Whereas the kids in Jeff Blitz’s Spellbound measured their self-worth via their final place in the National Spelling Bee’s standings, the dancing fifth-graders of Marilyn Agrelo’s Mad Hot Ballroom – while nonetheless fixated on an upcoming city-wide competition at the World Financial Center – primarily find a sense of collective community and inter-gender understanding through their merengue, rumba and swing lessons. Following three socio-economically diverse NYC schools’ dance programs, Agrelo’s compassionate documentary focuses on disadvantaged kids who, stuck in neighborhoods overrun with drug dealers but lacking suitable role models, come to look at their tangoing teachers as supportive, determined parental figures. As the film makes clear (and, by its conclusion, slightly too clear), what’s really at stake is not a trophy or even students’ dancing proficiency but, rather, the vigilant monitoring of, and caring for, still-malleable boys and girls. And thus despite the illuminating classroom training sequences, much of Mad Hot Ballroom’s heart shines through during conversational scenes with the candid children, whose thoughts on school, home and the icky (but also strangely alluring) opposite sex paint a vivid portrait of impressionable, irrepressible youth.
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