Doc follows dance troupe with barefaced honesty
From talent competitions to teen dance movies to Glee and Pitch Perfect, the “journey” of a young musical troupe from long-shot losers to triumphant champs is so familiar that even told in broad strokes, it can make our hearts swell as if by muscle memory.
And so it’s startling to see this familiar story told in a new way by Step: not with glamour but with barefaced honesty.
The documentary follows the Lethal Ladies of BLSYW (Baltimore Leadership School for Young Women), a step dance group, in the leadup to their final competition before they become part of the school’s inaugural graduating class.
Like many dance stories, Step splices the dancers’ personal obstacles with their dance evolution. But framed against the aftermath of the 2015 death of Freddie Gray and the ensuing Baltimore riots, the stories achieve deeper resonance.
What the film lacks in actual music and performance (only a snippet of Beyoncé’s “Formation”?), it makes up for in intimate interviews with the Lethal Ladies and their mothers, who are doing their best to give their daughters a better life. Forget the American dream — Step makes painfully clear how long the odds are for these women to escape intergenerational poverty.
During a visit to a mural of Freddie Gray — the Black man whose death from spinal injuries while in Baltimore police custody triggered protests across North America — the Lethal Ladies’ coach, Gari McIntyre, teaches a lesson not found on any curriculum: As Black women, she says, they are on American society’s bottom rung. No wonder Step’s message is that winning at dance isn’t everything; going to college is. BLSYW opened in 2009, and has a mandate for100 per cent of its graduates to be accepted to college. But top grades aren’t enough — the film shows studious Cori Grainger strategizing with her family over how they will afford the $60,000 annual tu- ition if she is accepted to her dream school, Johns Hopkins University.
At the film’s core is the group’s founder, Blessin Giraldo, a gifted performer whose discipline as a dancer is threatened by her academic ambivalence. In her final year, she is struggling to make the grades to get into college.
Her mother, who struggles with depression and lives with the regrets of dropping out of college herself, vows to support her by attending the school’s parents’ night. Blessin’s not surprised when she doesn’t show.
One night, after goofing around at home with her 6-year-old nephew, Blessin confesses that they have no food in their fridge. “I’m OK,” she says defiantly. “But he’s 6.” Fighting tears, she says, “It’s OK. It will just keep me going, work harder. Because this is not it for me.”
Those words have proven prophetic: The film has already received acclaim at Sundance and Hot Docs, and Blessin and the Lethal Ladies are set to perform on So You Think You Can Dance on Monday. But these performers don’t need reality TV to write their happy ending: Step already celebrates the triumph of their real-life journey.