The best dance films, in any sub-genre, succeed because they are not really about dancing. As I argued in my review of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, it is possible to enjoy these films as artistic endeavours rather than narrative ones, but for the less freeform among us, even the best leave us with an unsatisying niggle. Even in the so-called golden days of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, around ten times the effort seemed to be expended on the dancing than on the events that made them dance in the first place. It's very easy to view dance films as essentially a series of set-pieces held together by a threadbare story.

It's hardly game-changing in its construction, but it is surprisingly heartwarming and comes across as more genuine than you might expect. But where its sequels increasingly sacrificed narrative for the sake of set-pieces, the film that started it all gets a good balance and is the most focussed of all the series. Where classic-era Hollywood dance films were dominated by ballroom, ballet and tap dancing, the 2000s gave us film after film in which impressive street or hip-hop choreography came face-to-face with decades-old romantic and dramatic conventions, with varying degrees of success.Īt the more mainstream end of this wave we have Step Up, the first in a series of five films (to date) which combine predictable plots with often jaw-dropping dancing. The surprise commercial success of Save the Last Dance ushered in a wave of films focussed around street dance and hip-hop.

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