Mad Hot Ballroom, June 17, 2005, Greenway

Let's face it, kids are cute. The directors of Mad Hot Ballroom use that to full advantage. This documentary has all the elements to tug at our heartstrings: kids from a working-class neighborhood, a contest with several stages, teachers who love to teach, and bouncy music. To be more specific, Mad Hot Ballroom follows teams from 3 1/2 public middle schools in New York City as they learn ballroom dance and compete for the big trophy. (One school doesn't become part of the story until the middle of the film.) It's sobering to see the contrast between the gyms in which the working-class and upper-middle-class kids practice. Notably, the producer/director/writer/photography team is all female. I don't know how it is in the documentary world, but elsewhere in the movies it seems there's a serious lack of women in authority positions. A glance at the Oscar nominees for 2000 through 2004 shows men with a 3:1 advantage over women. (Due to a missing comma, the producer/writer's husband is twin daughters. Sorry, pet peeve.) Enough about that, what about the dancing? you say. The kids learn the Foxtrot, Merengue, Swing, Tango, and Rumba. (I finally got to see the basic steps of the Rumba!) Some of them are clearly natural dancers. Some of them are not. They all make a real effort, so it's sad to see some of them left behind at the quarter- and semifinals. Some of the girls really let loose with the 'tude while dancing, which delighted both the judges and the audience. The teachers (both public-school and ballroom) have tremendous patience and obviously love working with the kids. To tie it all together, one of the judges at finals is Charlotte Jorgensen from Dancing with the Stars, and the foxtrot music in the finals is Sinatra's "The Way You Look Tonight," which is on my new CD. (That answers THAT question.)