Julia Louis-Dreyfus still fields requests to revisit one of Elaine Benes’ most memorable (and awkward) moments.
The 64-year-old actress addressed the enduring legacy of her Seinfeld character. When the topic turned to Elaine, Louis-Dreyfus revealed the persistent fan demand she encounters – one she has no intention of fulfilling.
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“They often come up to me and ask me if I want to dance. You want to dance?” Louis-Dreyfus told People, providing a brief impression of the enthusiastic request. Does she oblige and recreate Elaine’s infamous dance? Her answer was a firm, “No.”
In a scene that cemented its place in television history, Elaine Benes’ attempt to liven up a company party in the Seinfeld episode “The Little Kicks” remains a source of both amusement and infinite memes. (The Brooklyn Cyclones even hosted an Elaine-inspired dance contest).
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In the episode, Elaine, after delivering a somewhat edgy toast (“Here’s to those who wish us well, and those who don’t can go to Hell”), decides to take to the dance floor when the Bar-Kays’ “Too Hot To Stop” begins to play. What follows is a display of jerky, spastic movements that quickly turns the initial excitement of her coworkers into puzzled stares. Jason Alexander (as George Costanza) aptly puts it, “Sweet fancy Moses.”
Jerry Seinfeld, in a later conversation with Elaine, bluntly states, “You beyond stink.” The scene has become one of the most memorable and talked-about moments from Seinfeld, demonstrating Elaine’s quirky and often cringe-worthy charm.
Louis-Dreyfus offered insight into the creation of the memorable scene in a 2019 interview with Vanity Fair: “The night before the table read, I had the script, and frankly, I just stood in front of a mirror and tried to do movements that looked incredibly bad. I had a few of them, and I remember my mom was staying with us at the time and I came downstairs and I sort of auditioned these different movements for my mom and my husband — and they all voted on the one that I did.”
The inspiration behind Elaine Benes’s notoriously awkward dance moves in Seinfeld‘s “The Little Kicks” episode has a surprising origin story rooted in a real-life observation at Saturday Night Live. According to Jennifer Keishin Armstrong’s book, Seinfeldia: How a Show About Nothing Changed Everything, the bizarre choreography was inspired by none other than SNL creator Lorne Michaels.
As Armstrong recounts in her book, Seinfeld writer Spike Feresten, who previously worked as a receptionist at SNL, witnessed Michaels’s unique approach to dancing at an SNL after-party.
“As he stood at the door late one Saturday, he spotted his boss dancing,” Armstrong writes, quoting Feresten. “What he saw, as he later told me, was Lorne Michaels dancing as if he’d never seen another human dance before. The man heaved and gyrated to a rhythm only he could feel.”
This vivid description from Feresten provided the comedic spark for Elaine’s unforgettable and cringe-inducing dance, forever linking the sophisticated world of Saturday Night Live with the quirky humor of Seinfeld.
Fans will just have to recreate the dance on their own.
