Strictly ballroom

Essay by steveiszbestJunior High, 9th grade March 2002

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STRICTLY BALLROOM

?Strictly Ballroom? follows the activities of Scott Hastings, who is a promising dancer. He has learnt the strict tradition of the ballroom steps from Kendal?s Dance Studio which his parents own and the whole film resolves around Scott and everything connected to his life and the ballroom dancing world. Throughout the film we see how Scott has been influenced in the past by his family, their ambitions and culture and we also see how Fran?s Spanish culture and her family help him to discover himself, the way he really feels about dancing. Scott has many problems with his mother and the Australian Dance Federation because of the conformity ballroom dancing demands competition.

Scott?s influenced by Australian culture and the tradition of Federation ballroom dancing. Ballroom dancing is all about glamour and winning, they don?t believe in dancing meaningful for enjoyment. To them it is just a competition to be won.

Fran has a Spanish cultural background and the Spanish believe dance communicates love and life and it has to have meaning. The Spanish keep dancing alive and meaningful and they dance 'from the heart not the mind' as Australian ballroom dancers seem to do.

The Hastings family ambition is for Scott to become the next Pan-Pacific Grand Prix Ballroom Dancing Latin Competition. His mother Shirley was a former national ballroom dance champion who raises her son to follow her footsteps to compensate for her own disappointments. She is a typical example of the fixated characters that live within the ballroom dancing world. To the people who use performing as a way to escape the daily grind of normality, there is nothing more important. Scott?s family have had him dancing since the age of six with his partner of fifteen years Liz Holt towards winning the Pan-Pacific Grand...