Dance Movies v. Movies With Dancing

A long time ago, during some summer when I was home from college, Alex and I started one of those massive projects we enjoy so much. We planned to watch all the dance movies from the 80s, and we wrote up this all-encompassing rating system to definitively figure out what was the BEST 80s dance movies. We wrote it in this spiral bound notebook that has, I think, been lost to time, but I do remember two categories: Butt Shots and Visible Nipples Through Clothes. After we watched and rated Fame, we kind of lost interest in scoring things, but our project lives on. We still watch dance movies every chance we get. When we watched Road House over his spring break, Alex mentioned that he couldn't believe he'd never watched Dirty Dancing, since it involved Patrick Swayze AND dancing. But is Dirty Dancing really a Dance Movie...or is it just a movie about dancing? And what's the difference? Really, there's no better way for me to explain this than by comparing a classic movie with its "sequel."
Saturday Night Fever seems to be remembered as nothing but dancing and tight pants. It's such a relic of an era that its impossible to separate the movie from disco. But, really, that movie doesn't need dancing, at all. Dancing is Tony Manero's escape from a life that is somehow both mundane and violent. The movie deals with family pressure, class, religion, sexy pizza eating, rape, suicide, and that's just a quick summary. I found the movie to be incredibly dark and depressing. Tony Manero doesn't necessarily find "success" in the end, as it is traditionally defined in a Dance Movie; that is to say, he doesn't find happiness through winning a dance competition or score a Broadway role or showing his parents Who He Is on the Inside. And then there's THIS exchange:
Tony: "Are you a nice girl or are you a cunt?"
Annette: "Can't I be both?"
Tony: "No. It's a decision a girl's gotta make early in life, if she's gonna be a nice girl or a cunt."
Here's the trailer, which reminded me that Fran Drescher is in the movie! Love her. I think this trailer pretty accurately portrays the movie's tone:

In contrast, SNF's "sequel" was Staying Alive, which could only say in the opening credits that it was inspired by characters from the original. That's a pretty good way of putting it. There isn't really a plot to this movie, just scenes and dialogue that enable more dancing. Staying Alive is about how Tony wants to be a successful dancer and then he is. The end. Finola Hughes is this sexy dance star that Tony thinks he wants, but then it turns out she is a huge bitch. Luckily for Tony (and the viewer), he is ultimately the superior dancer, as we see in this final dance scene. This is, honestly, one of my favorite scenes in all of cinema and I can't even count the number of times I've seen it. Sometimes at work this song gets stuck in my head and then I have to do AR with a chorus of "Fire fire fire!" in my head.

So, in summary, Staying Alive is a Dance Movie. Saturday Night Fever is a movie with dancing. The easiest way to tell is that Dance Movies almost always have a choreographed group dance. Also, montages.