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I happened to catch a few moments of Gene Kelly and Van Johnson dancing in the 1954 MGM musical Brigadoon on television the other night. As was typical of Kelly’s choreography, when he and Van Johnson danced together their steps mirrored each other. And Johnson, who was a pretty good hoofer, acquitted himself very well. But still I couldn’t help looking first and most often at the immortal Kelly. Little wonder, I suppose. Gene Kelly was so talented, famously perfectionist, and a grindingly hard worker who somehow managed to make every step look fluid and easy. So much so that when the great Latvian dancer Mikhail Baryshnikov was considering defecting to the West during the bad old Soviet days, one thing that gave him pause was that all American dancers were as skilled as Kelly or Fred Astaire. Hah! (Baryshnikov once said of Astaire, “His perfection gives us complexes, because he’s too perfect. His perfection is an absurdity that’s hard to face.”) All that’s a given. Even though Van Joh...