Center Stage

Appears on

• Top 6 Dance Films of All Time

  Currently #5 · score 0

Reviews

Log in to leave a review.

Barks

Log in to bark.

Similar places

• Dirty Dancing

  Dirty Dancing, released in 1987, follows a teenage girl on a family vacation who falls for a working-class dance instructor at a 1960s Catskills resort, and the film's climactic final dance lift, in which Patrick Swayze's character famously lifts Jennifer Grey's character overhead, became one of the most iconic images in dance film history. Made on a relatively modest budget, the film became a massive sleeper commercial hit, and its soundtrack, including "(I've Had) The Time of My Life," topped the Billboard charts and won the Academy Award for Best Original Song. The film's line "Nobody puts Baby in a corner," delivered by Swayze's character, became one of the most widely quoted and referenced lines in popular romantic film history, and the phrase has entered common usage as broader shorthand for refusing to be marginalized or dismissed. Dirty Dancing's combination of genuine dance sequences performed largely by its lead actors and its underlying social commentary on class differences within its 1960s setting has made it one of the most enduringly beloved dance films ever produced, sustaining its popularity across multiple subsequent generations.

  BattleCompare
• Flashdance

  Flashdance, released in 1983, follows a young woman working as a welder by day and an exotic dancer by night while pursuing her dream of formal ballet training, and the film's music-video-influenced visual style reflected the broader early-1980s aesthetic influence of MTV on mainstream film production. Its soundtrack, including the number-one hit "Flashdance... What a Feeling," became one of the best-selling film soundtracks of the decade, and the film's combination of dance sequences with pop music helped establish a commercial template that numerous subsequent dance films continued to follow. The film's famous audition sequence, in which the protagonist performs an athletic, emotionally cathartic solo dance routine, including her signature water-drenched chair movement, became one of the most widely referenced and imitated individual sequences in 1980s film. Flashdance's massive commercial success, despite mixed critical reviews upon release, helped establish the dance film as a commercially reliable genre throughout the 1980s and directly influenced the visual and musical approach of numerous subsequent films in the category.

  BattleCompare
• Footloose

  Footloose, released in 1984, follows a teenager who moves to a small town where dancing has been banned by local ordinance, and his efforts to overturn the ban and organize a school dance became one of the defining teen films of the 1980s addressing generational and cultural conflict. The film's title song and soundtrack, including multiple chart-topping singles, became one of the best-selling movie soundtracks of the decade, and Kevin Bacon's performance in the lead role established him as one of the era's most recognizable young film stars. Its central premise, based loosely on a real Oklahoma town's actual dancing prohibition, gave the film's seemingly exaggerated small-town conservative conflict a grounding in genuine, if unusual, American small-town history. Footloose's combination of energetic dance sequences and its underlying exploration of generational and religious conflict over youth culture and self-expression made it one of the most commercially successful and culturally significant dance films of the 1980s, and its central rebellious premise has remained widely referenced in popular culture.

  BattleCompare
• Save the Last Dance

  Save the Last Dance, released in 2001, follows a white ballet dancer who moves to a predominantly Black Chicago high school after her mother's death and gradually incorporates hip-hop dance styles into her ballet training with the help of a new romantic interest, blending distinct dance traditions within its central romantic narrative. The film's soundtrack, blending contemporary hip-hop and R&B artists, became a significant commercial success and helped introduce the film's musical sensibility to a broad mainstream teen audience during the early 2000s. Its central narrative exploring interracial romance and the blending of different dance traditions and cultural backgrounds gave the film a substantive thematic dimension addressing race and cultural exchange within its accessible teen romance framework. Save the Last Dance's commercial success helped sustain the teen dance film genre's popularity into the 2000s, following the format's earlier 1980s commercial peak, and its blending of ballet and hip-hop dance styles reflected a genuine attempt to bridge distinct dance traditions on screen.

  BattleCompare
• Step Up

  Step Up, released in 2006, follows a working-class street dancer who's paired with a classically trained ballet student at a prestigious performing arts school, and the film's blend of street dance and formal ballet training established a commercial template that its numerous subsequent sequels continued to build upon. The film launched one of the most commercially successful dance film franchises in history, spanning multiple sequels across nearly a decade, each continuing the series' formula of blending different dance styles across class and cultural lines. Channing Tatum's performance in the original film helped launch his career as a leading man, reflecting the franchise's broader role as a launching pad for several performers who went on to more significant subsequent film careers. Step Up's combination of genuinely impressive dance choreography and its commercially successful launch of a sustained multi-film franchise has made it one of the most significant dance films of the 2000s in terms of its lasting commercial and franchise impact on the genre.

  BattleCompare

More in Film & TV

• Hidden Figures

  "Hidden Figures" (2016), directed by Theodore Melfi, dramatizes the true story of Katherine Johnson, Dorothy Vaughan, and Mary Jackson, three Black women mathematicians whose calculations at NASA were critical to the success of the early American space program, based on Margot Lee Shetterly's nonfiction book of the same name. The film brought significant mainstream public attention to the real contributions of Black women "computers" at NASA during the Space Race, a history that had received relatively little prior widespread recognition, and it prompted renewed public interest in and honors for the real Katherine Johnson, who was still alive at the time of the film's release. Taraji P. Henson, Octavia Spencer, and Janelle Monáe's central performances drew significant critical acclaim, and the film became a notable box office success, outperforming many contemporary awards-season dramas and demonstrating a substantial mainstream audience for historical stories centered on Black women. Hidden Figures's combination of its overdue mainstream spotlight on real, previously under-recognized NASA scientists and its strong central performances has made it one of the most culturally significant true-story films of its decade.

• 12 Years a Slave

  "12 Years a Slave" (2013), directed by Steve McQueen, dramatizes the true story of Solomon Northup, a free Black man from New York who was kidnapped and sold into slavery in the antebellum South, based on Northup's own 1853 memoir of the same name. Chiwetel Ejiofor's lead performance and Lupita Nyong'o's supporting performance, in her film debut, both drew significant critical acclaim, with Nyong'o winning the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress, and the film itself won the Academy Award for Best Picture. McQueen's unflinching, sustained visual approach to depicting the brutality of slavery, including several extended, unbroken takes of violence that the camera refuses to look away from, was widely credited with giving American slavery a more direct and confrontational cinematic treatment than most previous major studio films had attempted. 12 Years a Slave's combination of its direct grounding in Solomon Northup's own historical memoir and Steve McQueen's unflinching directorial approach has made it one of the most acclaimed and historically significant true-story films ever produced.

• Catch Me If You Can

  "Catch Me If You Can" (2002), directed by Steven Spielberg and starring Leonardo DiCaprio, dramatizes the real early life of Frank Abagnale Jr., who successfully impersonated an airline pilot, a doctor, and a lawyer while forging millions of dollars in checks before being caught by an FBI agent, played by Tom Hanks. The film was based on Abagnale's own memoir, and the real Abagnale, who later became a longtime security consultant working with the FBI, served as a consultant on the production, giving the filmmakers direct access to the actual details and methods behind his real-life cons. The film's stylish, buoyant tone and 1960s period production design, paired with John Williams's jazz-inflected score, gave the true story a lighter, more playful cinematic register than many other crime-based true stories, emphasizing the audacious cleverness of Abagnale's real schemes over their consequences. Catch Me If You Can's combination of its direct access to the real Frank Abagnale's own account and its stylish period filmmaking has made it one of the most purely entertaining true-story films ever produced.

• Erin Brockovich

  "Erin Brockovich" (2000), directed by Steven Soderbergh and starring Julia Roberts, dramatizes the true story of the real Erin Brockovich, an unemployed single mother who, working as a legal clerk, helped build a massive lawsuit against Pacific Gas & Electric over water contamination in Hinkley, California. Roberts's performance won her the Academy Award for Best Actress, and her portrayal of the real Brockovich's brash, persistent determination in the face of both corporate stonewalling and professional condescension became one of the most acclaimed performances of her career. The real underlying case resulted in a $333 million settlement, at the time the largest settlement ever paid in a direct-action lawsuit in U.S. history, and the real Erin Brockovich served as a consultant on the film and appeared in a small cameo role. Erin Brockovich's combination of Julia Roberts's Oscar-winning lead performance and its grounding in one of the largest environmental settlements in American legal history has made it one of the most acclaimed true-story legal dramas ever produced.

• The Social Network

  "The Social Network" (2010), directed by David Fincher from Aaron Sorkin's screenplay, dramatizes the founding of Facebook by Mark Zuckerberg at Harvard University and the subsequent legal disputes with his co-founders and the Winklevoss twins over credit and ownership of the company. Sorkin's screenplay, built around competing depositions and conflicting accounts of the same events, embraced the genuine ambiguity of the real underlying legal disputes rather than presenting a single definitive version of what happened, a structural choice widely praised by critics as an unusually sophisticated approach to dramatizing contested recent history. Jesse Eisenberg's performance as a fictionalized version of Zuckerberg drew significant critical acclaim, and the film's release while the real Facebook was still a relatively young and rapidly growing company gave it an unusually immediate, real-time quality rare for a historical biopic. The Social Network's combination of its sophisticated multi-perspective legal-dispute structure and its unusually immediate proximity to still-unfolding real events has made it one of the most critically acclaimed true-story films of the 21st century.