'How She Move'? With spirit and style

"Save the Last Dance" established an annual mini-tradition: the story of high school or college students from different backgrounds who meet on the dance floor for romance and social acceptance. If you've missed "Step Up" and "Stomp the Yard" and all the rest, you can jump happily into the mix with "How She Move."

The characters and situations haven't changed much, but the energy level is high and the moral-that you can aspire to escape the old neighborhood without abandoning all that's good in it-is one we hear too seldom.

Raya (charismatic newcomer Rutina Wesley) has to leave private school and go back to her old neighborhood in Queens, N.Y., after her parents spend their savings trying to overcome her sister's fatal drug addiction.

Old friends and foes lie in wait. Bishop (newcomer Dwain Murphy) flirts with Raya and with the idea of admitting her to his crew, which is entering a national StepMonster competition in Detroit worth $50,000 to the winner.

Michelle (Tre Armstrong of "Save the Last Dance 2"), jealous of Raya's upward flight, bullies her. Raya's mom (Melanie Nicholls-King of "The Wire") fears that Raya's new associations-including one with Garvey (Cle Bennett), who ruined Raya's sister-could lead again to trouble.

The Jamaican accents freshen the film; most of these parents are immigrants who work at least one job to make a better life for their kids. One minor character is especially unusual, a high school freshman named Quake; he reads Tolstoy and wears a Frank Sinatra hat, yet dances as hard as the rest. Though all relationships get smoothed over with unrealistic ease at the appointed times in Annmarie Morais' script, we believe these characters walk Queens' streets.

Choreographer Hi Hat and director Ian Iqbal Rashid kick the film into high gear every so often with dance sequences, climaxing with a dance-off in Detroit that seems too short.

The dance numbers blend the kind of crunking seen in the documentary "Rize" (which, like "How She Move," broke through at Sundance) with bits of traditional African American step-dancing and old-school breakdancing, including headspins, freezes and handstands.

It's a style that speaks to both genders and all races, as the movie shows. That's another good point the film makes in an unobtrusive way: Whatever we think of each other elsewhere, we can stop caring about color on the dance floor and in the audience.