LEGS. Where would we be without them? Squatting in the primordial mud trying to catch trilobites in our grubby little fists, no doubt. Which makes it quite right and proper that we bipedal carbon-based life-forms should be proud of our ambulatory extremities, writes Arminta Wallace
Pride, however, is one thing. Obsession is another thing altogether: and when you scratch the surface of our interest in these particular appendages, you begin to suspect that in recent years we may have let it - so to speak - run away with us.
The internet, always a good guide to humankind's most fashionable fixations, fairly bristles with polls which purport to reveal the longest, sleekest, sexiest legs on earth. A top 10 list of iconic on-screen leg moments includes Marilyn Monroe's skirt blowing in the wind over a subway grid in The Seven Year Itch, as well a visions of Julia (Pretty Woman) Roberts strutting her stuff in thigh-high boots, and Ursula Andress striding out of the sea in Dr No. Mind you, the inclusion of Guy Pearce for his role as a triumphant transvestite in Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, plus Brad Pitt as the skirt-wearing Achilles in Troy, suggests that at the back of it all, many humans know perfectly well that their legs aren't long, sleek and sexy, but actually knobbly, hairy, blotchy and - in many cases - fat.
Scientists, always a cheerless bunch, insist it's really all about proportion. If a woman's legs make up 1.4 metres of her body length, she hits the evolutionary jackpot. Long legs tend to go with a wide pelvis, which bodes well for the production of many healthy offspring; consequently, scientists have concluded that the most beautiful pair of legs on earth are those of Nicole Kidman. Pragmatists might, however, find beauty in the more productive legs of Cristiano Ronaldo or Usain Bolt or even - chronic inflammation in his right Achilles tendon notwithstanding - the uber-leggy Chinese Olympic hurdler Liu Xiang.
For capitalists the issue is one not of utility but of monetary value - which would place the singer Mariah Carey, whose pins were recently insured for a billion dollars, in pole position. But Carey is by no means the first person to scamper into the lead in the highly-insured legs stakes. The 2001 Guinness Book of World Records listed the dancer and actress Cyd Charisse in the "most valuable legs" category on the grounds that the film company MGM had reportedly taken out a €5 million policy on her all-singing, all-dancing legs in 1952. MGM, however, hadn't. It was, as Charisse herself later admitted, just a running story — "an invention of the MGM publicity machine".
So Cyd Charisse didn't have the most valuable legs in history after all. But, boy, could she dance. She danced with Gene Kelly in Singin' In The Rain and Brigadoon, and with Fred Astaire in Silk Stockings and The Band Wagon. She made her name during the heyday of the big Hollywood musicals - which is probably why her death in June of this year slipped quietly beneath the radar of the people who conduct internet polls. Many movie fans, however, would happily confess to a fondness for the legs of Cyd Charisse; and she'll be dancing once again, as the Abba song has it, on a big screen at the National Concert Hall at the end of this month.
The extraordinary thing about Charisse is that she should, by rights, never have danced at all. She was born in Amarillo, Texas in 1921, an unspectacular child by the name of Tula Finklea who took up dancing to strengthen her leg muscles after a bout of polio.
By the age of 12 she was studying serious ballet in Los Angeles with Adolph Bohm and Bronislawa Nijinska. At 14, she was accepted by Diaghilev's Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo, for whom she performed several roles. In 1939, when she was still just 18, she married an old flame and former teacher, Nico Charisse - the "Cyd" came from her brother's childhood attempts to call her "sis". Then the outbreak of the second World War caused Diaghilev's French company to collapse and she returned to the US where, in the year 1943, she appeared in no fewer than three films.
The names - not to mention the plots - of most of those movies are eminently forgettable. Charisse's dancing, however, was more eloquent than any dialogue could ever be. In those days, alongside the usual quota of key grips and best boys, film sets sported a censor, who scanned both comportment and costumes for signs of impropriety or immodesty. Ironically, that gimlet gaze - which must have been trained relentlessly on Charisse's often tightly-sheathed torso - failed to register the blatantly erotic nature of her movements.
Fred Astaire was right on the button when, in his autobiography, he described her as "beautiful dynamite" and remarked: "That Cyd! When you've danced with her you stay danced with." And when you see her dance - especially with the accompaniment of a live orchestra - you feel like dancing yourself.
In Gotta Dance! at the NCH on August 29th and 30th, the RTÉ Concert Orchestra and conductor John Wilson will happily oblige with a selection of song and dance routines from An American in Paris, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Madame Bovary and Brigadoon. And, of course, Singin' In The Rain. If there was ever a suitable summer for it, this is surely the one.