Save the Last Dance was released in 2000 by MTV Films which grossed $91 million at the domestic box office. Save the Last Dance features a strong female character thrust into a new setting where her sexuality emerges in response to learning a new kind of dance. It tackles the ideological issues of: race, class and women’s sexuality.
Sara is a high school age young woman who has pursued a dream of becoming a prima ballerina. Her mother is killed in a car accident on her way to give Sara emotional support during a Julliard audition, and Sara has to leave her comfortable middle-class, Mid-Western upbringing to live with her estranged father in the Chicago inner city. Sara must now attend a predominantly black high school in Chicago—in fact there are only a handful of white teenagers there. Sara is idealistic and sees no reason not to be friends with the other black students as she approaches them first before being relegated to the white table in the school cafeteria. Sara is befriended by a young black woman named Chenille, whose brother Derek is a straight “A” student, headed for Georgetown and headed for a life outside their inner-city existence. Sara is invited to come with them to Steps , a members-only hip- hop danc
changes in setting to demonstrate subtle changes in development of relationships,
is an idea that both films embrace by using this patriarchal figure in conflict with their
Example Essays Home
