Why Dancers Should Care About Colonialism--Because It's the Gift That Keeps on Giving. Find out how by looking at "Save the Last Dance"

Abstract

Why Dancers Should Care about Colonialism—because it’s “The Gift that Keeps on Giving Do you absolutely love those Hollywood movies where a ballet dancer encounters hip hop and ends up dazzling everyone? Read on…. by Julianna Cressman After a long day of dancing at UC Irvine, I told my roommate over tea that I could absolutely ruin the 2001 dance film Save the Last Dance for her. You know, the movie starring Julia Stiles in which a young, fragile, white ballet student named Sarah is suddenly forced to transfer to a primarily black, inner-city high school. There, she faces both racial tension and the loss of her suburban childhood comforts, yet still triumphs in her audition for Juilliard with the fresh hip-hop skills she acquires from her new peers at school. We dancers tend to love this film in general. We get excited when we see modern or ballet, our high-art practice, represented in popular film. The narrative of a dancer getting into a performing arts conservatory resonates with all of us, because we all audition and we all want to succeed. As my roommate expressed her zest for the film, I was reminded of my own dancer nostalgia, remembering the first time I saw Center Stage or the first Step Up movie. I felt galvanized by these films; they made me feel confident and proud of my dance world. These movies were also a major adhesive for my social life at my home studio, because we all agreed how absolutely awesome they were, and repeatedly indulged in these popular romance, high- stakes competitive dance narrative spectaculars. But, this light-hearted perspective did not last long when I left my ballet studio behind and enrolled at UCI. In my Screening Race class my freshman year, a research course devoted to Race and Media studies, I finally decided to take a critical look at the Stiles movie, and subsequently “ruined” it for myself. But it was an important step in making me a more informed dancer—and person. Through my research, I found that Save the Last Dance tries to put forth a progressive, anti-racist message by portraying a triumphant interracial relationship featuring hip hop dance, and showcasing a primarily black cast, but ultimately, it fails at this mission. The film prioritizes the personal losses suffered by Stiles’ character, Sarah (her mother has just died), as she appropriates hip-hop and blackness to help her heal and serve her Eurocentric dance goals of joining the Juilliard elite. It struck me that the melodramatic portrayal of individual triumph and romance appeals to the hip-hop generation, but the movie ignores the larger issues of structural racism embedded within the story. Save the Last Dance assumes a post-racial sentiment that allows for and embraces appropriation, and it also recapitulates stereotypes of the black community. When examined with a critical lens, the film is a Eurocentric pop piece that ends up highlighting the supremacy of whiteness and high-art. The film accomplishes this in its narrative and in its subtle camera techniques and music choices. Using the theme of hip-hop versus ballet, the film makes the statement: Ballet, equated with whiteness, always wins. To be clear, when I say I can “ruin the movie for you, I really mean “deconstruct. This is not a negative thing; it’s a powerful tool for navigating our modern world. Deconstruction is a