Mad Hot Ballroom is a documentary film by director Marilyn Agrelo and writer/producer Amy Sewell about a ballroom dance program in the New York City Public School system.
Tango, foxtrot, swing, rumba and merengue may seem to represent the last vestiges of a dying art to some, but Agrelo proves this is far from true in Mad Hot Ballroom. Agrelo and Sewell reveal that the New York City public school system runs a ballroom dance program for fifth graders, in which these former preserves of the adult world are given a new lease on life.
The documentary premiered at the 2005 Slamdance Film Festival in Park City, Utah and was purchased by Paramount Classics and Nickelodeon Movies. Mad Hot Ballroom was the second highest grossing documentary in 2005 after March of the Penguins. As of February 7, 2012 it had earned over $8.1 million, making it the sixteenth-highest-grossing documentary film in the United States - (in nominal dollars, from 1982 to the present).
Read more about Mad Hot Ballroom: Plot, The Cast, American Ballroom Theater Dancing Classrooms, Awards
Famous quotes containing the words mad and/or hot:
“The mad girl with the staring eyes and long white fingers
Hooked in the stones of the wall,”
—Robinson Jeffers (1887–1962)
“Good-night to the Season!—the dances,
The fillings of hot little rooms,
The glancings of rapturous glances,
The fancyings of fancy costumes;
The pleasures which Fashion makes duties,
The praisings of fiddles and flutes,
The luxury of looking at beauties,
The tedium of talking to mutes;”
—Winthrop Mackworth Praed (1802–1839)