Tagline: Set your dreams in motion.
Raya Green is seventeen-years-old, incredibly bright and full of promise. She attends a prestigious private school outside her tough, crime-ridden neighborhood. When a family tragedy leaves her family unable to pay her tuition, Raya is forced to return to the old community she so desperately wants to escape.
She soon finds herself drawn into the world of underground dance competitions and smells an opportunity to win some money, get out of the neighborhood, help her family and return to her old school. But as the dance tournament unfolds, Raya realizes that real success only comes to those brave enough to tackle it on their own terms.
About the Production
Stepping, an intensely rhythmic, percussive and expressive form of dancing that began as a way of connecting people in Africa, has suddenly become a major phenomenon across North America. It was first seen in the U.S. in the 1920s when college students called it “marching,” but it wasn’t until Spike Lee’s SCHOOL DAZE that stepping first hit the big screen.
Since then, stepping has become hotter and hotter – not just among university students and not just in hit Hollywood films such as DRUMLINE and STOMP THE YARD, but on the streets as well, in inner cities where stepping is increasingly becoming both a thrilling form of competitive art and a way for a talented few to literally “step up” into a more promising future.
For director Ian Iqbal Rashid, fresh off the sensational reviews of his debut indie film TOUCH OF PINK, stepping was a way to tell a raw, honest, urban coming-of-age story with plenty of grit but also lots of dynamic style. Having fallen in love with such iconic and inspirational dance films as FAME, FLASHDANCE and SATURDAY NIGHT FEVER as a kid, he’d long dreamed of one day making that same kind of heartfelt, music-driven, culturally authentic story that merged movement, music and the rhythms of the human heart – but for a different generation.
So when he came across Annmarie Morais’ dance-fueled but character-focused screenplay, HOW SHE MOVE, about a fiercely driven, young Jamaican immigrant who discovers that stepping in an all-male crew might be her ticket out of a dead-end neighborhood, Rashid himself was powerfully moved. He was impressed by how the story of HOW SHE MOVE interwove elements of a young woman taking a risk to become who she really is with themes of friendship, family and class – and, most of all, heart-pounding, hypnotic dance sequences that intensified the tale’s volatile mix of emotions with sheer motion.
“I saw HOW SHE MOVE so clearly as I was reading it,” recalls Rashid who, like the film’s lead character, grew up in urban Toronto as an immigrant, his family having sought asylum there from his native Tanzania. “I love dance and music, and dance tells so much of this story – so much texture and emotion are played out through it. Yet, the film also speaks to the scars of migration, a theme that very much interests me and runs through all of my work. I was also drawn to it because it’s a story that talks about different ways of winning; and how winning doesn’t always look how you think it’s going to look.”
The story of Raya Green’s complicated, yet rousing quest to step her way out of despair and into her own identity began with the passion of rising young screenwriter Annemarie Morais. Morais, herself a Jamaican immigrant who grew up in Canada, developed a deep love of stepping while studying at Canada’s York University. She was exhilarated by step’s inherent pendulum of feelings – how it could be at once celebratory and fierce, sexy and strong, angry and bursting with life. Although she claims to be rhythmically challenged, having never stepped competitively herself, Morais became a passionate fan of step competitions. “Step is so much about personal expression,” she says. “There’s so much energy and such a strong sense of community feeling in it. The same way that hip-hop became the voice of a generation, I think step is bringing out a certain expression of our past and our present through dance in a powerful way.”
While still at York, Morais would go on to make an award-winning short documentary, STEPPIN TO IT, which followed the pressures and preparations surrounding co-ed step teams getting ready for a big contest. But even after that, the subject continued to compel her and Morais began to link it up with her desire to write a screenplay that would have a young black woman as its central heroine. Thus was born Raya Green, the fiery, fiercely intelligent young woman who thought her plan to escape a rough-hewn immigrant community was all in place – until her sister’s death from a drug overdose changed everything and brought her back home to start all over again.
Morais wrote from the heart and from the intimate emotions of her own personal experience, but she also felt instinctively that the themes of the film would be universal. “I think everybody knows what it’s like not to know what to do with your life,” she explains “Everybody knows what it’s like to have family pressures that you just don’t know how to get out of, and relationship pressures, and all these expectations and huge life decisions that you have to make when you’re that age. It’s an overwhelming time and whether you’re from New York or Toronto, that situation applies.”
Certainly, the dance in the film speaks a language that crosses all borders. Even while working on the page, Morais felt the stepping sequences come alive in her mind’s eye. “The story’s really about one girls’ journey to figure out her life, and step gives her a power and a voice to find her way in the world,” she explains. “I tried to put all of Raya’s pain and anger and frustration into motion and, as I was writing, I always saw her movements in my head. The heart of the story is the relationships and how that influences who Raya is – but the dance became an expression of those things.”
Morais set her story in a unique locale few filmgoers have seen: Toronto’s “Jane-Finch corridor,” an area of low-income and public housing that became a melting pot of multi-ethnic culture in the middle of the city, teeming with new, often impoverished, immigrants from across the globe. Today, the Jane-Finch Corridor is home to 75,000 people from 80 ethnic groups, speaking 112 different languages. A high-density area rife with drug and gang-related crime, it is also a vibrant, restless area home to many unseen dreams and dramas.
For Morais, it was important that Raya see that leaving Jane-Finch behind – turning away from her own personal history — is not the key to starting her life anew. “The idea that you have ‘to leave to achieve’ is no longer true, and I think people need to be reminded that you can affect change wherever you are and whatever your situation is. Your success is not about your location,” says Morais. “It’s about your determination. Whatever it is that you desire, it’s not a matter of you have to be from here or you can’t be from Jane-Finch. It’s your own determination that charts your future.”
Having conceived this dance-driven story of self-determination that unfolds in a strong female voice, Morais was thrilled when two women came on board to develop and produce HOW SHE MOVE. She first brought the idea to Jennifer Kawaja and Julia Sereny of Canada’s Sienna Films because she was enjoying working with them on other projects and thought they might be interested in the subject matter.
Kawaja and Sereny, who have a reputation for seeking out edgy, risk-taking material, not only were intrigued by the subject matter, they were impressed with Morais’ distinctive approach to it. “Jennifer and I are both great fans of dance films,” says Sereny. “In HOW SHE MOVE, the dance is integrated into the roots of the story and the emotions — whether it be passion, humor, tragedy, defiance, or stubbornness – are clearly reflected through those sequences. The dance is an extension of each of the characters, not separate from them.”
Adds Kawaja: “We thought a lot about the themes and ideas that are in the film – especially the idea that if you come from a disenfranchised community, the most brutal thing that can happen to you is that your hope is killed, your ability to dream is killed. The story is a very delicate balancing act between these themes and the life-affirming joy of dance.”
It was Kawaja and Sereny who brought the project to director Ian Iqbal Rashid. They had recently produced his first film, the award-winning comedy TOUCH OF PINK, which starred Kyle MacLachlan, and thought he would have an affinity for the material.
As they’d hoped, Rashid responded immediately and intensely. “I really liked the central character, Raya, and related to her in so many ways,” he says. “And then I started doing more research into the whole stepping culture, and that really moved me, too. Its history is so rich and poignant and rooted in African-American aspiration, and I thought it would be a real privilege to work on a project that would bring step further into popular culture.”
It was the film’s mix of unusually stark realism surrounding the explosive dance sequences that made it really work for Rashid. “This is a story about kids who are yearning for a better life, which is a classic theme in a lot of musical and dance films,” he notes. “Raya, our central hero, becomes an ever fiercer competitor and ever fiercer dancer as her journey continues, but then she also begins to get in touch with the person she really wants to be. So it truly becomes a coming-of-age story that is realized through dance numbers.”
How They Cast How She Move
The strong personalities and awe-inspiring dance styles of the young characters form the heart of HOW SHE MOVE, so casting was a priority. The filmmakers knew they would need to bring together a very special group of vibrant and authentic talents, which set off a search across North America, in both the U.S. and Canada. They held lots of open calls, hunted in recreation centers and performing arts high schools, auditioned dancers who could act, actors who could dance and discovered total newcomers who at times took their breath away. “The process of finding the cast for the movie was like a movie itself,” notes producer Julia Sereny.
The first and biggest challenge was casting Raya Green – a role that would require an actress of considerable range – capable of being at once an intellectual heavyweight, a rebel, a grieving sister and a teenager falling in love – as well as someone with serious gifts as a dancer. Rutina Wesley, freshly graduated from Julliard’s theatre school, emerged as the filmmakers first choice.
“When I first met with Rutina, it was like manna from heaven,” says Ian Iqbal Rashid. “Not only did she physically look like the character that Annmarie described in her script, but to me she had the emotional essence of Raya as well: intelligence without pretension, warmth without ever seeming like she was trying to ingratiate herself, and a simple, natural beauty. There’s something quite serious about her and world-wise.”
With a mother who was a Las Vegas showgirl and a father who is a musician, Rutina already had rhythm and dance deep in her blood. Though not a formally trained dancer herself, she was always athletic and, most importantly, was willing and able to put herself through an intensive schedule of lessons and daily dance rehearsals that were required for the part.
For Rutina, the role was everything she ever yearned for. “To combine my two passions, acting and dancing, at the same time in my first movie was amazing,” she says. “I couldn’t have dreamed of any more. I am just so thankful to Jennifer and Julia and Ian for cracking that door and letting me come through.”
When she read the script, she also immediately fell in love with Raya, in spite of her flaws. “She’s a beautiful character,” Rutina says. “I can really relate to her because I think if you grew up in the inner city or somewhere where it doesn’t seem like you have a lot of opportunities, it’s really hard to think that you can get somewhere in life. It’s hard to know what you want. What I like about Raya is that, by the end of the movie, you truly feel she’s going to live on her own terms and not do what her mother wants, or what her sister wanted, but what Raya wants. She’s now got a lot of hope.”
Rutina had to work extremely hard at the dance and choreography, practicing until she was sore, but it paid big dividends, allowing her to shine even among the great dancers who form the Jane Street Junta (JSJ) and the Kin-Dreadz teams. “The toughest part for me was feeling like a true step-slash-hip-hop dancer and I was incredibly frustrated sometimes,” she admits. “But once I got more comfortable and confident in my steps, Raya just came out of me.”
Rutina believes that for Raya, the visceral feeling of dancing becomes far more than just a way of taking advantage of her talents. It also becomes a new means of accessing and dealing with her deepest feelings, starting with her inexpressible sadness over her sister who died of a drug overdose. “Dance always reminds Raya of her sister, because it was her sister who taught her everything she knew about dance. So when Raya finally allows herself to step, she is letting out all her frustration and the isolating sadness of grieving for her sister alone,” explains Rutina. “And when Raya starts to release all this pressure through dance, she lets out her feelings about this boy Bishop, and her feelings of guilt towards her friend Michelle, and about having to prove herself within her community because she went to an all-white school. It all starts to come out in a powerful way.”
By the end of production, Rutina was as passionate about stepping as her character. She continues: “The thing I love about step is that, because you’re connecting with the ground and you’re actually hitting it, it’s really cathartic, its like this big release, and then it becomes exhilarating. You can feel every clap, every step, every hit through your entire body and it’s an incredible experience.”
Everyone on the set was amazed by the way Rutina seemed to become one with the role. “She gave it her all in every take, and with an incredible intensity and focus,” Rashid remembers. “She doesn’t believe in holding back or pacing herself.”
“When we cast Rutina she had never even been in a film before,” notes Jennifer Kawaja, “but she had a kind of control and reserve that usually only more mature actresses have. She also has a way of carrying herself in the world, like her brain’s always working, and that’s exactly who we wanted Raya to be. She’s tough, but feminine.”
Surrounding Raya Green is a group of characters with their own stories of yearning and drive who also bring in the considerable pressures of friendship, romance, competition and parental expectations.
Raya’s former friend Michelle – who felt bitterly betrayed when Raya left their public high school behind to attend the elite Seaton private academy — helps to push Raya into action when she accuses her of snobbery and “slumming.” To play Michelle, the filmmakers eventually cast Tré Armstrong, a dancer who has toured with Missy Elliot and who had originally joined the production as a choreographer until the filmmakers encouraged her to audition for the vital role of Raya’s rival.
Tré knew she had a shot at it because she related to the script so deeply. “The story was so real to me and the kids I went to high school with,” she says. “And what really made the story stand out to me is that it has a female hero. You rarely get to see a strong woman of color in a hero position, so to find a story with so many powerful women characters who have their own strong sense of self and confidence really drew me.”
Once she got the role, Tré blossomed in it. She especially loved dancing as Michelle, whose self-assurance and physically powerful moves keep her among the top female steppers around. “When she gets on stage, she owns it – and that’s how I always feel when I dance so it felt natural to me,” she says.
Rashid remembers, “Tré and a few of the other performers were very talented dancers, but had minimal acting experience. So in rehearsals we worked very hard at trying to fid the point at which the actress and the character intersected. Given the budget and schedule of the film, I knew we’d only have a couple of takes and the performance had to be right there, right at the actor’s fingertips. Tré didn’t disappoint. She found a vulnerability and strength in herself that was very Michelle-like.”
But the big challenge for Tré as a first-time screen actress was nailing the intense dynamic — one that begins in anger and turns to trust and affection — between Michelle and Raya. “Michelle’s a girl with a lot of attitude and when Raya goes away I think she has a lot of jealousy and resentment. She’s thinking, ‘why did you have to go and leave?’ And when Raya comes back, Michelle’s a little bit of a bully because she sees this chick coming back into her zone. But, at the end of the day, Michelle comes to respect Raya,” says Tré. “Working beside Rutina, I learned the grace of an actress, and she inspired me to put on my A game for the acting.”
Also heating up the rivalry between Raya and Michelle is Bishop, the talented head of the JSJ dance crew, who becomes increasingly attracted to Raya’s independence and feverish passion for step, much to Michelle’s dismay. Another newcomer comes to the fore as Bishop: Dwain Murphy, who hails from the Caribbean island of Dominica and won the role in a series of flashy auditions that proved he had the right stuff for the part. “Dwain initially came in to audition of one of the smaller parts,” recalls Rashid. “But he was so good, we kept bringing him back for bigger and bigger parts. With his looks and magnetism and charm, it seemed silly to waste his talent in a small role. In the end, we just handed Bishop over to him.”
Dwain had all the charisma and confidence of Bishop – the only thing he lacked was dance experience. “Zero, zip, nada,” is how Dwain describes his previous work in dance. “I shake my booty in the club like everyone else, but that’s it.” But the challenge of learning to dance at a pro level in a matter of months became part of the thrill. “For me, pushing myself five days a week, eight hours a day, routine after routine after routine until my knees couldn’t take it any more – I loved it. I’d push Dwain out of the picture and dance as Bishop because he’s a leader and I knew he’d dance that way, with that attitude. There are two different Bishops: the one outside the ring, who is humble and always trying to keep his crew together, and the one in the ring, who always has the gloves off.”
Like the other cast members, Dwain soon became immersed in the joy of step. “A lot of people don’t realize how emotional step is. It’s more than the stomping of your feet to make a rhythm, it’s about what your body does, what your face does, it’s how powerful you step, because you can be devastated inside and all that will come out. It’s a very passionate thing.”
He also came to see what step and the JSJ mean to Bishop. “For Bishop, I think step allows him to be free,” observes Dwain. “He’s working at the body shop all day and when it’s his break time, he could easily fall into the trap of drugs and gangs and all that stuff surrounding him, but instead, he puts his energy into creating his own routines, something he can really control.”
Dwain especially enjoyed the relationship between Bishop and Raya, which, though challenged by conflict, goes far beyond dancing in the same crew. “I think she kind of opens his eyes and he kind of opens hers,” he explains. “What I love about this film is that unlike most dance films it tells a really good story with a lot of different conflicts. You get to see people’s struggles with life and love and there’s some great dancing in the middle of it all, expressing it all.”
Playing Bishop’s bookish younger brother, Quake, who has a secret crush on Raya, is Brennan Gademans, a young Canadian hip-hop dancer and actor who made his acting debut playing the young Michael Jackson in a telefilm. He describes his character as “the younger brother who’s heard ‘you’re not good enough yet’ his whole life and he’s just been building up and practicing and watching and learning and he has all this potential inside of him and is just waiting for the opportunity to let it go.”
Bishop’s best friend, E.C., is played by rising, Toronto-based actor Kevin Duhaney, who has already been seen in such films as John Singleton’s FOUR BROTHERS. “E.C. is a lot different from Bishop,” explains Duhaney. “He’s very materialistic. He isn’t in it for the stepping. He’s in it for his own reasons. He’s really the opposite of who I am, so I thought playing him would be an interesting challenge.” Although he too had never stepped before learning the moves for the film, Duhaney notes that it shares a lot in common with acting. “You can tell a lot about somebody by the way they step. If someone is aggressive, they’ll dance that way. If someone is laid back, they’ll dance that way. Everything shows.”
Also joining the cast as part of the Jane Street Junta is actor, dancer and Platinum-recording artist Shawn Desman, who plays Trey, the team’s sole white kid who becomes Raya’s unlikely supporter. “Trey is one of the only people who accepts Raya into the group and sees that she’s amazing at what she does,” he explains. “Being the one white kid in the dance troupe — that was always me, so the role was perfect.” Rounding out the Jane Street Junta is Daniel Morrison, who stars on the hit television series DeGrassi: The Next Generation, as Wayne, and Montreal native Tristan D. Lalla as Big Man Manny.
When Raya heads to Detroit for the Step Monster competition – where Jane Street Junta will compete with Michelle’s FemPhatal crew and the slick Kin-Dreadz – the film’s two most recognizable stars take the stage as the contest’s entertaining MCs: platinum-selling R&B artist Keyshia Cole and stand-up comedian and screen and television star DeRay Davis.
The adult cast also includes Melanie Nichols-King, most recently seen on HBO’s acclaimed The Wire, as Raya’s mother, Faye, who is forced to rethink her dreams for her daughter when Raya begins to dance. “Faye’s dreams of worldly success were inherited by Raya,” explains Rashid. “But of course those are really Faye’s dreams and ambitions and they are driven as much by Faye’s own dissatisfaction as by her hopes for Raya’s future. Now, Raya will have to do it on her own terms, not her mother’s. It’s a very difficult performance that Melanie has pulled off. Faye is often dislikeable, tough, even bitter. Melanie attacked the part with a true actor’s courage.”
Melanie Nichols-King was able to bring out the mix of pain and pride that accompany Faye’s discovery that her daughter is forging her own path in life. “Melanie is an amazing actress,” says Rutina Wesley. “We developed this real bond, this real feeling of love so that when you get to that defining moment at the end when Raya becomes her own woman with her mother, I think that scene is one of the most beautiful.”
On the set, the cast’s mix of dancers, actors and newcomers from disparate backgrounds could have descended into chaos. Instead, under Iqbal’s direction, tight bonds were forged and the enthusiasm became infectious. Says Rutina: “Ian’s energy is so calm and loving, it was really hard to ruffle his feathers. He had a way of making us feel really safe.”
Concludes producer Jennifer Kawaja: “A lot of the actors hadn’t even been in movies before, yet they were so incredible. I think without them we wouldn’t have gotten the movie because they nailed every take and so we were able to keep moving forward quickly. The commitment and focus on their part was absolute.”
About The Moves
With the cast set, Ian Iqbal Rashid now faced the considerable challenge of bringing to life his vision of merging the intensity of a gritty coming-of-age drama with the pulsating rhythms of street-style dance. Almost like a 21st century musical, the story’s emotional climaxes are expressed explosively through the film’s show-stopping dance numbers. Step lends itself to inner expression -since steppers use their bodies as instruments, making the very rhythm to which they are dancing with their hands and feet, feelings that range from fury to ecstasy come to fore in visually exciting ways. But it takes tremendous finesse and creativity to bring out the maximum visceral quality from the moves.
Inspired by the looser manner of Toronto’s street steppers, who mix-master step with hip-hop and break-dance to create hugely kinetic, acrobatic, breathtaking routines, Rashid knew he would need a choreographer who really understood contemporary street dance from the inside out – and could actually translate the emotions of the story through original moves. The filmmakers found that rare combo in Hi-Hat, hip-hop’s so-called diva of dance, who is renowned for working with such artists as Missy Elliot, Eve and Kanye West. As one of the few women working in this male-dominated arena, Hi-Hat brought something else essential to the film: a natural affinity for choreographing for women in strong, beautiful and unexpected ways.
“Hi-Hat has worked with Missy Elliot on some of her best videos, as well as with P-Diddy, Wyclef Jean and Mary J. Blige. In a lot of music videos, women’s bodies are used as props, most often with sexual overtones, but Hi-Hat works with female dancers in much more complex and interesting ways,” says Jennifer Kawaja. “Even her sexiest routines don’t objectify women’s bodies – instead she gives the female dancers power and dignity. And she had what was most important to us: the skills to relate the dance to each one of the story’s characters.”
When first approached, Hi-Hat admits she was skeptical, but once she read Annmarie Morais’s script, she couldn’t resist the challenge. “I could really relate to Raya’s struggle to be recognized,” she explains, “and it’s so rare to see a female lead in a black dance film. The character of Raya inspired me because she can hang with the guys when it comes to dance and she’s fearless and she reminded me of my own passion for dancing. I also loved that the film looks at a real Caribbean immigrant community – the language and the emotions are all very true to life, and you don’t see that too often.”
Right away, Hi-Hat envisioned bringing a high-energy polyglot of dance styles to the story. “I wanted to not only bring in step but amazing hip-hop, amazing breakdancing, and an amazing Jamaican reggae feel,” she says. “I wanted to have interesting movement, unique movements, as well as lots of fun movement.”
That wide-open approach was perfectly in synch with Rashid’s. “I wanted something bigger, bolder and rawer and I liked that Hi-Hat was mixing crumping moves and other hip-hop styles with step. The mix of different dance forms adds to the originality and the appeal of the dance numbers,” says the director. “Hi-Hat was able to come up with choreography that was perfectly matched with the strength and spirit of the characters.”
Hi-Hat irreverently worked outside the lines but started with a deep appreciation for the history and legacy of stepping. Step is most often traced to a folkloric South African form known as gumboot dancing, which spread among laborers and miners, often allowing a mix of ethnic groups who spoke different languages to communicate via rhythm and sound. They used the only instruments available to them: their boots and their bodies. By stamping, clapping, and even rattling ankle chains, they developed dances that expressed to one another all the heartache and yearning of working-class life and that became a popular form of social activity.
This “gumbooting” combo of footsteps, claps and spoken word storytelling made its way into African American sororities around the turn of the 20th Century. It remained largely a college phenomenon until recently, when step began to spread out into new areas, cultures and dancers, who have kept it dynamically changing by adding in elements as diverse as martial arts, cheerleading, hip hop, tap dancing, ethnic dance and acrobatics. But no matter what goes into it, what comes out is a way of dancing that is a lot like storytelling. “The culture of stepping is all about communication and creating a group bond,” explains Hi-Hat.
The vast creativity of step allowed Hi Hit to develop distinctive dance styles that would reflect each of the very different personalities of HOW SHE MOVE’s characters. She elaborates: “Raya is always very creative with her emotions, so if she is angry or if she’s happy, she creates that with her moves. Whenever Bishop and his crew perform, it is uplifting for the crowd, and you want to join in. Garvey is slick, so I wanted his team to be acrobatic. That’s where the break dancing comes in: it’s energetic and it’s intense. Michelle’s crew is another style, another flavor. She’s sexy. So it’s rugged and it’s raw and diva-ish.”
Hi-Hat found herself constantly inspired to come up with new moves for the characters. But the question was: could the cast, many of whom had never stepped before, keep up? The key would be to intensively training them to step with the passion and skill of real competitors with everything on the line.
Step Camp
To help train the cast to perform Hi-Hat’s wildly creative choreography, the young stars were inducted into a literal “boot” camp in which they donned their Timberland boots for eight hours of rehearsal a day over a period of five extremely intense weeks. Hi-Hat knew she was asking for the impossible, but somehow she got it. “Stepping is all about rhythm, so it’s hard not only for actors, but for dancers,” says Hi-Hat. “The thing is that the cast really wanted to do this, they were determined, they worked hard and they truly became their characters because of it. Everyone was focused on making this a great dance movie – and that’s what did it.”
The cast was amazed by their own transformations. Rutina Wesley admits she was intimidated at the start of rehearsals but soon found she was dancing with all the abandon and fervor of Raya. “I had never done step before, but Hi-Hat made me want to dance. She is such a mommy. Step began to make my pulse race; I connected with the ground under my feet.” Tré Armstrong was equally awed by all the hard work and its pay off. “Eight hours a day, five days a week, for five weeks we worked it. It was grueling, but look at me now — I’ve never looked this good!” she muses.
Shawn Desman, who plays Trey, was in a state of shock at how difficult and physically taxing the training could be, even for a pro dancer. “I’m all about dancing, but the first week of rehearsals, my body was killing me. I’ve been dancing since I was 12 years old, and my body had never felt like that, all that clapping and stomping – even my hands were bruised and I could barely walk. But after a couple of weeks I was fine.”
Dwain Murphy adds: “If I hadn’t had the full five weeks of rehearsal, I would have been nowhere. It’s actually not easy to make it look easy! It also was not just about dancing, it was about learning how to dance in character, which is a challenging thing for an actor.”
In the end, the filmmakers were duly impressed with the way the cast stepped it up and made both the choreography and the drama come alive in equal measure. The mix of actors and dancers seemed, in the end, to heighten both elements. Says Ian Iqbal Rashid: “Tré, who plays Michelle, had never acted before but is a professional dancer. Rutina Wesley, who plays Raya, has never danced professionally, but has a strong acting background. So everybody had a different level of experience and the best part was that we all shared our strengths and found a way to make it mesh together.”
Moving To The Music
With such explosive and emotional dance routines, next the filmmakers began looking for music that might sonically echo the incredible verve and vibrancy of the dancers as well as their neighborhood. Rather than going for familiar hits, they wanted to remain true to the film’s roots and use lots of authentic music from Canada’s cities. Explains producer Jennifer Kawaja, “HOW SHE MOVE does have huge tracks in it, from ‘Bad Man’ from Missy Elliott, ‘Touch It’ from Busta Rhymes and ‘Is It Good (To You)’ from Yummy Bingham. But is was more important to us that a lot of the music come from the community we’re portraying, and that we showcase Canadian artists whose music is a reflection of their background, just as dance is for the characters in the film.
HOW SHE MOVE features music from a wide-ranging slate of Canadian artists, from heavyweights such as Saukrates (who wrote an original track, “Monster,” for the film), to newer voices such as Mood Ruff (“Don’t Let It Slip Away”) and Tasha T (“Rectify”). Artists representing Toronto include Mayhem Morearty (“Out Here”), who grew up in the city’s Lawrence Heights (aka “Jungle”) metro-housing complex, and Smugglaz (“Jane & Finchin'”), whose members hail from the same neighborhood as Bishop, Raya, Michelle and their friends and who have become leaders of the thriving Jane-Finch hip-hop scene.
Another rising Toronto star, Cali (aka Sarah Francis), who was seen this year in HAIRSPRAY, appears in HOW SHE MOVE as a member of the FemPhatal dance crew, and her track “Bout ‘It” is featured on the soundtrack. HOW SHE MOVE also features music by Winnipeg’s hip-hop/reggae artist Fenom (“Reflections”) and Montreal’s Carl Henry (“Perfect”). From across the border, Philadelphia’s new sensation, Kevin Michael, along with beatboxer Akil Dasan, contributes a track (“It Don’t Make Any Difference To Me”), and Brooklyn’s Lil Mama contributes two (“Life” and “G Slide”).
HOW SHE MOVE also required very specific kinds of tracks for Hi-Hat’s high-energy routines. For that job, Hi-Hat brought in long time collaborator Montell Jordan of Atlanta’s J&J Productions. J&J has written and produced for such artists as Whitney Houston, Gladys Knight, Deborah Cox, Dru Hill, Sisqo, Heavy D, and the list goes on. Their unique Atlanta beats and their knowledge of stepping provided the perfect accompaniment to Hi-Hat’s blend of step, hip hop and breaking. Finally, rounding out the musical tapestry of HOW SHE MOVE is the original score by Canadian composer Andrew Lockington.
The Look Of How She Move
Ian Iqbal Rashid shot HOW SHE MOVE just outside of Toronto in a neighborhood similar to the one in which both he and the film’s lead character grew up. “We shot in a neighborhood so much like mine, I felt like I was starting from the inside out,” says Rashid.
When it came to the look of the film, Rashid wanted to match the nature of stepping – keeping the visuals hard, powerful and edgy. He worked closely with cinematographer André Pienaar and production designer Aidan Leroux to keep the emphasis of the design on the very raw and gritty nature of Raya’s surroundings. To this end, much of the film was shot with a 16-mm handheld camera.
“The film is about movement – about movement through dance as well as upward mobility and ambition,” says Rashid. “I wanted to further excite that theme of motion through the way we shot the film. We worked a lot with a Super-16 camera, which is relatively light and mobile, and tried to keep the camerawork constantly alive. Also, during the editing process, we tried to leave each scene with a feeling of movement, even if it’s expressed as subtly as through an unfinished gesture. I wanted to provide a sense that, even when unobserved, the characters continued to move, to yearn.”
Rashid was especially influenced by the style of German photographer Thomas Struth, whose vast, almost clinical cityscapes dissect the rhythms of modern life; and the raw, moody quality and deep hues used in the palette of American photographer Nan Goldin, whose emotionally intimate shots have won international recognition.
“Our aesthetic was chosen with a view to giving the film a more immediate feel,” Rashid explains. “In the end, it’s a chunky, modernist vision — clean lines, girth, hard edges, muted colors and very spare – not the vivid tenement urban jungle we’re used to seeing in American films. The buildings that surround the characters are modern and spread far apart and lonely. It’s a cold landscape, but the people who live there find a way to warm it.”
Production notes provided by Paramount Vantage.
How She Move
Starring: Tracey Armstrong, Rutina Wesley, Clé Bennett, Nina Dobrey, Romina D’Ugo, Kevin Duhaney, Shawn Fernandez, Brennan Gademans, Jai Jai Jones
Directed by: Ian Iqbal Rashid
Screenplay by: Annmarie Morais
Release Date: January 25, 2008
MPAA Rating: PG-13 for some drug content, suggestive material and language.
Studio: Paramount Vantage
Box Office Totals
Domestic: $7,070,641 (83.2%)
Foreign:$1,428,633 (16.8%)
Total: $8,499,274 (Worldwide)