Get ready for like six prolonged close-ups of pointe shoes and bleeding feet, because the dance gods have blessed us with another Center Stage (which, let’s be real, aggressively holds up in 2016).
This trailer has everything you’d want in a follow-up to the 2000 cult classic and my permanent favorite movie: a spunky young ballerina preciously saying “the American Ballet Company,” a lot of solo practice time in The Studio, an uptight probably-Russian female instructor who will definitely get on our heroine’s ass about her technique and her potential, a partnering class for sexual tension and hijinks, some painful-looking falls for sympathy, some dancers really learning to let passion fuel their art, a kiss with a mystery ballet man, and original dad Peter Gallagher as JONATHAN.
Honestly, if just once Peter Gallagher called me on the phone and told me I didn’t have the right feet for professional ballet my 15-year-old vagina (sorry, vulva) would grow wings and fly away.
The sequel welcomes back our favorite ballerina-actors Sascha Radetsky (original Charlie) and Ethan Stiefel (Cooper), thank God. Here’s a synopsis, via Huffington Post:
Jonathan Reeves (Gallagher) is tasked with infusing more contemporary styles and modernism into the American Ballet Academy and enlists his top choreographers Charlie (Radestsky), Cooper (Stiefel) and Tommy (Kenny Wormald) to recruit dancers to compete at an intensive camp where the winners will be selected to join the Academy. Bella Parker (Nicole Munoz), who has always lived in the shadow of her hugely successful sister Kate, finally gets her chance to step into the limelight as one of the dancers selected for the camp. Lukasiak stars as Gwen, a talented dancer prodigy who competes at the camp.
I mean, great.
The movie premieres on Lifetime June 25 at 8 p.m. ET. If you’re interested, I’ll host a dance sleepover where you can hear about how I recently saw Radetsky at Broadway Dance Center and he had an earring and a goatee and gave me a side smile like I was fuckin’ Jody Sawyer herself.
