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Well, presumably the term is a lift from "blaxsploitation", where the aim was specifically to draw in black audiences with cheaply-made films which were distinguished by having black actors (although often with white producers and directors, hence to a degree the exploitation part) - this is a bit different, because there isn't an under-represented class of dancers out there eager to see representations of themselves on the silver screen. However, there are a lot of people who are passionately interested in sex. I don't think I'm exactly pulling up trees to suggest that dancing in many of these films is a narratalogically cleansed version of sexual awakening, often between people from different social classes (Dirty Dancing) or racial groups (Save the Last Dance), or both.
Girls Just Want to Have Fun, the absolutely seminal teen dance film starring a young Sarah Jessica Parker (who, with an appearance in Footloose is basically the Max von Sydow of dance movies), is a pretty textbook example of this treatment. A young woman, new in town, befriends another young woman. They start to dance together, with a stated aim (in this case, a competition). However, their experimentation with each other proves unsatisfying. Through another agency (in this case a sprained ankle), the protagonist needs a new partner, and finds a young man from the wrong side of the tracks (a Patrick Swayze, if you really want to stretch the definition of "young"). They have radically different dancing styles - she classical and learned, he "street" and instinctive - and their relationship is tempestuous, but by mingling their styles they achieve a superior combination. However, class rifts and the awkwardness of the emergence of tender feelings, along with interference by a malign other competitor, protective and disapproving parent or both causes a misunderstanding and brief separation, before they are reconciled and go on to compete in and win their tournament, discovering at the same time that they are indeed in love.
Basically, this is a romance with dancing substituted for sex, which allows for depictions of teenagers without undue censorship or ickyness. Applied more broadly, dancing (and specifically "street" dancing that is, dancing to pop) expands to represent a number of behaviours adults are supposed to find terrifying - requiring as it does free time, a secret language of terms, endless practice with no vocational end in sight and a group of peers, dancing of this kind is easily identified as a clannish, teenaged activity. Your classic there is Footloose, in which the parents seek to exert control over teenagers by banning dancing, but are eventually won over to the necessity of letting teenagers do their thing - basically the plot of most Cliff Richard movies, essentially, but with a headier tang of sex.
The Kevin Bacon sort of dancing is subversive - it forces communities to decide on what their young people do. It breaks down class barriers - the girl from the good school and the boy from the projects, or the princess and the dance instructor - race barriers - the white ballerina and the black "hip-hop" dancer - and often gender barriers - at becomes a battleground between protective parents and in particular teenaged girls. In one example, the US/Italian co-production and work of genius Dance Academy, an entire ballet academy is subverted by the hip-swinging jazz dance of the new, blue-collar and bohemian influx, culminating in a dance-off with the new other - some breakdancers. Make of that what you will.
So, sex, class, race - the "streets", as you mention, and the ways to integrate the often dangerous or wretched "real" world with the often outmoded and exclusive academy. Note that parents in dance films often respond to their children dancing as if they were taking drugs or having sex - that is, rebelling in the way that the audience are more likely to be - and respond with curfews and crackdowns. The idea that anyone can dance with anyone else, like the idea that anyone can fall in love with or sleep with anyone else, is a dangerous one that is opposed by the authority figures around the protagonists.
Bring it On, by the way, I would suggest is probably actually a sports film, with some dance movie elements - the sport just happens to be cheerleading. |
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