"When Elvis Presley sings See the girl with the red dress on in his 1964 movie Viva Las Vegas, and points across the dancefloor, the gyrating girl in the red dress is Basil. When Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper take LSD at the end of Easy Rider with two sex workers, one of them is Basil. When dance troupe the Lockers showcase their pre-hip-hop street dance moves on Soul Train in 1976, it's six guys and Basil."
"She's now 82 years old but on Zoom, from her dance studio in Los Angeles, she doesn't look much older than she did in the video for Mickey and she looked like a teenager in that, even though she was 38 at the time. Her memory is perfectly sharp, too, and her energy levels are as high as ever, as she shares her packed life story with animated diction."
Toni Basil spent more than four decades in entertainment before her 1982 hit "Mickey", appearing in films, television and high-profile musical contexts. She danced in Elvis Presley's Viva Las Vegas, appeared in Easy Rider, and performed with the Lockers on Soul Train, while working with artists such as David Bowie, Tina Turner and Talking Heads. She maintained close contact with contemporaries like Iggy Pop and Freddie Mercury and continued performing and socialising with peers. At 82 she teaches from a Los Angeles dance studio via Zoom, retains sharp memory and high energy, and describes dance as her lifelong "drug of choice" for community and vitality.
Read at www.theguardian.com
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