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The allure of ballroom dancing—indeed, any social dancing—is simply this: It allows us to connect with other human beings, as well as to the best part of ourselves. Agrelo's fabulously entertaining documentary, Mad Hot Ballroom, takes us inside public schools in New York City, where kids are taking ballroom dance classes. These preteens, who are just hitting puberty and realizing that the opposite sex will, sooner or later, have to be addressed, find themselves competing in a giant tournament for city-wide bragging rights.
There are plenty of endearing moments, such as the short boy who gets paired with a girl a full two feet taller than him, or the Muslim boy who finds a place where he can be accepted, or the quiet kid who doesn't speak any English yet finds himself a dance god when he does the rumba.
The film succeeds on every level. Beyond the simple exuberance of watching the kids learn to dance, it's a brilliantly funny comedy of the sexes. The girls can be bossy and the boys clueless (no surprises there), and the way both sides view each other is not very different from how we so-called adult men and women do. Still, as they dance with each other, both the girls and boys begin to articulate their ideas about the other gender, and then move past them into an appreciation of their differences and similarities.
If that isn't enough, Mad Hot Ballroom also examines the role of competition in our culture. Agrelo wisely steers clear of what you might think would be her target, a sort of left-leaning disdain for competition. True, the sight of serious, middle-aged judges picking over the kids' performances with their needle-sharp pencils makes you think the adults are taking this all a bit too seriously. And when one of the schools we follow loses, the kids let loose with an outpouring of real tears. (Later, hilariously, they dissect why they lost. "I'm indignant ..." one girl begins.) Fortunately, the film's view of competition is more complex—it certainly galvanizes the kids as they become dance teams trying to win, and when some teams do, the kids' sheer elation is beautiful to behold.
A truly wise society would probably teach all of its children to dance, to engage their minds with their bodies, and to get a head start on the vexing challenges and opportunities of meaningful dialogue with the opposite sex. Who knows how many divorces these classes could prevent?