By now, Rogers has learned Astaire's true identity although neither of them yet know that her impulsive marriage to Rhodes is null and void. Dining together during carnival night in Venice, and to help assuage her guilt, Astaire declares: "Let's eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we have to face him," which serves as the cue for the music of "The Piccolino", the film's big production number. A gondola parade is followed by the entry of a dancing chorus who perform a series of ballroom poses and rippling-pattern routines choroeographed by Hermes Pan. Berlin, who lavished a great deal of effort on the song designed it as a pastiche of "The Carioca" from "Flying Down to Rio" (1933) and "The Continental" from "The Gay Divorcee" (1934), and the lyric communicates its fake origin: "It was written by a Latin/A gondolier who sat in/his home out in Brooklyn/and gazed at the stars." It is a song about a song and Rogers sings it to Astaire after which an off-camera chorus repeats it while the dance ensemble is photographed, Busby Berkeley-style, from above. The camera then switches to Rogers and Astaire who bound down to the stage to perform a two-minute dance, all shot in one take, with the Astaire-Pan choreography separately referencing the basic melody and the Latin vamp in the accompaniment. They dance to the accompaniment as they descend the steps and glide along the dance floor, then, when the melody enters, they halt and perform the Piccolino step, which involves the feet darting out to the side of the body. The rest of the dance involves repetitions and variations of the Piccolino step and the hopping steps associated with the vamp, leading to some complex amalgamations of the two. On the vamp melody's final appearance, the dancers perform a highly embellished form of the Piccolino step as they travel sideways back to their table, sinking back into their chairs and lifting their glasses in a toast.