Step Right Up

I don't think I mentioned it in my year-end post, but I've been thinking about action movies: I love the adrenaline and the technical thrills of modern action movies, but do we really need to watch so much violence? If only there were some genre that valued displays of physical prowess filmed in an exciting way - wait! How about dance movies? Not only do you get the same kind of excitement as action movies, but there are a whole lot of them to choose from. We started with Stomp the Yard (2007).

It stars Columbus Short as a street dancer who gets into a beef with another crew that winds up with his brother dead. He is shipped off to Truth University in Atlanta, where his uncle is groundskeeper. Right from the start, he sets his sites on Megan Good. He also gets recruited by two frats, famous for their step teams.

If you don't know, stepping is a vernacular dance form practiced by members of Greek organizations at historically black colleges. It involves vigorous, synchronized stamping, gestures and some chanting. It reminds me a lot of New Zealand's haka. Of course, Megan Good's boyfriend leads one frat's team (the one that wins national championships year after year), and our hero pledges the other one.

StY is sometimes called Drumline without the drums, which is pretty accurate (Drumline even has a short stepping scene). In some ways, it's an ad for Greek organizations and college in general. Short is a good student, although he got in trouble. He works hard for his uncle as gardener, and spends a lot of his time studying - in fact, scenes with Short and Good studying together make black study very sexy.

But who cares? This is not why we watched this. We watched it for the stepping. So, first, there is a lot of hip hop dancing. It's not all step. In fact, the theme is that Short's team will need his urban battle dance training to win the nationals. It's pretty wild, but I might have preferred a little more traditional stepping. Also, more of the women - when Ms. (now Dr.) Spenser was at Florida State, we saw a little stepping, mostly from the women. They are fabulous - putting women through those strong, aggressive, percussive steps can be pretty awesome.

So, successful experiment. It sounds like the sequel isn't worth it, but there are plenty of others - the Step Up series, the You've Been Serveds, etc. We'll let you know how it goes.