Movie themes
The recent surge in the popularity of dance movies is undeniable. As an avid viewer and fan of the genre, I tend to watch these movies more to enjoy the sterling choreography and camera plays on display than actually looking into the underlying themes the films possess. Now, watching them again with a more analytical eye, it is hard to miss the major issues dealing with everyday society, which such films aim to portray. Beyond the apparent clichés and romance that are usually easily noticeable the first time round, for the inattentive viewer, there are much more important themes that come into play, as can be seen in recent films such as Save the Last Dance, and Street Dance 3D.
Hybridity is an accepted aspect of modern dancing. Sara, in the film, Save me the last dance, as detailed earlier, is a young girl trying to adapt to her new school. She is a promising ballet dancer who, after getting introduced to Derek by her friend Chenille, gets immersed in the world of hip-hop dancing upon gaining interest after seeing Derek do it. The club scene in the movie shows Derek and Sara getting on the dance floor and dancing to some hip hop music. Sara shows, quite obviously, the struggles of adapting to the new style due to its less strictness and rigidity that is characteristic of ballet. As Derek puts it, hip hop offers one freedom to express and has no underlying formula except having its fun factor. Through the struggles, Sara eventually learns her moves, overcoming the stiffness that ballet bred in her and adding the funk of hip-hop, wowing viewers in the club as she dances with Derek in the final scenes of the movie.
Carly, in the same way, struggles to help his group adapt to the new style of ballet, forced upon them by the fact that they lost their rehearsal space earlier in the movie, and had to team up with the ballet group to use their studios. The two groups initially have troubles getting along and dancing together, as their styles differ significantly. Eventually, the two find a middle ground, conjuring up a new technique that is a mixture of the two. In the final dance battle scene, the group, “Breaking point” gets one over their arch-rivals, “the surge” through a dance routine that was a mixture of the funky hip-hop and the graceful ballet, a testament to the success of integrating the two.
Dance styles get restricted to racial identities and class. In Save me the last dance, the club scene where Derek and Sara dance to some hip-hop tunes does a lot than showcasing the struggle Sara goes through in adapting to the new style of dance. Casual observation reveals the fact that the club is predominantly occupied by black people, with Sara being the only stand out person of another race. This is to show the big place hip-hop and the lifestyle has in the black race and judging from the living conditions in the town, to the lower class, too. Ballet, on the other hand, is considered a dance for the more affluent and gets predominantly preferred by the whites. Sara goes against the grain and is probably one among a few to make a jump between the two, shifting to hip-hop from the less flexible ballet.
In the film Street dance 3D; race also is a major deciding factor in the various styles of dance. The final battle scene between “Breaking point” and “The Surge” shows the tremendous racial influence in hip-hop and ballet. The reigning hip-hop dancing champions “the surge” is predominantly occupied by black dancers, same as the audience, showing the preference for hip-hop culture by the black people. The Ballet dancers in the group “the surge”, on the other hand, are mainly whites, again showing the preference for ballet by the white, or people of the higher class. The integration of the two, however, may be viewed as a depiction of how dance as an art, attracts humans regardless of class or racial affiliation.
The two films, Save me the last dance and Street dance 3D have primarily been considered as prime additions to a booming genre of dance movies. As can be seen, though, by the above comparisons between the two, their underlying themes are similar in many ways, beyond the flashiness of their colourful dance scenes. They are a mirror to the present society and showcase themes of significant importance, more so the integration of aspects that seem like polar opposites, but in the end, work fine together.