10 Dance is a recent movie available on Netflix, made in Japan and featuring Japanese actors. You can view it dubbed or in Japanese with subtitles. I have now watched it both ways, and would recommend watching it in Japanese with subtitles. This will keep you glued to the screen, which will help you catch some of the finer details of this film, because a lot happens without dialogue.
Why did I watch it? Well, it’s about ballroom dancing, and I will watch just about anything that even pretends to be about ballroom dancing. 10 Dance is based on a 7-volume manga. I have read the first volume, because once I heard about its premise, I couldn’t not.
The premise is: two successful male ballroom professionals agree to train together for 10-dance competition and during the process fall in love.
Note: “together” does not mean they are training as partners. See below for more.
10 Dance: I have feelings about it.
Full disclosure, I have only read volume 1 of the manga, so I don’t know where the film diverges, and it was quite some time ago so I don’t truly remember where volume 1 left off. I will say, first and as a bit of a spoiler, if you are looking for 100% resolution to either the 10-dance ballroom training story arc or the falling-in-love arc, you will not get it in 10 Dance the movie. Would I watch a sequel? Absolutely.
Herewith, some of my feelings.
About the filmmaking:
It’s quite stylish. There’s some beautiful and effective photography, with a thoughtful use of reflections and light to convey emotion. This is needed, because both of the main characters are hella repressed. Much about their personalities is revealed by their workplaces: one is elegant and urban, the other scruffy and out-of-townish. The production design and sound design are high quality.
About the characters:
MC1 is Shinya Sugiki, a standard ballroom Japanese national champion and world circuit competitor. Standard is the style involving tailcoats and ballgowns; the dances are slow waltz, tango, foxtrot, quickstep, and Viennese waltz. Sugiki’s partner is named Fusako (Anna Ishii).
MC2 is Shinya Suzuki, a Latin ballroom Japanese national champion who, when the story begins, is not pursuing a world title. Latin is the style involving see-through shirts and sexy dresses; the dances are cha cha, samba, rumba, paso doble, and jive. Suzuki’s partner is called Aki (Shiori Doi).
Note: in Dance Sport, pretty much every competition includes a championship event, so a couple can have championship rank without being national or world champions.
Only one event per country conveys a national championship. And there are only a few events conveying a World Championship in any of the six divisions (standard ballroom, Latin, American Smooth, American Rhythm, American 9-dance, and International 10-Dance).
About the dancing:
The actors playing both Shinyas were well trained. A lot about their dancing is very good. Their partners are good, too. They are also surrounded by skilled dance extras which provides verisimilitude, even though the actual competitions depicted are fictional. A couple of those competitions occur in Blackpool, England, site of a very real world championship event.
We see Sugiki almost entirely in the context of his dance life. We don’t see him at home, with friends, out socially, or doing anything except being a dancer (including in his studio, teaching). He has built himself a highly artificial persona and has come to feel trapped by it. The actor playing Sugiki (Keita Machida) has to do a lot with micro-expressions; you need to pay attention when he’s onscreen.
On the other hand, we see a great deal of Suzuki outside of his dance life. He’s in his studio a few times, but not with a student. He practices sometimes on the roof of a bodega near where he lives and works. He smokes, drinks, and parties; we see him wake up with three girls. The backstory is that he is half Cuban, and there’s some mildly cringe material about Latinos being passionate and free-spirited. Stereotypes: we haz them! In any case, the actor playing Suzuki (Ryoma Takeuchi) is given much more scope to emote, and he uses it well.
Note: why do we see so much of the Shinyas training together, vs with their partners? Well, for one thing, this is supposed to be about their relationship. But it’s also how a good leader learns to lead: by dancing the follow part. So I found that consistent with my experience as a ballroom student and instructor, not contrived for story purposes.
About the falling-in-love:
Girl, it’s barely there. What we do see is a highly realistic scenario of two men whose view of each other is half envy and half attraction, working together in an intimate way that has sent many, many people to bed together. Sugiki has had his eye on Suzuki for three years, since first seeing him compete. Not 100% admiring, but (and this is key) attracted. It is unclear at any time whether Sugiki is out to himself. He is certainly not out to anyone else, and the “romance” on the screen doesn’t go beyond one hot kissing scene on a train and one sad kissing scene post-competition in Blackpool. Suzuki, on the other hand, has had his eye on Sugiki for years but in a “love to hate you” kind of way. On his side, it’s enemies to lovers plus bi-awakening. His attraction is both obvious to others and, eventually, accepted by himself.
About the training:
Both Shinyas are pro-certified ballroom dancers, which means they’ve been trained to the point that they can teach all ten dances. But you don’t reach or maintain competition-level skills unless you constantly train, so someone who specializes in standard ballroom or Latin will not be world-class in the other style. Most competitors specialize in one or the other. A few do 10-dance. The kickoff to this story is Sugiki approaching Suzuki and suggesting they train each other for 10-dance. (This includes their partners. Fusako and Aki are present for at least part of every training session. They are sweet to each other, both important characters, not just there to show off dresses.)
So, why does Sugiki make the pitch? We never entirely know. We get very little of Sugiki’s thoughts or history; the movie opens and closes on Suzuki. But the attentive viewer can pick a few things up, such as: Sugiki believes he has never won a world championship because he lacks passion on the dance floor. He perceives that Suzuki, though a messy dancer at times, with a questionable attitude and some inappropriate styling, has the visceral connection to movement that he, Sugiki, needs in order to enliven his own precise and somewhat mechanical approach.
From that, any viewer of ballroom movies will say, oh, hey, that sounds like Vanessa Williams and Chayanne in ‘Dance With Me!’ Yes, it certainly does.
Other ballroom movies are referenced as well. The traumatic collision at Blackpool: straight out of Japanese Best Picture winner ‘Shall We Dance’ (the movie that sent me to a ballroom studio, back in the day) and its American remake. The seductive training montage and the hypercritical coaching: straight out of ‘Strictly Ballroom.’ The cartoonish facial expressions Suzuki resorts to on the competition floor: also straight out of ‘Shall We Dance.’ My husband and I both said “he’s being Mr. Aoki!”
When I say that neither story arc is resolved: SPOILERS AHOY
On the dance side, it’s because the premise of training together is intended to propel both couples into the 10-dance event, which we do not get to see. The last dance scene is a big one, and we see the Shinyas do bits of all ten dances together, but it’s not 100% clear that this is real life. It might be a fantasy, a dream sequence as it were, and the movie ends right there. No conversation, nothing except “See you at 10-dance.”
On the falling-in-love side, from the point of kissing on the train to kissing in England after Sugiki has once again taken second place in ballroom and Suzuki has possibly not placed at all (though he and Aki do make the final) in Latin is two months of story time. The second kissing scene ends with Sugiki saying he can’t do this and Suzuki shattered. Six months pass before they encounter each other again at the climactic dance event, and there’s no hint that they’ve seen each other or even spoken since Blackpool.
Frankly, Sugiki needs to do a lot of work on himself before he’d be a decent boyfriend. We see Suzuki cleaning up his act a little and buckling down with the goal of becoming a world champion, not just a national champion. We see him caring for, and being cared for by, his partner Aki. We only see Sugiki as a sort of wedding-cake topper of a man. Handsome, perfectly presented, sexually undemanding around women (gee, wonder why) but controlling and even harsh as a partner and coach; he’s directly responsible for Fusako’s trauma, but she believes he makes her a better dancer. We do see some of the life history that’s shaped Sugiki, but not enough of his feelings make it past his gorgeous face.
Since the film doesn’t have a happy ending on the falling-in-love side, we can’t really call it a romance. It could be the first half of a romance, though.
And as I mentioned…I would totally watch a sequel.
So … have you watched 10 Dance (or any of the other dance movies mentioned here, all of which I love btw)? Let me know what you think. And if you’ve read the whole manga, I’d really love to know how it and the film worked for you.