Street­dance Family

With their cute out­fits, invin­ci­ble atti­tude, and mean­ing­less name, Enti­ty seem to have every­thing they need to take on the world of com­pet­i­tive junior street danc­ing. Unre­lat­ed to the high­er-bud­get, high­er-action Street­Dance fran­chise, the film sees the dance troupe take a famil­iar emo­tion­al roller coast­er ride to the IDO World Hip Hop Championships.

Like most films that cen­tre around an organ­ised com­pe­ti­tion, the plot fol­lows the inbuilt dra­mat­ic struc­ture of the championship’s qual­i­fy­ing events. As the are­nas get larg­er so do the troupe’s prob­lems. Yet chore­o­g­ra­ph­er, coach and role mod­el to the kids, Tashan, exudes an unas­sail­able con­fi­dence through­out – it’s his ener­gy that pro­pels the group all the way to the finals.

The dancers who appear so teenage and awk­ward on their liv­ing room sofas trans­form on stage. They move and pulse like some mul­ti­cel­lu­lar organ­ism. We get some brief shots of the oth­er teams, who are also intim­i­dat­ing­ly tal­ent­ed. But the cam­era nev­er goes as close as it does when Enti­ty is on stage, beyond the syn­chro­nised pops and shuf­fles to the indi­vid­ual faces. There’s an idea here that dance is a way for the kids to tran­scend their per­son­al pain, trans­form it into some­thing else on stage, but the emo­tion­al focus remains on the dra­ma of the contest.

There’s also none of the humour of a film like Sounds Like Teen Spir­it, which found a whole sur­re­al appa­ra­tus behind the scenes of Junior Euro­vi­sion. Some of the most sur­pris­ing moments here spring from the strange com­pe­ti­tion pol­i­tics, which unfor­tu­nate­ly become just anoth­er obsta­cle for the group to over­come on their way to street dance glory.

The film suc­ceeds in depict­ing a group con­nect­ed on stage and off by a pow­er­ful shared ener­gy (“like Blue­tooth”, one of the mem­bers describes it). And for all of Tashan’s clich­es about pos­i­tiv­i­ty, there are just as many insight­ful com­ments from the kids. But it’s a shame that it sticks so close to the well-worn ter­ri­to­ry of group hugs and back­stage tears. It’s an inter­est­ing world with some inter­est­ing per­son­al­i­ties, but the film is nev­er as ambi­tious as the dancers themselves.