Stepping High

STEPPING OUT Sima, while stunningly beautiful, has failed to fulfill her dreams as a professional dancer. She is on the wrong side of thirty, being aged out, and is forced to take a job as a teacher at a conservative local high school. Much to her surprise, it sparks the choreographer in her-a talent she has been nurturing in private not only to battle her self-doubt and depression but to create a new and unique fusion of belly and ballroom styles. As one who throws her heart and soul into everything she does, her life inevitably entwines with those of her students, a diverse group of teens, both in the classroom and outside it. Sima becomes re-energized. She opens the kids' eyes and minds to dance as a powerful tool for social change. Not everyone likes her progressive ideas. When she introduces them to her belly-ballroom style, tensions escalate. Race, class, culture, teen romance, Sima's personal failures in her relationship with her parents and her boyfriend, all of which has been...