Nobody commented about the Bottle Dance during the wedding celebration. Is this a Russian custom at weddings or just something just done in the film? How did they get the bottles not to topple over? Did the dancers actually balance those bottles?
shareThe hats had little recessions on top to hold them up. I have no idea about the tradition of it. Not being Jewish, I am clueless, but I doubt it was invented just for this movie. By the way, when I was a kid and the upcoming movies were premiering clips on HBO, it was the bottle dance that made me want to watch it for the first time.
"I will not go down in history as the greatest mass-murderer since Adolf Hitler!" - Merkin Muffley
The "Bottle Dance" was one of director/choreographer Jerome Robbins' most memorable contributions to the stage version - the audience literally held its collective breath. I seem to recall reading somewhere that Robbins supplied the dancers with alternate moves in case anyone's bottle fell off, which I don't think happened very often (even bottles were terrified of Robbins!).
"Forget it, Jake. It's the internet."
3) The famous ?Bottle Dance? is not a traditional Jewish folk dance but the razzle-dazzle creation of director-choreographer Jerome Robbins. Robbins had previously staged West Side Story and Gypsy. He did ?field research? for Fiddler by attending Orthodox Jewish weddings and festivals where he was thrilled with the men?s dancing. He observed one man entertaining a crowd by tottering around with a bottle on his head pretending to be drunk. Robbins took that image and elaborated to create the Broadway showstopper featuring four dancers performing precise, electrifying moves.
Read more: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/six-things-you-may-not-have-known-about-fiddler-roof-180952771/#8yQpi0mmOBOgq1kP.99
Give the gift of Smithsonian magazine for only $12! http://bit.ly/1cGUiGv
Follow us: @SmithsonianMag on Twitter
Oddly enough, dancing with wine bottles on the head is traditionally done at Hungarian peasant weddings by girls, and I've seen it done in a mixed-sex dance in Croatia. So it"s a real traditional Eastern European thing, just not specifically a Jewish thing.
shareCertainly, like in Broadway, they used prop hats that alowed them to secure the bottles in position along the dance.
Nevertheless, this musical number is one of the many highlights of the movie.