Preview: Save The Last Dance - Brief Article

Interview, Jan-April, 2001 by Gregg Goldstein

Directed by Thomas Carter

Ballet collides with hip-hop in this latest entry into the teen flick mix. Julia Stiles (Ten Things I Hate About You, 1999, State and Main) plays a suburban teenage ballerina whose world is rocked when her mother dies in a car accident. Sent off to the Chicago ghetto where her father lives, she finds romance and a mutual love of dance with a young black student (Sean Patrick Thomas from Cruel Intentions, 1999), but also prejudice from both sides of the racial divide. Will she trade in her tutu for Timberlands? Finally, a Jungle Fever (1991) for the She's All That (1999) crowd, with more than a little Dirty Dancing (1987) thrown in.