Superb high school documentary takes 'Step' toward understanding

They called themselves the Lethal Ladies of BLSYW, aka the Baltimore Leadership School for Young Women, a Baltimore charter startup with the preposterously optimistic goal of getting every senior student to graduate from college.

In 2009, they were in sixth grade when Baltimore filmmaker and Broadway producer Amanda Lipitz discovered these inaugural BLSYW students and their fascinating, percussive “step” performance art.

She started shooting a film short that evolved into a documentary feature.

Four-hundred-plus hours of footage later, Lipitz brought in film editor Penelope Falk to trim and shape a narrative from the students' documented experiences.

Lipitz had begun with a small focus on a few girls performing a simple hand-clapping drill. She wound up with an expanded story celebrating the power of the arts to prepare, inspire and propel young people to overcome obstacles and adversity, then to achieve on levels they themselves might have thought to be impossible.

We meet Blessin Giraldo, the group's founder and leader, a movie-star grade beauty with dreams of going to college in New York. But her grades will never get her there.

Painfully bashful Step member Cori Grainger receives excellent grades, but can't possibly go to Johns Hopkins University without a full-ride scholarship.

A third student highlighted in “Step,” Tayla Solomon, has a single mother (who works as a state corrections officer) determined to help her daughter succeed.

We also get brief profile snapshots of BLSYW's caring principal Chevonne Hall, even more caring college adviser Paula Dofat and the team's tough-love coach Gari McIntyre.

Lipitz spent months hanging out with these students, who became so accustomed to the cameras that, after a time, they became virtually invisible, enabling the filmmakers to provide the ideal “fly on the wall” authenticity that eludes most coached and directed reality TV shows.

During their senior year in 2015, the students ramp up for the state's big step competition (yes, there really is such a thing) by preparing a routine honoring the Black Lives Matter movement and the memory of Freddie Gray, a 25-year-old black man who died of injuries while in Baltimore police custody. What they perform can be measured in Kleenex tissues.

“Step” runs at a lean 85 minutes.

If there ever were another documentary whose scope and substance were worthy of being placed in the same rarefied class as Steve James' Chicago-shot classic “Hoop Dreams,” this really would be it.

“Step”

★ ★ ★ ★

<b>A documentary with:</b> Blessin Giraldo, Cori Grainger, Paula Dofat, Gari “Coach G” McIntyre

<b>Directed by:</b> Amanda Lipitz

<b>Other:</b> A Fox Searchlight Pictures release. Rated PG. 85 minutes