Young Emma Biegacki is a keen philosopher of gender roles. Outside her Manhattan elementary school, she tells a fellow student, “I read in a book … that women, overall, judging by scientific research, are the more advanced civilization.”
Little Michael Vaccaro does his best – often breathlessly – to explain the deeper meaning of ballroom dancing while he plays foosball with two pals in the basement of his Bensonhurst, N.Y., home.
Wilson Castillo doesn’t yet speak English, but his self-expression doing the merengue or the rumba or any other dance has a jaw-dropping eloquence.
Watching Marilyn Agrelo’s highly entertaining, and just as moving, documentary “Mad Hot Ballroom,” it’s never just one smile or astute observation or befuddled face that forces you into a movie-length grin.
Instead, as the film follows three groups of fifth-graders from New York City public schools on the road to a ballroom-dancing competition, “Mad Hot Ballroom” wins you over with kid after kid after kid saying the darndest things about boys and girls, winning and losing, and a host of other issues.
Early in the film, Cyrus Hernstadt, a student at P.S. 150 in Manhattan’s Tribeca neighborhood, explains it like this: “Dance is like a tiny grain of sand if you consider the entire country.” This insight by the curly-haired shorty with the serious look makes his conversation with the director of the American Ballroom Theater’s Dancing Classrooms program at a quarterfinal competition all the more poignant.
“Mad Hot Ballroom” took inspiration from a neighborhood newspaper article that co-producer/writer Amy Sewell had done on P.S. 150’s participation in the ABrT’s 10-week program. In adding the predominantly Dominican P.S. 115 in Washington Heights and Bensonhurst’s P.S. 112 to the mix, the filmmakers have given audiences a chance to ruminate on class, race and hope.
Adults have their place in Agrelo and Sewell’s documentary. There are the dance instructors, Alex, Miss Victoria and Rodney, who can’t help being characters as they utilize different personal styles to shape the character of their charges.
Then there are the teachers and principals. In particular, Yomaira Reynoso and Allison Sheniak provide distinct portraits of deep dedication.
Parents and relatives, for the most part, are relegated to walk-on roles. This suits the movie just fine; somehow just seeing them pick up a kid after school, or have a conversation about their immigrant hopes, or grab a camera at the big dance showdown, adds to the film’s sweet sociology without veering from the stars.
Because in end – the beginning and middle, too – it’s the children who argue for sophistication and innocence, sensitivity and goofiness and, yes, the thrill of victory and the agony, however temporary, of defeat.
“Mad Hot Ballroom” has the sort of pathos and final-act gravity major-motion-picture producers pray for. No wonder a recent pre-release screening of the movie at Starz FilmCenter had the audience clapping.
“Mad Hot Ballroom”
***½
PG for some thematic elements|1 hour, 45 minutes|FEEL-GOOD DOCUMENTARY|Directed by Marilyn Agrelo; written by Amy Sewell; photography by Claudia Raschke-Robinson; featuring fifth-graders and teachers from New York City’s P.S. 150, P.S. 112 and P.S. 115 as well as instructors from the American Ballroom Theater’s Dancing Classrooms program|Opens today at the Esquire.
