I am terribly fond of movies about dancing and everything around dancing. I am also terribly fond of movies based on real stories. Sometimes I think they should only film those. I still plan to publish a list of my favorite movies inspired by real life.

Take the lead starring Antonio Banderas is a movie based on a real story of Pierre Dulaine who organized a ballroom dancing course for children from the US ‘black’ schools. Thousands of unprivileged children that got a chance to see another side of life, learned to communicate, got attention. His program covered 400 000 participants in 31 cities around the globe.

Beginning

The movie is focused on the beginning of this path. Pierre saw a teenager who was crashing a car in the street. Ater that Pierre found the school, met the headmaster and offered to give a course on ballroom dancing at this school. I was thinking a lot about this scene. So you see a teenager who is destroying someone’s property in the street, what would this encourage you to do? To call the police? To be afraid? To be annoyed? To decide to change the area of living? Would you just pass by, complain about teenagers or would you create a program for these troubled children?

So apparently the reaction could be coming to a black school and teaching ballroom dancing to aggressive teenagers.

Initially, Banderas did not want to take the part, as he thought that this is just a movie about dancing. But then he met real-life Pierre Dulaine and decided to participate in the movie.

 Most interesting scenes from ‘Take the Lead’

• The first visit of Pierre to the school and his conversation with the headmaster. Interesting dialogue and humor and sadness and a very good set of actors.
• All dancing scenes and especially the one where Pierre invited an experienced female dancer to show how dance can look like (the main photo of this post).
• Cameo (tradition to film a real person to which the movie is dedicated in a secondary role). The real-life Pierre is playing the role of one of the judges. I think that’s him in the screenshot below.

Most interesting facts from the life of Pierre Dulain

Реальный Пьер Дюлэйн пошел дальше — создал курсы танцев в Яффе, Израиле, где заставил арабских и еврейских детей танцевать вместе и назвал эту программу «танец с врагом».

В своем ТЕД выступлении Пьер говорит про то, как танец может изменить жизнь. Он предлагает выйти из зала под руку с партнером (escort position) и дома включить музыку и танцевать вместе, а потом посмотреть, как изменятся ваши отношения.

И одно из его доказательств — «представляете, как танец может изменить вашу жизнь, меня вот в кино сыграл Антонио Бандерас».  

The real-life Pierre Dulaine took the next step. He founded ballroom dancing course in Jaffe, Israel where he encouraged Arab and Jewish children to dance together and called this program ‘Dancing with an Enemy’.

In his TED speech, Pierre is talking about how dance can change your life. He offers to leave the room in the escort position with your partner, to come home, to put music on and dance together and then just watch how your relationship changes.

One of his proofs of the life-changing power of dancing is that finally thanks to ballroom dancing he was portrayed in the movie by Antonio Banderas himself.

P.S. You are welcome to read other posts about cinema and series following the tags.