Disco wasn’t just a musical genre but the perfect embodiment of its time. When else but the 1970s could it have occurred?
Yet to so many, “disco” must be followed by “sucks.” Hip-hop sparks division, but even people who hate hip-hop will often add that they like early rap. Disco, though, is not a gray area; it’s too charged. If it had to be a color, it would be red, in Qiana, with sequins.
MTV’s “Turn the Beat Around,” airing Friday, Feb. 26, tries to capture why those days were so special in a predictable yet fun movie. How believable it is that a 21-year-old unemployed dancer/choreographer single-handedly resurrects disco because of a hot one-night party?
Not at all. Yet the star of the movie, Zoe (Romina D’Ugo), is winning, and even if she’s immature, her disco fever carries the story. She has a nasty boyfriend, Chris (Adam Taylor Brooks), and they live the way struggling young dancers do in L.A.
They strive to impress the nasty Malika (Brooklyn Sudano), the go-to choreographer of music videos. Zoe’s mom came to L.A. to be a dancer in the disco era and never made it. She’s married to a miserable man, and Zoe seems to be repeating that unhealthy choice.
From the moment Zoe meets disco club owner Michael (David Giuntoli), it’s sealed in the cliche handbook that they must fall in love, but not before she almost throws away her career. Of course Malika will be shown up, and Chris will learn a lesson. If the script is less than stellar, though, the soundtrack is great fun.
Disco classics are updated. Leighton Meester sings “I Feel Love,” and Jason Derulo does a great job with “Strobelight.” No nod to the times of large Afro hairdos (preferably with picks) and even larger elephant bells would be complete without “That’s the Way I Like It,” which Eytan covers.
Vogue in the Movement belts “Ain’t No Stopping Us Now,” and Sing It Loud covers one of the anthems, “Get Down Tonight.” B.O.B.’s “Disco Inferno” keeps the beat, and naturally, the movie’s title song, Cobra Starship’s “Turn the Beat Around,” gets viewers in that funky beat.
Choreographer Tre Armstrong does a fine job of melding original disco steps — the walk, the Latin hustle with salsa hips, break-dancing dives and a hip-hop feel.
The film’s actors consider the true meaning of disco. “I learned about the spirit of it and why the inclusiveness of it especially coming on the heels of the civil rights movement, something embracing gay, straight, black and white, all in the name of dancing and having fun getting rid of all of the trivial things,” Brooks says. Sudano, daughter of disco queen Donna Summer, knew these songs.
“For me it was music in general,” Sudano says. “That is kind of the category my mom got pushed up to; that’s where she shot to her notoriety. My father (Bruce Sudano) was an actor and musician.
“Disco is making a comeback,” she continues, “the element of what it was about, certain sounds. If you listen to music now, you can hear the strings, the different sound qualities within the instruments. What it represents is feel-good dance music. People can criticize it or make fun of it. What it did at the end of the day was it brought people together to have a good time to lose themselves in music and have a good time. Considering the state of our country, the recession, people just want to have a good time and be brought together.”
D’Ugo says disco is definitely making a comeback in her native Toronto.
“People are starting to bring that fresh, fun, sexy sound,” she says. “I love disco. I didn’t realize how much I love disco until I did this movie.”
“I think it is an empowering and inspiring story,” D’Ugo says. “And I hope that people will watch it, and whatever situation they are in,
