Every once in a while, something sweet, beautiful, and good comes along.

From Prison Fellowship (via Townhall.com) come this movie review by Mark Gauvreau Judge.

I have just emerged from one of the most moving films I have ever seen—a documentary called Mad Hot Ballroom. The movie tells the story of a remarkable program launched ten years ago in New York City public schools, a program that teaches grade school children how to ballroom dance and prepares them for a city-wide competition.

I must admit that I went into the movie with something of a bias. A little more than ten years ago, I learned how to swing dance. It was an experience that changed my life. In fact, it was so remarkable that I recount it my book If It Ain’t Got That Swing. Formal dancing, I learned, was about much more than movement—it was about manners, etiquette, dignity, and respect for yourself and others. It was also a wonderful response to the lax morals and hideous flip-flop and fanny-pack fashions that tarnished society in the 1960s. While swing dancing, I saw rock and roll kids turn into young adults.

The dance students in Mad Hot Ballroom have a similar experience. (Although they learn the fox trot, rhumba and other dances besides swing.) Indeed, one of the teachers actually states that the ballroom dancing program has changed students into “young ladies and gentlemen.” She even breaks down and cries at the wonder of it.

Her emotional response is understandable. The poverty rate of the kids in one school is over 90 percent. Several of the kids seem headed for jail. But we watch in amazement and delight as their prospects are dramatically improved through the art form of dance. The learning, and then loving, of dance may have literally saved their lives.

Surprising, but it shouldn't be. I guess we are jaded and fearful.

Of course, it’s the students, not the teachers, who are the real stars of the movie. Their transformation from shy, awkward kids into passionate, confident dancers is moving and often hilarious. But their transformation is more than entertainment—it’s a story of deep cultural meaning. The kids are, as their teachers keep telling them, learning more than dance steps—they are learning that passions must be shaped by traditional principles. Only then will they experience genuinely joyful expression.

This axiom carries far beyond the dance floor. When I was researching my book If it Ain’t Got that Swing, I interviewed a dance historian from Howard University. She told me that the lessons learned in dance class—how to give and take, follow structure, and have concern for your partner—are principles that dancers bring into marriage. Imagine my shock and delight when I heard this idea expressed, almost word for word, by one of the young dancers in Mad Hot Ballroom.

Of course they don't get it.

Sadly, but perhaps not surprisingly, movie critics have generally ignored the lessons taught in Mad Hot Ballroom. Sarah Kaufman, writing in The Washington Post, praises the film, but worries about “the gender bias embedded in the art form, which means spirited, outspoken girls have to submit to being ‘led’ by their awkward, sometimes intimidated male counterparts.”

Elsewhere in The Post, Michael O’Sullivan opened his review with this:

The essence of ballroom dance, it seems, lies not in the formal steps that the feet take or the way the hips move to the music. It’s not in the frozen smiles on the faces of the dancers or the way one partner must maintain eye contact with the other. It isn’t even in the rigid “frame” a couple holds with their arms as their bodies glide in unison across the dance floor. It’s in the heart.

This is so stunningly wrong I can’t even feel angry about it. It’s as mystifying as someone calling The Passion of the Christ a stirring defense of atheism. My guess is that O’Sullivan is so steeped in the liberal philosophy of feelings and emotion over structure and discipline, that he simply mashed Mad Hot Ballroom into that template, regardless of whether or not it fit.