Mad Hot Ballroom
Review by Carolyn Arends | posted 5/20/2005
 1 of 4
Every year, sixty of New York's public school fifth grade classes participate in the American Ballroom Theatre's Dancing Classroom Program. The result: Thousands of ten- and eleven-year-olds learning to tuck in their shirts, make embarrassed eye contact with each other, and dance the tango, rumba, foxtrot, swing and merengue. Mad Hot Ballroom is the documentary that follows the 2004 program in three culturally diverse inner-city schools, from the first dance class to the Finals of the multi-school Rainbow Team Matches competition. The result: A charming, sometimes hilarious, always captivating celebration of childhood, community, music and movement. Only the most lead-footed (or stone-hearted) wallflower could resist this dance.
Mad Hot Ballroom opens in Public School 115 in Washington Heights, and here we find the film's most compelling subjects. We learn from an interview with the school's principal that 97% of the mostly Hispanic school population live below the poverty line, but the students never come across as children to be pitied. They dance (very well) on the brink of adolescence—full of opinions and dreams and passions, but still innocent in ways that are funny and sometimes wrenching. We see them in their dance classes, but we also get snatches of them at home, on the basketball courts, or just hanging out on the neighborhood streets.
Student dancers Wilson and Jatnna practice their moves
We know these streets can be Mean—the kids are matter-of-fact about the crime and the dangers rampant in their environment—but the film's loving treatment of the ethnic shops and restaurants and of the kids themselves show us that the streets are also beautiful. The girls talk about what they want in a future mate: Someone with ambition. Someone who gets an education. Someone who treats them with respect, and cares about family. These could be kids from any American suburb, until one of the girls adds a final item to the wish list. "And he shouldn't sell drugs." Her friends agree: Drug dealers are off the husband list.
Soon we are also introduced to the students at PS 150 in downtown Trebecca, where some of the movie's most precocious fifth graders are found. Tara spends a lot of time rehearsing her moves (which are decidedly more Britney than Ginger) in her bedroom mirror. She explains at one point that she'd like to combine her interests in the future by being a singer who acts and uses dance in her live show. Emma is the film's lovable Cliff Clavin, offering up helpful information and opinions on a variety of subjects. It's from Emma we learn that scientific research has proven that women are the superior species, that ballroom dancing is great because it exposes the softer side of boys and is helping prepare both males and females for future marriage, and that eleven-year-old girls are the Number One target of kidnappers.
Three boys psych themselves up for the big competition
The third school featured is PS 112 in Bensonhurst, an Italian and Asian neighborhood in Brooklyn. Michael and his buddies Donato and Ronnie meet regularly around the foosball table to discuss various matters, giving us a detailed guide to what (and who) is "mad hot" and what (and who) is not. Michael's tango is as earnest as it is dreadful, and he provides the film with some of its greatest humor and pathos when he's asked to dance an exhibition dance with a girl he doesn't know and who towers over him. ("It was like being forced to dance with an alien," notes a sympathetic buddy.)
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