Center Stage: Turn It Up: What other people are saying

I've had many reactions to my review of the new dance movie Center stage: Turn It Up, both extremely positive and angrily negative. It's only fair to acknowledge what other dancers and websites are saying about it.

From Star Magazine:

In this TV movie, a young street dancer (hot newcomer Rachele Brooke Smith) tries to make it in the demanding world of New York ballet. Naturally, she has to face numerous obstacles first, including a school administrator (Peter Gallagher) who doesn't believe she has the talent for the school - and a mean/rich girl ballerina who becomes her rival for the cutest straight male dancer in the school. It's her street cred - her passion and fire - that gets her over the hump. This is a TV sequel to a 2000 theatrical release, "Center Stage," and does have real-life ballet whiz Ethan Stiefel going for it, along with some very watchable dancing. Otherwise, it's pretty clichéd stuff about working hard to overcome adversity and nice (but tough) girls triumphing in the end.

2/5 stars

From the Herald Sun:

The world was not crying out for a sequel to the 2000 dance hit Centre Stage. But here it is anyway.

The fate awaiting this pedestrian low-budget affair in the States - bypassing cinemas altogether for a few special screenings on TV - would have been the better way to go here in Australia also.

In the first picture, the story was spread across a number of ambitious young dancers looking to make the most of their time at the prestigious American Ballet Academy in New York.

In Centre Stage 2, the principal setting remains unchanged, but all attention is mostly confined to just the one wannabe, Kate Parker (newcomer Rachele Brooke Smith).

Miss Parker is virtually exactly the same character as that played by Mary Elizabeth Winstead in the recent Make It Happen.

Kate is a girl from the sticks who finds it tough acclimatising to life in the big smoke.

Her car gets impounded. She stuffs up a crucial admission audition.

Finds waitressing work at the coolest club in town. Dominates the dance floor during her breaks.

Meets a cute guy. They kiss, break up and make up. Just in time for Kate’s last-ditch chance at grabbing hold of that elusive dream.

Despite these and many other uncanny similarities to Make It Happen - including the heroine’s conflicted allegiances to both freeform hip-hop moves and the rigid discipline of traditional dance - Centre Stage 2 turns out to be a marginally superior offering.

The only reason why is the obvious dancing abilities of the featured cast. Where Make It Happen would sneakily cut away so stand-ins could replace the actors, the CS2 gang are determined to do their own thing.

2/5 stars.

From the New York Times:

It’s always fun to mock the Oxygen network, which was created in 1998 with highfalutin airs and big-name backers (Oprah Winfrey was one) and is now bottom-feeding with shows like “The Bad Girls Club” and “Snapped.” But Oxygen does try to wedge in better programming where it can, and Saturday’s “Center Stage: Turn It Up” is a case in point: a sweaty, sexy movie that is centered on ballet dancers, not the lap kind.

It’s basically an updated version of “Flashdance,” mixing hip-hop with classical ballet. Kate Parker (Rachele Brooke Smith) is a talented but self-trained dancer from Detroit who loses a position at New York’s American Ballet Academy to a wealthy patron’s daughter (Suzanne Von Stroh). Kate finds work in a nightclub and tries to make her own way with the help of another dancer, a former hockey player and fellow have-not, Tommy Anderson (Kenny Wormald).

Peter Gallagher, who played the Academy’s artistic director in the first installment, “Center Stage,” in 2000, returns in the same role, as does Ethan Stiefel, a principal dancer with American Ballet Theater, who plays Cooper Nielson, a star of the academy.

Some of the acting is stilted in spots, but the dancing is fantastic. And the leitmotif of class resentment is an apt one for the times.

So there you have it. Still generally bad, but with some high points noticed by those reviewing it from a movie-goer's point of view, not a ballet dancer's.

Stay on your toes,

Selly