On "Mad Hot Ballroom"
Check out the (longish at 105 minutes) 2005 documentary
"Mad Hot Ballroom:" Public school kids in New York learn to merengue and tango (but always with a chaste inch of air between them). It's good to see the class shrimp and even a few fatties, both boys and girls, take pride in athletic accomplishment.
Eleven-year-old girls dutifully parrot back what they've been told about boys, life and the universe.
As for the boys, even if
Fred Astaire was straight, that type of talent is rarely appreciated these days, especially in an era when the arts are being downgraded in schools and -- well, this is filmed the United States, so I half expected WASP parents picketing to demand an end to teaching fagginess. (Ballroom dancing is an effete diversion from chopping wood and getting girls pregnant.)
As with so much in our society, the classes are vaguely subversive and yet in the end, clearly reinforce the gender status quo. (How much choice do the teachers have?) This is a glimpse into the childhood that many of us have mercifully forgotten.