Il ritmo del successo

Come on, I know it's not cool to admit to liking what is essentially a cheesy teen flick. But go ahead, say it aloud - this is a fun movie! Sappy, badly acted, full of exaggerated clichés and one-liner groaners, Center Stage nevertheless has a kind of charm to it. No, it's not an Oscar contender or a change-your-life kind of movie. This is pure escapism, plain and simple. But - say it together with me now - there's nothing wrong with that.

Amanda Schull plays Jody, a wannabe ballet dancer who gets accepted to the prestigious American Ballet Academy. The movie follows her life and that of her friends and fellow students, who fall into the predictable stereotypes. There's Eva (Zoe Saldana), the city kid with attitude. There's Maureen (Susan May Pratt), the teacher's pet. There's Erik (Shakiem Evans), the gay guy. There's Cooper (Ethan Stiefel), the bad-boy celebrity who's still in love with the director's wife ballerina. There's Charlie (Sascha Radetsky), the perfect good guy. One has the obnoxious stage mom. Another has the talent but not the drive. A third has the drive but not the talent. Etcetera. And the lives of the students take the typical high school romantic twists and turns, as the students compete for one of three spots in the company by the end of the year, and also in the various love triangles between the cast. There are few surprises here.

None of the cast is much of an actor - Schull is particularly uneven - and the plot has a sort of predictability to it that make eyes roll.

So why the 8/10? Well, because despite all this, Center Stage is a great amount of fun - mostly due to the dancing.

By casting real dancers in a lot of the roles, Center Stage lends an air of credibility to the lavishly filmed dance sequences, clearly done with love by such talents as world-leading dancers Julie Kent and Ethan Stiefel (widely considered to be one of the best ballet dancers in the world) as well as relatively new talents such as Amanda Schull. Some of the actors have body doubles dancing for them, such as Zoe Saldana - who had some dance training but not at the level required by the film. But overall, the dance scenes are the best part of the movie, especially Cooper's ballet at the end.

Some movies are great because they change your life or make you think. Center Stage is great because it's like candy - full of saccharine sugar and empty calories, but eminently watchable over and over again. Sometimes movies don't have to be socially relevant or intellectually stimulating to be good. Sometimes, escapism is OK too.

The plot is basic and at least one of the actors, the one who plays Maureen can't act her way out of a box, but who cares. It doesn't matter.

The dancing is what we are here for and it is flawless! From the salsa club scene to the modern dance class to the unbeatable finale. This dancing is on pointe!

The end dance which involves love triangles, motorcycles, canned heat and simulated sex is the reason to watch this movie. Dance movie finales do not get better than this.

If you love dance watch it, rewatch it and love it forever! Dance movies done right. This is best dance movie ever! Ever!

What makes this something unique? What the difference with other movies about dancers?.

I just can tell I'm not a fan of the dance things, I mean I really hate those many pop singers who abuse of the dance to hide their bad work, so for year I was avoiding these movies.

But when I saw the music video of this film, something was different, there was not the same old story with the cast of pop stars trying to show they are more than a cute face. There was a cast of amazing dancers showing the best of them in just a few minutes.

So, finally I found myself watching this movie with the strange desire about an endless story. Weird, but for one who doesn't like the dance, this was a discover of whole new world were the dancers and the cast make an incredible work in a story who deserve to be with the classic of these themes.

This movie it's not shallow love story of a group of teenagers trying to become in big stars, it's about the crash of the passion and the reality, the time when the real love for something has to be tested to found the perfect place in the universe of the society, something that it's hard to find in a good film.

I loved this for the dancing - the balcony scene from Romeo and Juliet, the dance of the little swans from Swan Lake, a bit of the Stars and Stripes, and some great modern stuff, especially the show sequence which works through Michael Jackson and Jamiroquai. The story is just a bundle of cliches in looks and personalities and you just know how it is all going to end. So, worth seeing for the dance sequences, but its turn off your brain time for the rest. With a stronger storyline this could have been a really good film. As it is, its a high 7 out of 10.

The title comes from the dancer's center of gravity, which I'm told is used to explain the difference between Russian and American dance to us non-dancers. The Russian tradition is one of capturing and controlling it; the American (since Balanchine, whose work is employed here) is to understand it and let the center `go.' And insofar as it can, that is the point of the drama employed to tie together the dance segments of this film. It is a non-trivial point, underlined by employing not actors in the key roles, but dancers who `act.' These kids are surely endearing.

Two points seem worth mentioning.

The first is the matter of dance in film. Dance is intrinsically cinematic in terms of emotion as motion. But it is too personal, too directly a matter between humans, to convey well to the funnel of film: everything squashed into an image, then given indiscriminately and undifferentiatingly to all viewers. So the cinematographer has a tough choice: what to do with the camera to increase bodily intimacy.

One, unacceptable, extreme is to stay stationary at a few points, another is to choreograph the camera so the viewer is one of the dancers. In this case, at the end at least, we have a happy medium so far as camera involvement. The camera is stationary, but often within the field of dance, and it pans. The staging of the dance was partly to the audience pictured, and partly to us, which is very clever. But it would have been nice to be more adventurous in this regard, especially since there are several choreographers in NYC who are up to the challenge, and cheap!

The second point is a matter of self-reference, which I appreciate almost without qualification when I see it.

The filmmaker gives us a bunch of young actors (actually dancers) who surprise us by effectively showing us their souls in a little love triangle drama. And the matter of their story? A bunch of young dancers who surprise the audience in the film by effectively showing their souls in a little love triangle drama. The film as summarized in the dance is a very intelligent device which I appreciated. And you will too.