Plot
Based on a feature article written by Sewell, Mad Hot Ballroom looks inside the lives of eleven-year-old New York City public school kids who journey into the world of ballroom dancing and reveal pieces of themselves along the way. Told from the students' perspectives, the film highlights the cultural diversity that is the soul of New York City as the children strive toward the final citywide competition.
The film chronicles the experiences of students at three schools in the neighborhoods of Tribeca, Bensonhurst and Washington Heights. The students are united by a zeal for the ballroom dancing lessons, which builds over a 10-week period and culminates in a competition to find the school that has produced the best dancers in the city. As the teachers cajole their students to learn the intricacies of the various disciplines, Agrelo intersperses classroom footage with the students' musings on life; many of these reveal an underlying maturity. Gender and race boundaries disappear as focus on the competition consumes the students' energy, and the teachers are brought to tears as they see their prodigies turning into what one teacher touchingly terms "little ladies and gentlemen."
Mad Hot Ballroom celebrates the intricate lives of these students and reminds audiences of their own childhoods when anything was possible. Living with the complexities of big city life, these kids take on something unfamiliar and rise to the occasion. Filled with emotion and triumph, this documentary feature captures the essence of growing up in America.
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““The plot thickens,” he said, as I entered.”
—Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1859–1930)
“We have defined a story as a narrative of events arranged in their time-sequence. A plot is also a narrative of events, the emphasis falling on causality. “The king died and then the queen died” is a story. “The king died, and then the queen died of grief” is a plot. The time sequence is preserved, but the sense of causality overshadows it.”
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—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)