Mad Hot Ballroom follows the progress of a diverse group of eleven-year-olds from three elementary schools in New York City all learning ballroom dancing through a scheme run by the not-for-profit American Ballroom Theatres Dancing Classroom. One school is in downtown Manhattan’s trendy Tribeca area, another at Washington Heights, located far uptown and populated primarily by Dominican immigrants almost all of whom live at or below poverty level, and the third is across the Brooklyn Bridge in Bensonhurst, where many Asians have integrated into a traditional Italian neighborhood. Amid complex big city life, these kids take up a totally unfamiliar skill and rise to the challenge. They only have ten weeks to practice for a big contest and while they prepare, we’re given an insight into their candid, sometimes hilarious perspectives on life, the opposite sex, and the future. We witness the boys transform from reluctant participants to determined competitors, and watch the little urbanites rumba, meringue, tango, foxtrot and swing like little Fred Astaires and Ginger Rogers in baggy jeans and baseball caps. Mad Hot Ballroom is an engaging look at an articulate group of average kids from diverse cultural backgrounds on the cusp of adolescence and all mad on ballroom dancing. Uplifting, optimistic and entertaining: ‘Anyone can make it if they know how to shake it’. SD
