'A Dance for Grace' misses a step

Erin Hansen, Sunday Gleaner Writer

An American film with dancehall at the centre of its plot premiered Tuesday night at the Courtleigh Auditorium in New Kingston. Local dancers and American actors came out to support the film, which received a sceptical response from its viewers.

A Dance for Grace is about a small community in Georgia which finds that a locally adored woman named 'Grace' (Susan Lahout) is suffering from a potentially terminal illness and her insurance won't cover an operation to remedy it.

To cover costs, a local dance crew enters a national dance competition using choreography from the dancehall.

Coincidentally, an American-Jamaican man named Ricky Myers (Orville Matherson) with a sordid drug-trafficking history is given a second chance to prove himself by working out his parole as a dance teacher in Grace's small Georgia community. Myers finds himself compelled to help the woman and the community of local dancers by preparing them for a national dance competition, which could pay for Grace's surgery.

Personal vendetta

Despite the personal vendetta of a cop named Mason (Doug Sines), who tried to lock Myers up, with the help of his parole officer and love interest Jerri (Nancy Alvarez- Pellegrini), he succeeds in staying out of trouble while teaching his dance crew a dancehall style that will help them compete in the national competition.

Much of the film takes place in Georgia, where an unrealistic plot is revealed between the twisted cop, the romantically involved parole officer and the ex-drug runner, now dance teacher.

The unnecessarily complicated storyline competes with that of the small-town Georgia community member's story of their beloved Grace and the fight for her life. This results in a broken connection among lead characters, as their storylines never fully develop or invoke compassion.

The film focuses on the process in which the American dance crew learns the dancehall style - a style Myers introduces to them at a local Georgia dancehall session. This scene exposes some of the best choreography in the film, as local Jamaican dancers, Black Blingaz, show they can dominate the dance floor with their finely tuned steps.

This turning point in the film delivers the next stage of the dance crew's training, where Myers is miraculously given permission by his judge to travel to Jamaica with his parole officer Jerri and the dance crew to learn dancehall from the source.

The dance crew spends a great deal of time visiting local Jamaican tourist spots with Myers, who explains in the film that they are learning different styles of dance while training on a Blue Mountain hillside or on the beaches of Negril.

The final Jamaican scene pits local Jamaican dancers Fadda Pow, Bombsquad, WellRich and HP Dancers against the American dance crew. HP Dancers have their moment in the spotlight in which they compete against the freshly trained American dancers.

While in the film, the story gives the illusion that the American dance crew solidifies their presence with a stellar performance, there is no evidence that they are on the same level as the HP Dancers, who perform their steps with more finesse.

The end of the film brings the American dance crew to the national finals where they compete against the best dance crews in the nation.

Against the odds, the crew conquers all with their fresh, new steps straight from the roots of Jamaican dancehall. A conclusion, that if realistically composed, would have been a great reflection on authentic dancehall.