Mad Hot Ballroom

MAD HOT BALLROOM is an inspiring look inside the lives of New York City school kids on a journey into the world of ballroom dancing – a new and unexpected arena where they discover home truths about attitude, movement, style and commitment. Told from the candid, sometimes hilarious perspective of the boys and girls themselves, the picture chronicles their transformation from typical urban kids to “ladies and gentlemen,” as their school teams aim towards a final citywide competition. Providing unique insight into the incredible cultural diversity that is truly the soul of New York City, first time feature filmmakers Marilyn Agrelo and Amy Sewell profile eleven-year-olds from three public elementary schools. Shooting in neighborhoods, classrooms and in the fifth-graders’ homes, the filmmakers show all the contradictions of this dynamic and intriguing age, when growing pressure to become a “cool” teenager vies with rambunctious childlike innocence. American Ballroom Theater’s (ABrT) Dancing Classrooms is the nonprofit organization that currently provides instruction in ballroom dance at over sixty public schools in New York City. The program was introduced in two schools ten years ago. In ten weeks of intense, required classes, the program’s skilled and passionately inventive teachers take their students through a dance repertory: the merengue, the rumba, the tango, the foxtrot and swing dancing. In the process, we see boys and girls learn a whole lot more than just how to make the right steps. Near the end of the program, schools are given the choice to compete in what is called the Rainbow Team Matches. Each dance team is made up of five couples -- one for each of the five dances, plus an alternate couple who must know how to do every dance well, as back-up in case of illness. Forty-eight schools chose to compete last year; only nine made it to the final round.