Mad Hot Ballroom
Along the same line as my last post about The Five Browns, (sorry, the teacher side of me got thinking about more of the media that I have really enjoyed lately) has anyone else out there seen Mad Hot Ballroom? Autumn, who is always in the know about the newest indie/documentary films, told me that I would love it, and indeed, I did. It is a documentary about schools in the New York City Public School system (mostly in low-income, ethnically-diverse areas) that start an after-school ballroom dancing program culminating in a city-wide competition. Oh my, oh my…after teaching 5th and 6th grade band for two years, I feel like this is the best insight anyone could get into what it is like to teach students this age (which happens to be probably my favorite age to teach).
Between slices of the classtime, they do candid interviews with the students. Sometimes I think God planned that our best source of humor would be kids…and you definitely get a taste of that here. Besides being an quasi-inspirational film, I think pretty much anyone would get a kick out of it just from the candid humor.
I have no experience teaching kids this age, but I do have experience taking ballroom dancing classes — with my wife last year. I am now a worse dancer than I was before. That’s because I compared dancing to playing basketball — if you have to think about it, you suck at it.
On the other hand, since I wasn;t a great dancer to begin with, my wife and I want to take ballroom dancing again together. (The class also is a metaphor for marriage — men lead, women follow, or at least pretend to.) We also want to take tap classes together.
P.S. — I love your new blog design.
Erik and I too have been taking ball room dancing lessons and enjoying them greatly! Thanks for the movie info! Hollywood just spit out its own version of the same story in the film Take the Lead with Antonio Banderas. Fun, fun!
I’m sure you’ve seen these, but two must-see movies for any teacher are Stand By Me, based on a true story (I think), and Mr. Holland’s Opus, although fictional and overly-sentimental but especially for music teachers.
TLA. Sorry, just testing.
Thanks so much for those two references Nancy! I am really looking forward to both of them! I was just reading in this book about having toddlers listen to instrumental music and have them create verbal or pictoral stories that go with the feelings and emotions you can feel in instrumental music and think I will try that out using The Five Browns. Thanks friend!
I remember hearing about that movie but I didn’t know much about it. It sounds funny… will have to put it on the list.
The Five Browns are coming to Minneapolis for Sommerfest. You should come visit! :)