Pointe shoes or sneakers? That is the question Into The Beat (2020) puts to its teenage heroine, a gifted ballet student who stumbles on a crew of street dancers just weeks before the audition that could decide her future. Stefan Westerwelle directs this German dance romance.

What is Into The Beat about?

Katya has trained in classical ballet for as long as she can remember, and the work is paying off: she is regarded as one of the most promising young dancers of her generation, and a major audition for the New York Ballet Academy is only a few weeks away. A scholarship there is a realistic prospect. Everything is mapped out. Then she crosses paths with a group of street dancers whose energy, freedom and community are nothing like the polished discipline of the studio. Drawn in, Katya starts leading a double life, keeping up her ballet preparation while spending more and more time with her new friends, and a romance begins to grow alongside the dancing. As the audition date approaches she has to decide which stage she really wants to stand on, and whom she is dancing for.

About the cast

Alexandra Pfeifer takes the lead, with Yalany Marschner, Ina Geraldine Guy, Katrin Pollitt, Trystan Pütter, Julius Nitschkoff, Helen Schneider and Julia Strowski completing the principal cast. The film relies heavily on its dance sequences, and the young performers carry both the classical and street-dance material on screen.

Context & significance

Director Stefan Westerwelle builds the story around a familiar and durable conflict, the pull between rigorous formal training and a looser, self-taught art form, and the film uses that contrast to shape a coming-of-age story about a teenager choosing her own path rather than the one chosen for her. Produced in Germany and released in 2020, Into The Beat runs about a hundred and two minutes and is catalogued on K-Time under drama and romance.

Watching Into The Beat on Ktime

Into The Beat is available on K-Time with a Persian dub. You will need to log in with a K-Time account to play the film; browsing the page is free. K-Time's Farsi-language interface makes it simple for Persian-speaking families, wherever they live, to find and watch titles like this together.