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So who is? Pretty much anyone who will openly admit they enjoyed the original Step Up. Or people who use “dope” as an adjective, or “battle” as a verb but have never served in the military.
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This isn’t metaphorical expression. It’s no West Side Story, where dance was a violent catharsis. It’s no Footloose, where dance was a rite of passage. Or Chicago, with its choreographed sins and gyrating thighs. Step Up is more of an exhibition of dance, a technical ecstasy of fancy footwork.
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Of course, the snobby campus and its required homework alienate her from her friends in the 410, who are so "street" they rehearse in the sweltering sun in rusty playgrounds. They take her tardiness at dance rehearsals as personal attacks on their moral characters, or they're just possessive little bitches. After a formal inquisition and a vote using parliamentary procedure ("You out, let's bounce") Andie is kicked from the group named after Baltimore's area code. She then quickly organizes her own crew out of her school’s eccentric and misfit dancers, who must then battle on the “streets” to prove their worth.
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There are other subplots, of course: a talented male dancer is involved, as well as a nerdy boy with untapped dancing skills, a classically trained ballerina who longs for attention and a bitter dance professor, who thinks hip-hop dancing is classless dreck. I like that guy.
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Hip-Hop culture deserves better than this; maybe it deserves nothing at all — no movies, TV shows, dance-offs — to preserve its authenticity. It’s been said that when the mainstream public discovers something new and interesting then it’s already dead and buried within the circles that were instrumental in its creation. If that’s true then somewhere a b-boy is weeping because of movies such as Step Up 2 the Streets.