Step Up 2 the Street and my Love of Dance Movie

02/16/08

Flash Dance was my first love I had with a dance movie. I still remember the scene when Alex (Jennifer Beals) tips a bucket of water on to her chest while she was opening “Chair Dance” at Mawby’s bar.  Sound kinda gay but I have to say that its soundtrack is still one of my all time favorite.

Dance movies were huge in the 1980s when disco conquered the dance floor. Movies like Saturday Night Fever, Flash Dance, Footloose, Fame and Dirty Dancing took the place on the top of movie charts. But in the1990s when every major Hollywood studio tried to copy the success of those big blockbuster movies like Batman, Titanic or Armageddon or teen movies like American Pie and its sequences, the dance movies disappeared for a while.

After the millennium, it seems the dance movies have made a comeback. The story is still pretty much the same. It is about passion to follow their dream of become a dancer and about the underdogs who want to show the world they can kick ass. But the dance has exponentially evolved. Hip-hop has replaced disco and Pop has replaced break dance. Yep, and Hip-hop has become my favorite kind of dance as well. Hip-hop always excites me; it always pumps up the huge amount of adrenaline in my blood stream and at the end it elevates my serotonin in my brain.

I watched the first Step Up when I was in Thailand and I was wowed by the choreography and Ty (Channing Tatum) is not only super hot but also knows how to move. After unexpectedly made $65 million two years ago, Step -Up 2 the Street is expected to do better.

Step Up 2 reminds me of Fame. Boys and girls from different background share their passion of dancing in school. While fighting a rival group called 410 who is trying to monopolize the street dance, in a mean time, they are trying to prove to their school that dancing should not be limited just classical (or other traditional) dances but it should include all kind of dances. Even though, I think, the movie line is not that great and several parts are very cheesy, the choreography in the second one is even better than the first one. Particularly at the end when the crews are dancing in the rain, it is so amazing that I was literally holding my breath. Another good point of this movie is to include all ethnicities like a Hispanic girl, a hilarious Japanese girl with a heavy accent and a tall Chinese guy in the dancing team as oppose to 410 (the rival team) which is dominantly black. I think Hip-hop dancing has become something international not just for black kids anymore.

Like I said, time has changed. The streets of Baltimore in the 1960s were a birthplace of Hairspray but in 2008, the same streets have become a place where these street kids have a Hip-Hop showdown in the rain.

I have to say 12 dollars was definitely well-spent for me. Just to see the choreography, my whole day depression has totally gone. I feel like my brain cells are being soaked with dance serotonin.

Tae Athikomvittaya