentions dancing when she states that her new “fella” and she go dancing on a regular basis. Then once more when she explains that a judge let her son Sammy off because he wanted to take her dancing “could I take you dancing?”.
There are many other examples of dancing being used in this play, such as when Mrs Lyons is teaching Edward how to dance after the Johnstone’s have moved (but Mrs Lyons and Edward still do not know that they only live a short distance away from each other) and Mrs Lyons is content with Edwards dancing as she says “That’s it Edward, you’re dancing”. Also “Edward grabs Linda’s mate and begins to Waltz her around the street” is another moment where dancing has been used to create a very mellow feel to the play.
All of these show dancing in a happy light, which means that attached to all of these memories of dancing is happiness and love. But there are a few times that dancing is mentioned in quite a negative way, for example, when Mickey has come out of prison and he is on the tablets, Mrs Johnstone states that “His minds gone dancin” which is a metaphor to describe how Mickey is not all mentally there. His mind is on taking his tablets which he believes will make him better, but his family know that what Mickey