Save the Last Dance

“The only person you need to be is yourself.”

Sara Johnson (Julia Stiles) leaves suburbia for the South Side of Chicago after her mother dies, moving in with the father she barely knows and starting at a mostly black school where she is the outsider. Chenille (Kerry Washington) befriends her, and Chenille's brother Derek (Sean Patrick Thomas) starts teaching her the dancing she has never tried. Thomas Carter builds the story around Sara, who still has her Juilliard audition to get ready for.