A BOLD STEP
Director’s dual focus benefits documentary
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 high school 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. Early on we learn that this team is part of the first graduating class of a new charter middle and high school. Its mandate is students graduate and go on to college.
This is a wise choice for both emotional and auditory reasons: 84 minutes of step dancing would have you sticking popcorn in your ears. And yet the director’s flyon-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? We see a few dads and boyfriends in the background, and hear of financial difficulties, but it’s all kept a bit 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 accepted into college, and the even more important issue of figuring out how to pay for tuition.
And fear not: 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 cap that reads Black Girl Power, well, it describes these young women’s step aspirations as well as their educational ones.