Center Stage

Center Stage Brings New Energy to Old Story

Main Cast: Peter Gallagher, Amanda Schull, Ethan Stiefel, Zoe Saldana, Sascha Radetsky, Ilia Kulik, Susan May Pratt
Director: Nicholas Hytner

The critics are right.

Center Stage is sentimental. It’s predictable. It trots out an old story, dressed up in new, good-looking clothes that don’t hide its cliches.

Know what? I enjoyed it anyway.

Call me a pushover if you want — I won’t deny it. Though I see my share of arthouse films, I’m also a sucker for sheer entertainment, and Center Stage fits the bill. (It also helps if you’re a dance fan, like me.)

The movie tracks a group of students through one term at a prestigious ballet academy, focusing on Jody (Schull), who lacks good technique; Eva (Saldana), who boasts too much attitude; and Maureen (Pratt), who doesn’t have soul. Other principals include two fellow classmates, Charlie (Radetsky) and Sergei (Kulik), and Cooper (Stiefel), a gifted dancer-choreographer who harbors a grudge against the head of the American Ballet Company (Gallagher).

The stakes, as in all movies of this sort, are quite high; performance in the final workshop will single-handedly determine each dancer’s professional future (or lack thereof). Add to that a couple of romances, bulimia, and a generous dose of ordinary teen angst, and we have the makings of a formulaic melodrama.

When Center Stage focuses on the moves rather than the movers, though, it’s easy to forget about the film’s shortcomings. The students, by and large, are a likeable — and, it must be said, attractive – bunch, and they’re up to the demands of Susan Strohman’s and Christopher Wheeldon’s choreography. A few sequences in particular stand out: the salsa sequence during the students’ night out, the class that both Jody and Cooper wind up attending, and the freewheeling, non-traditional number that serves as Cooper’s farewell to the ABC. (This last dance showcases the skills of Stiefel, Schull, and Radetsky, all members of professional companies in real life.) I also need to give props to Ilia Kulik, who does a good job with his dancing even though figure skating is his day job.

To sum up: Center Stage doesn’t have the freshest storyline, or the best moves. But it’s got feet and heart to spare.

–A. Wu