As Ellen had a reoccurring dancing segment on her show, The Ellen DeGeneres Show, many fans wonder if Ellen can actually dance.
Ellen can dance. As she is the world’s highest-paid comedian, most of her segments are jokes or just meant to be humorous. Her dancing segments, however, are not just comedic. She has not received any formal training but has been dancing on and off the show for over 16 years.
Continue reading to find out what Ellen’s history with dancing is.
Dancing On The Ellen DeGeneres Show
Since The Ellen DeGeneres Show started in 2003, Ellen used to dance to segue from her opening monologue onto the show. Ellen used to go into the audience and dance with them. She even had a segment where people would teach her new dance moves. In one episode, Ellen bought a Groupon, a virtual coupon service where you can buy things like services, food coupons or travel deals. The Groupon she bought was for Belly Dancing lessons and the instructor came to teach Ellen on the show. She even put on belly dancing attire and tried to follow along as best as she could.
Ellen also dances off the show. When she hosted the 86th Academy Awards in 2013, she made a trailer with Bridesmaids director Paul Feig to advertise the award show. In the trailer, she dances to “The Walker” by Fitz and the Tantrums with 250 back up dancers. The dance, albeit simple, shows that Ellen can follow choreography despite not receiving formal dance training. Ellen also performed a dance segment on So You Think You Can Dance where she was also a guest judge. The show is a dance competition with trained dancers, so the fact that they had Ellen on the show, shows that she does have dancing skills.
Ellen and her audience aren’t the only ones that dance on her show. Many of her celebrity guests join in as well. Notably, Michelle Obama has done a dancing segment to Bruno Mars’ song Uptown Funk complete with backup dancers. Ellen even had a Korean pop star, Psy, teach Britney Spears and Ellen his famous 2013 Gangnam Style dance. Her guests seem to enjoy the dancing segments just as much as the audience does.
Moving On From Dancing
While Ellen seemed to enjoy dancing for the first 15 years of the show, she says she got sick of dancing. She said people started to expect her to be dancing all the time or to dance for them when they met her in person. She does not want to be known only for her playful dance segments on the show, so she is trying to move on from them.
She says that while the talk show is still her, in some ways, she is playing a character. She wants to move on to create content where she can express herself completely. This is why she partnered with Netflix to create a special called Relatable. It is a stand-up comedy special that features Ellen as herself. She joins many other stand-up comedians on the platform like: Kevin Hart, Aziz Ansari, John Mulaney and Iliza Shlesing.
Ellen has since expressed interest in permanently moving onto other endeavors, but has signed on to do the show until at least 2022. Ellen’s brother, Vance DeGeneres, has tried to convince her to stay on as he says America needs a positive voice on television to counteract all the negativity. Her wife, Portia de Rossi, on the other hand believes that Ellen can find success outside of the show, either in stand-up or film. While Ellen still seems unsure about what she wants to do, it seems clear that it is not dancing.
Although Ellen may no longer want to dance as much on her talk show, she still can and is still dancing outside of the show, especially with her wife as seen in the video below.