"Flashdance... What a Feeling" is a song from the 1983 film Flashdance with music by Giorgio Moroder and lyrics by Keith Forsey and the song's performer, Irene Cara. Moroder had been asked to score the film, and Cara and Forsey wrote most of the lyrics after they were shown the last scene from it in which the main character dances at an audition for a group of judges. They felt that the dancer's ambition to succeed could act as a metaphor for achieving any dream a person has and wrote lyrics that described what it feels like when music inspires someone to dance. The song wound up being used for the scene they watched as well as during the opening credits as the main character is shown working as a welder.

Flashdance is a 1983 American romantic drama dance film directed by Adrian Lyne and starring Jennifer Beals as a passionate young dancer Alex who aspires to become a professional ballerina, alongside Michael Nouri playing her boyfriend and the owner of the steel mill where she works by day in Pittsburgh. It was the first collaboration of producers Don Simpson and Jerry Bruckheimer, and the presentation of some sequences in the style of music videos was an influence on other 1980s films including Footloose, Purple Rain, and Top Gun, Simpson and Bruckheimer's most famous production. It was also one of Lyne's first major film releases, building on television commercials. Alex's elaborate dance sequences were shot using body doubles.