Doc steps into unique school culture

If you think you know Step, think again. On its face, this documentary from first-time filmmaker Amanda Lipitz would seem to conform to the traditional youth-sports pattern; a team of highschool girls from inner-city Baltimore are going to compete in a step dancing competition. Will they win?

Instead, the film takes its own sidestep to focus on the girls’ post-secondary futures. This team is part of the first graduating class of a new charter middle and high school, the Baltimore Leadership School for Young Women. Its mandate is that every student will graduate and go on to college. Some are going to need a lot of help.

This is a wise choice; 84 minutes of step dancing would have you sticking popcorn in your ears. And yet the director’s fly-on-the-wall approach leaves a lot of unanswered questions. What exactly happened to team leader Blessin last year to cause her grades to drop so precipitously? Why does her mom keep skipping important parent-teacher meetings?

We see a few dads and boyfriends and hear of financial difficulties, but it’s all kept a little vague. A few quick question-and-answer chats could enlighten us, but Lipitz seems content to just observe.

Not that it diminishes the film’s emotional impact. Students, teachers, coaches and counsellors all shed a tear or two over the trials of getting into college, and the even more important figuring out how to pay for tuition.

And the tri-state step competition at Bowie State University in Maryland is not forgotten, even if its conclusion ranks of secondary importance to the college-application narrative. But when we see one of the graduates wearing a sparkly mortarboard cap that reads Black Girl Power — it describes these young women’s step aspirations as well as their educational ones.