07 May 2008 was an important day for me for one simple reason… It was the first time I saw the hit dance movie STEP UP, and it’s now officially my favorite dance movie.

Okay, okay, so Step Up is a pretty old movie, and it was shown here in the Philippines about two years ago I think. It’s probably not the best movie to write about for my first blog entry since it’s not very current. For some reason, although I am a huge fan of musicals and dance movies, I didn’t watch Step Up when it was showing because it seemed formulaic and predictable to me. Rich, stuck up ballerina meets edgy bad-boy street dancer. They fight. They fall in love. They dance together in the end – maybe she does hip-hop, or he does ballet (ew).

My boyfriend Sidney (who’s a pretty good dancer himself) has seen the movie before and liked it, so he told me about a month ago that it was going to be on Star Movies and that I should try to catch it. I said okay half-heartedly, without really planning to check it out. I remember even being a bit irritable when he asked me for the fourth or fifth time if I’ve already caught the movie on cable.

That is, until it was the deadline for my Shelfari challenge with Mike R. I was planning to stay up late on the night of May 7 just to add all the books I have previously read in my lifetime to my Shelfari account in order to win a geeky bet. I flicked on the TV to keep me company, and I chanced on Step Up. It was the scene where Tyler Gage (played by Channing Tatum) was cleaning the muddy floor of MSA (which is in the first one third of the movie, so I wasn’t missing much). I called my boyfriend to ask whether this guy was a janitor or something, and he explained the whole community service thing.

I got sucked into the story when Nora Clark (Jenna Dewan) held auditions for her temporary partner, and these lithe ballerinos (is that even a term? ballerinos as opposed to ballerinas who are female?) showed up and couldn’t manage to lift or hold on to her. That was so hilarious, and I found myself leaving my seat in front of the computer and taking a seat in front of the TV to enjoy the movie better. Then Tyler went down the ladder (after he finished cleaning the windows), wiped his hands, and approached Nora:

Tyler: I’ll do it
Nora: Do what?
Tyler: I don’t know, whatever y’all were trying to do out here.
Nora: (looking at him in disbelief) You want to lift me? Are you kidding?
Tyler: (with a tough-guy expression) Does it look like I’m kidding?

By the time they started rehearsing, I knew I was hooked. It was funny, and sweet, and had an interesting plot – never mind my previous apprehensions on the storyline, they didn’t really focus on the rich girl-poor guy angle that I loathe. I also instantly noticed that they were doing their own dancing (unlike in Save the Last Dance where it was SO obvious that Julia Stiles had a dance double in the ballet sequences). Then came the club scene, which became my favorite.

The very next day I watched the club scene repeatedly on Youtube and bought a DVD of Step Up before I went home. I was up until the wee hours of the morning just watching the movie again and again, especially the dance sequences.

I’ve always wanted to have my own blog, but for some reason I never got around to doing it. Sure, I wrote a couple of blog entries for my Friendster blog account, but I was never serious about keeping it because I felt like I was going to run out of topics sooner or later. But now, I think I have one topic I can talk about for a couple of blog entries worth.