Do you remember where you were the first time you visited the fictional American Ballet Academy and saw a group of dancers compete for their futures? Center Stage — the beloved dance film starring Amanda Schull, Zoe Saldaña, Susan May Pratt (who iconically declared “I am the best goddamn dancer in the American Ballet Academy”), Peter Gallagher and an ensemble that mixed dancing and acting experience — was released 25 years ago today, on May 12, 2000.
Though the film underperformed with critics and at the box office at the time, it’s become a favorite for a generation of dancers, dance fans and current and former teenage girls. Ethan Stiefel and Sascha Radetsky, who played Cooper Nielson and Charlie Sims, went on to become principal dancers for the American Ballet Theatre, where they experienced fans’ passion for the movie first hand.
“It’s amazing to me that people are still so fascinated with the movie,” Stiefel, 52, told the American Ballet Theatre in 2020. “But it’s rare that a week goes by without someone asking about it and wanting to discuss it.”
Radetsky, 48, told the Theatre that the movie trafficked “a little” in ballet clichés, but, “Mostly, it showcased the more redeeming elements of dance, things like the camaraderie and the mutual support. Those are the things that shine through. And the joy of dance, of course. I understand why young dancers still love it so much.”
Ahead, here are five things you might not know about Center Stage.
Both Amanda Schull and Zoe Saldaña Were Making Their Film Debuts
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Zoe Saldaña in ‘Center Stage’ in 2000
When Amanda Schull, now 46, was cast in Center Stage, like her character Jody, she was also working toward a career in ballet, unlike Stiefel and Radetsky, who had already found success in the dancing world. She was an apprentice at the San Francisco Ballet School.
As for the audition itself, the choreographer just told the class, ” ‘There’s going to be some big Hollywood producer watching rehearsal today,’ ” Schull told the San Francisco Chronicle in 2024. “And when I tell you that I have never worked harder in a rehearsal, I am serious.” In the movie, Jody is often criticized for her “bad feet,” and Schull said she, too, didn’t “have the best feet” or a “stereotypical dancer’s body.”
Zoe Saldaña, 46, had also had dance training, but had stopped dancing a few years earlier. Still, she moved well enough to make it work, and Aesha Ash was her dance double for the scenes she couldn’t do. “She was so talented. At that time I think she was the only woman of color at New York City Ballet,” the actress told Vulture in 2020.
Saldaña almost made a major change after booking the film. “When I did Center Stage, I remember being discouraged by my management at that time to use my name,” she told Entertainment Weekly in 2022. She added, “But their intention was never for me to stop being who I was. They celebrated who I was.”
“But my manager at the time was a former singer and a ballroom performer, and she did change her name as well, when she was a teenager back in the ’60s, I believe. And she said it’s what everybody does,” the Oscar winner remembered. “That was her doing the best that she wanted for me, but I still knew that I liked my name.”
Amanda Schull Had a Whole Ballet Career After the Movie Was Released
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Amanda Schull (left) and Ethan Stiefel in ‘Center Stage’ in 2000
After the movie was released, Schull decided to stick with her dancing career instead of jumping into acting. She worked with the San Francisco Ballet until 2006. “I always knew dance was a finite career,” she told the Chronicle about deciding to leave. “I had a back injury that sidelined me for a lot of the season, and it gave me perspective. I loved that life, but I was never one of those people who ate, slept and breathed it. And there were those people in the company. Sometimes I was envious of them, because they were doing exactly what they knew they were meant to do.”
Once she wrapped up her dancing career, she jumped back into acting, with roles in movies like Mao’s Last Dancer and on shows like One Tree Hill, Pretty Little Liars, Suits, 12 Monkeys and The Recruit.
Sascha Radetsky Was Cast at the Last Moment to Replace Another Dancer
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Sascha Radetsky in ‘Center Stage’ in 2000
Sascha Radetsky’s role as good guy Charlie was originally cast with Spanish ballet dancer Angel Corella (who also became a principal at the American Ballet Theatre). The character would have been named Carlos instead. Corella explained in a May 7 Instagram post, “The reason why it didn’t work out is because I broke the ligaments of my foot a few weeks before the shooting started. @sascharadetsky did an amazing job, it is hard to imagine the movie any other way.”
Amanda Schull Kept Those Iconic Red Shoes
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From left: Ethan Stiefel, Amanda Schull and Sascha Radetsky during the red shoe dance in ‘Center Stage’ in 2000
In the movie’s final dance scene, in which the ballet trainees perform the dance they’ve been working on for weeks as their final audition, the character Schull’s Jody plays on stage is torn between Cooper and Charlie. Cooper literally drives a motorcycle on stage and then dances to her at the start of the number, and pulls off her white tutu to reveal a more sensual red dress underneath.
Later in the dance, in a moment of true fantasy, Jody’s blue dress and traditional pointe shoes change into a fire engine red dress and red pointe shoes, perhaps in part in reference to another iconic dance movie, 1948’s The Red Shoes, which also mixes fantasy and reality in its dance numbers.
At an anniversary screening in Miami in April, Schull revealed that she still has the red shoes.
But Dancing on Those Red Shoes Was a Pain
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Amanda Schull in ‘Center Stage’ in 2000
Schull told Vulture in 2020 that when they filmed the dance with the red shoes, it was “like 3 o’clock in the morning on the last day, and it was exhausting.” She explained, “My body just didn’t hold out, just wasn’t capable of staying on pointe for that. We had been dancing for probably 10 to 12 hours at that point, stop and start, stop and start.”
The shoes made it worse. “It took several [takes], because my red pointe shoes were really slippery. They were dyed. I kept falling, not just off pointe, like falling and slipping and falling,” she said.
Choreographer Susan Stroman told the outlet it was director Nicholas Hytner’s idea to have the red shoes, wanting to make the ballet “magical” and “fantastical.”
Read the original article on People
