Center Stage: Turn It Up

Kate Parker wants to dance but has had no classical training; she grew up in a small town and her technique is short. She goes to New York, auditions for the American Ballet Academy and is not taken. She stays, starts working at a studio, waits tables in a bar and prepares for the audition again. Along the way she meets a boxer. Steven Jacobson directs from a screenplay by Karen Bloch Morse. Rachele Brooke Smith plays Kate and Kenny Wormald plays Tommy. Peter Gallagher and Ethan Stiefel return from the first film in their own parts. It is the sequel to Center Stage from 2000 and did not go to cinemas; it was shown on Oxygen on 1 November 2008 and distributed on video afterwards. The narrative repeats the shape of the first film: a gifted dancer short on technique, a rigid academy, and everything settled at the final performance. What is worth watching is the dancing. Kenny Wormald is a professional dancer and the choreography mixes classical ballet with street dance. The acting and the dialogue stay at television film scale; the narrative takes no risk anywhere. Who it is for: viewers who like dance films and anyone who liked the first one. Who it is not for: the script is predictable, the characters are thin, and a viewer expecting the original cast will be disappointed.