Step

Com­bin­ing ener­getic foot­work, intense clap­ping and swift move­ments into one ful­ly-formed dance rou­tine, step danc­ing is the sub­ject of this impres­sive doc­u­men­tary from direc­tor Aman­da Lipitz. It chron­i­cles the lives of the first grad­u­at­ing class from The Bal­ti­more Lead­er­ship School for Young Women and focus­es specif­i­cal­ly on three young women – Blessin Giral­do, Cori Grainger and Tay­la Solomon – as they chal­lenge them­selves both aca­d­e­m­i­cal­ly and emo­tion­al­ly in order to achieve their goals: a Step cham­pi­onship and accep­tance to college.

Filmed in the after­math of Fred­die Gray’s death, a young African-Amer­i­can man who suf­fered extreme spinal injuries while in police cus­tody in April 2015, Step show­cas­es a dif­fer­ent side to Bal­ti­more, a side that fights back, but not in the usu­al sense. It demon­strates the strug­gles these young girls face, being black women forced to grow-up amid a cli­mate of police bru­tal­i­ty and an extreme­ly prej­u­dice jus­tice system.

It’s a tri­umph from Lipitz, an expe­ri­enced Broad­way pro­duc­er turned first-time film direc­tor who under­stands the irre­sistible emo­tion­al pull of a good human-inter­est sto­ry. The women involved are real and well worth root­ing for. Cheer­ful, strong and per­cep­tive, they are not afraid to be them­selves, and their vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty and appre­hen­sion over what’s to come (adult­hood) is ter­ri­fy­ing­ly relat­able. The world of Step brings them sta­bil­i­ty and an envi­ron­ment they can open up in. It pro­motes a strong sense of sis­ter­hood that teach­es them to sup­port each other’s goals as well as their own.

Though Step tugs at the heart-strings in the right way, the girl’s hard­ships are tough to watch at times. Yet it is how they over­come their fears and trep­i­da­tions that tru­ly makes the film inspir­ing, demon­strat­ing that a lot of hard work and deter­mi­na­tion, plus an incred­i­ble amount of sup­port from fam­i­ly, friends and men­tors alike, can make all the dif­fer­ence when it comes to accom­plish­ing your dreams. Noth­ing is ever out of reach.