Set in the Jane-Finch corridor and brazenly biggin’ it up for the T-dot, How She Move is refreshingly unembarrassed about being a Toronto story. That’s especially unusual because Ian Iqbal Rashid’s dance flick is one of a tiny few Canadian indie productions to ever end up in US multiplexes. (Paramount Vantage and MTV Films put some muscle behind it after the movie won love at Sundance last year.) While it’s unlikely American viewers will find it so amusing when singer-turned-actor Shawn Desman’s character is mocked for his Scarborough roots, the displays of local flava should certainly add to the film’s appeal around these parts.

The energetic young cast and the arresting but not too slick dance sequences also help How She Move overcome some clumsy plotting and its formulaic nature as the story of a young person who struggles to rise above her circumstances and faces a familiar cycle of setbacks and triumphs. Here, that person is Raya (Rutina Wesley), a talented teen who thought she’d already escaped from the ’hood but who returns after the death of her junkie older sister leaves her family too broke for Raya’s private-school tuition. She sees step competitions as a way of raising money but after joining the crew of would-be beau Bishop (Dwain Murphy), Raya has to decide what she’s willing to do and who she’ll cast aside in order to fulfill her ambitions.

While it’s typical for contemporary dance pics — such as You Got Served and Stomp the Yard, this film’s closest kin — to only come alive when bodies are in motion, many dramatic scenes here have equal verve, largely thanks to the charisma of Wesley, a Juilliard grad making her screen debut. The storyline gets messier and the situations more trite as the climactic showdown looms but the moves that How She Move makes are mostly smart ones. Hey, that’s the way we roll up here.

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