Richard Armitage, did you dance Mr. Thornton away?

Many of the questions I’ve been asking lately about Richard Armitage’s participation in North & South venture into the unanswerable, or push me into the realm of applied fantasy. I’ve always had “I wish I could watch Richard Armitage dancing” fantasies. I think they might have begun when I saw this picture below of Armitage shaking his head while doing karaoke.

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Richard Armitage in his pre-muscular biceps days, pretending to be Liza Frank’s boyfriend, an image she included in her photo collection, My Celebrity Boyfriend (2007). Source: RichardArmitageNet.com . You can read Liza Frank’s interview about the photo project, including remarks on Armitage, on the Armitage Army Forum here (logon required).

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Or maybe it was reading that he had gone clubbing in Paris on his birthday in 2005. I’d love to have been a fly on the wall for that. In any case, when I hear a song that sets my own feet tapping (even if I know it isn’t really great dance music), like this one, lately, a vision of Richard Armitage standing in a group in a darkened room with low lights, moving to music, starting to dance, always crosses my mind.

 

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And so I wonder. Armitage says so many things that suggest he’s a workaholic while he’s on a project. Yet — I can’t separate myself from this fantasy of the disobedient actor, on location in Edinburgh or outside of Manchester, sneaking away on a weekend night for a few hours to be spent in the dark rooms with the flashing lights, or maybe hightailing forth and back to London, top hat and cravat left behind with the costume people, thin-soled shoes, trousers that show off his legs and arse, open collared button-front shirt, a bit of chest hair showing, leather jacket. In my fantasy, he’s a total unknown stealing away to the bright lights, getting a long drink, standing on the margin, holding himself to create the proper atmosphere and then downing the last swallow, putting the glass down, looking around, reading the room.

Richard, the guy who likes to dance, out to lose not only Mr. Thornton but also the actor, just for an evening, or just for a weekend, or maybe at the end of the shoot. The music’s so loud it annihilates thought. All that’s left is the tremors it slams through his body, and finally, he can’t stand still any more. In my mind, he starts to shake his head, the rhythm moves down his shoulders to his hips, his feet move, first slowly and in a small radius, then gradually further, he engages his arms around his core and then outward, he’s moving out of himself and toward something he can’t quite recognize. Armitage on the verge.

~ by Servetus on November 16, 2014.