Mad Hot Ballroom
Can there be anything easier than to make a documentary about school kids facing off in some sort of eccentric competition? Establish the ground rules, turn the camera on, let the children be themselves: Presto, instant insight into embattled innocence and native wisdom. ''Spellbound" (2002) did it with spelling bees, ''Word Wars" (2004) did it with Scrabble, and now ''Mad Hot Ballroom" does it with ballroom dancing.
Thing is, it works.
Filmmakers Marilyn Agrelo and Amy Sewell haven't made a film as resonant, rich, and focused as ''Spellbound," but they've still delivered a heartwarming experience about the New York City public school system's ballroom dancing program. Begun over a decade ago and now involving 6,000 fifth-graders in 60 schools, the after-school program leads up to an all-city dance competition held at the Winter Garden in the World Financial Center.
Agrelo and Sewell chose three schools to film at. P.S. 115 in Washington Heights, Manhattan, has a largely Dominican student population; the poverty rate is 97 percent and the street life constantly beckons to kids. Down in Tribeca, at P.S. 150, the children are somewhat better off, more articulate, and less assured. At P.S. 112, in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, the students are funny, affable, and open to anything.
Watching these pint-size Astaires and Rogerses practice the fox trot, tango, rumba, and swing is the immediate hook to ''Mad Hot Ballroom," which became an audience sensation at the Slamdance alterna-fest this past January for just that reason. But Agrelo and Sewell go deeper by showing the effect the program has on the toughest kids. P.S. 115's principal, Clarita Zeppie, points out that Michelle and Kelvin, both problem students who might have been lost, have seen leadership skills blossom they never knew they had.
Better, the filmmakers go to the kids themselves, for long, rambunctious, often unexpectedly sober discussions about dancing and life. These children are 10 and 11, so they're just figuring out what they may someday want from the opposite sex. As one instructor tells them, ''Ballroom is a dialogue between a lady and a gentleman." In other words, it lets their bodies and minds touch in a ritualized, nonthreatening context, and if the girls seem to welcome it, the boys are ecstatic. And, yes, the question of who gets to lead comes up, as it does in life.
Other than that, the schools couldn't be more different. The Washington Heights girls know more about drug dealers and unwanted pregnancies than you wish they had to; the boys test out a bravado that sometimes leads them astray. The filmmakers got lucky in that one of the teams makes it to the finals, but of the two that don't, one group dissolves into hysterical tears while the other appears to shrug and move on. ''It's not about the competition," a teacher says, but for many kids that's lip service. Why would we be watching otherwise?
Because dancing is a group activity, unlike, say, a spelling bee, ''Mad Hot Ballroom" is less sharply insightful, more openly celebratory than a movie like ''Spellbound." We root for the teams more than for the individual children in them, even as we understand how the steps of a tango can provide definition in a haphazard life.
''Mad Hot Ballroom" may speak most loudly, however, to audiences the same age as its subjects. In other words: Take the kids. The 10-year-old I had the pleasure to watch the movie with was transfixed, racked with suspense, and mirroring the moves before it was half over. As the credits rolled, she asked where she could learn to dance like that too. No matter what I say, that's a four-star review.
Ty Burr can be reached at tburr@globe.com.
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