John Travolta Steals the Spotlight With a Lighthearted Dance Lesson for James Corden & Aaron Taylor-Johnson

Like all legends, John Travolta has gracefully aged like fine wine. The 65-year-old demonstrated that he still possesses the dance moves when he offered a playful dance lesson to James Corden. Corden began the segment by asking English power couple Aaron and Sam Taylor-Johnson about the time they dressed up as John Travolta and Uma Thurman’s Pulp Fiction characters for Halloween. Sam and Corden then praised the classic film, which includes an iconic dance scene featuring Travolta and Thurman.

Corden then invited Travolta to provide them with a dance lesson. In his prime, Travolta dominated the dance floor in roles such as Grease and Saturday Night Fever, proving to everyone watching that he hadn’t lost his ability to dance. Travolta taught the other three various dances, including the twist, the swim, the hip shaker, the mashed potatoes, and finally, the Batman. Although it was a simple segment, Travolta’s charisma made it thoroughly entertaining.

Travolta conducted his dance class on The Late Late Show with James Corden in an episode that was uploaded on December 5, 2019. The uplifting segment became quite popular on Corden’s YouTube channel, attracting 18.9 million views. Fans enjoyed seeing Travolta back on the dance floor and left comments such as “The man’s still got it – you never lose class” and “John Travolta should be declared as a national treasure. Love the guy, so nice, iconic, resilient and positive.”

The dance scene between Travolta and Thurman in Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction is one of the most memorable moments in cinema. In the film, Travolta portrays career criminal Vincent Vega, who is tasked with entertaining his boss’s wife Mia Wallace, played by Thurman. The duo stops by a venue where Mia insists on joining the dance competition, and they dance to Chuck Berry’s “You Never Can Tell.” The dance moves Travolta performs on Corden’s show are featured in the original scene.

The Corden segment revealed some interesting facts about Travolta’s role in creating the dance scene in Pulp Fiction. The leading man explained that “Quentin was dead set on both of us doing the twist, which is a very fun dance, but it’s limited in how long one wants to watch someone doing the twist.”

Travolta continued, saying, “So I said to Quentin, when I was growing up there were novelty dances, like the swim and the Batman. I said ‘maybe we should widen the spectrum on this.’” After seeing Travolta’s novelty dances, the director was convinced and then the classic dance scene was born.