Dance Academy

This review may contain spoilers!

Maybe fans of the original TV show will like this but for anyone who hasn't seen it expect another trashy teen dance film. I would give Dance Academy a 4/10.

This film does a great job of showing how a serious injury or moment of trauma can affect a person for a long time after it happens to them; the main protagonist, Tara, has a few scenes where you see her reliving the accident she went through and the impact it's having on her in the present. I liked that the film had it's own sense of closure as well, the characters all find a place where they've discovered a sense of purpose by the end of the feature which is nice to see. Dance Academy also doesn't shy away from how vicious the dance profession can be, friends and teachers have a very high standard and the tone can turn cutthroat at a moments notice. My favourite aspect of this entire feature was the choreography designed by Tara which related to the Persephone myth; this story was a great metaphor for her development as a character and I think her passing the role of Persephone onto Abigail by the end of the film was an exceptional moment. The dance choreography in this film looks pretty good and provides a glimpse into how ballet can appear; the Persphone dance is performed by a number of characters over the course of the film but I thought it was performed best when Abigail and Ollie were presenting it. The score for the film was very peppy and kept the energy of this film up; the soundtrack was pretty simple but worked really in tandem with the film.

Alicia Banit, who played Kat Karamakov, did the popular girl who had let fame get to her head quite well; I liked that Banit presented a character who was still grounded in regards to her friends but who let things in the celebrity profession get out of control. Xenia Goodwin, who played Tara Webster, was very good at portraying quite a realistic leading protagonist; Goodwin brings forth a very driven role who allows herself to open up to new ideas as she reconnects with the rest of the cast. Miranda Otto, who played Madeline Moncur, is actually quite an interesting antagonist for the film; Otto brings forth a woman who is very naturally manipulative and deceptive with the intent of making her dance company the best in the profession.

However the best performance came from Dena Kaplan, who played Abigail Armstrong. I enjoyed this character because she is such a tough role while onscreen, I feel she reminds us that dance is not just a hobby but rather it is a lot of hard work and commitment. I enjoyed seeing Kaplan get a little sharp with her fellow cast member, she was very honest and not afraid to be curt when having a personal conversation. In moments where she helped her friends she was still this stern force, in the scenes where she helped train Goodwin she was a very harsh instructor who actually provided a lot of assistance despite her temperament. The manner with which she reacted to being told she would never be a leading star by Otto is well done by Kaplan, she brings out a lot of pent up rage and frustration. I really enjoyed the chemistry between Kaplan and Goodwin as well, the passing of Persephone from one dancer to the other is perhaps one of the best character exchanges in the film.

The main protagonist, Tara, has an interesting journey in terms of character development but the film fails itself by making her so hard to like. Over the course of the feature Tara react in ways that are exceptionally selfish and narrow-minded, there are several scenes where she dismisses her friends or romantic partners and their problems in favour of her own. The film is also really predictable and tends to stick to all the same tropes of your usual dance film, the fact that nothing in the feature really surprised me took away from the impact of a lot of the scenes. I could not stand the fact that this film placed more importance upon the love triangles and romance subplots than it actually did on the dancing, especially due to the lack of chemistry between actors when it came to these aspects of the narrative. Dance Academy starts by doing a quick summary of what had happened in the TV show that was important before letting the film carry on and while this was helpful exposition it also let the film down because the structure of the film almost entirely copied this description. The cinematography of the film never really knew how to capture dialogue scenes or moments where dancing wasn't taking place, shots felt very familiar and it didn't feel like there'd been much attempt to get creative. The editing started off with some great flow but got progressively slower as the film went along, this severely affected the pacing and dragged the film right out.

Thomas Lacey, who played Ben Tickle, really should not have been cast as the romantic interest for Goodwin or Banit because he had no chemistry with them at all; furthermore his bleeding heart speeches about his sickness preventing him from dancing were so poorly pitched. Keiynan Lonsdale, who played Ollie Lloyd, really feels like one of the characters in the film that was quite unnecessary; his constant brown-nosing and shameless actions made him a fairly pathetic role to watch. Tara Morice, who played Miss Raine, doesn't actually feel like much of a mentor or leader figure in relation to Goodwin and Lacey; she was never very assertive or supporting in a way that meant she seized or inspired within a scene. Jordan Rodrigues, who played Christian Reed, is the whiny romantic interest that gets on your nerves a bit throughout the feature; he really didn't suit being paired up alongside Goodwin.