Save the Last Dance

Save the Last Dance is a 2001 American teen dance film produced by MTV Films, directed by Thomas Carter and distributed by Paramount Pictures. The film stars Julia Stiles and Sean Patrick Thomas as a teenage interracial couple in Chicago who work together to help Stiles' character train for a Juilliard School dance audition. Released theatrically in the United States on January 12, 2001, the film received mixed reviews from critics but was a box-office success and grossed $131.7 million worldwide against a $13 million budget. A direct-to-video sequel, Save the Last Dance 2, was released in 2006. Plot Seventeen-year-old Sara Johnson, a promising ballet dancer in suburban Chicago, hopes to be admitted to Juilliard School and implores her mother to attend the audition. She fails the audition and soon learns that her mother was killed in a car accident in her haste to get to it.