Details: She always loved gymnastics since she was little. Her friend Isla too, but she has a dad who won four medals so he’s very strict now and seems like nothing is ever enough for him.
Isla gets a 9.85 and Ariana a 9.95 and in the car her mom gives her a we’re-so-proud-of-you speech and gets distracted and they have a car accident. Mom is fine, Ariana is in a coma and when she wakes up she’s told that she’s badly broken, that she needs a few months to heal but also that “gymnastics is pretty much off the table”. She misses the olympics, where Isla gets a silver medal.
She’s devastated and angry/down, then she starts physical therapy and works hard at it as if she was still training for the olympics. She goes to see her old gym and thinks at first that Isla and Nate are dating but learns that she got into UCLA, which somehow hurts more. She wanted that too, they were supposed to go together..
Therapist Michelle takes her to her ‘palace’ where kids dance and Michelle posts video online to promote the place. In Ariana’s words, she’s “a champion dancer who runs a studio and does physical therapy”. There’s an important audition coming up and she asks Ariana’s help. She starts teaching them new moves.
She can walk on her two feet now, she’s healing well, and she asks Pierce for the use of the gym after hours, and he’s like ‘if you can do hip-hop why aren’t you doing gymnastics?’ which seems rather silly and cruel to me, they’re not exactly the same thing and come to that she’s just teaching dancing moves, not doing them herself. It’s good too, sure, because he tells her that she could still do a demo to audition for UCLA, which is a way to encourage her that she could make it. Anyway.
They need something big for their audition and ask her about the “holy grail of gymnastics” and she says “the full out”, two flips with a full twist I think, meaning “two backward flips with a full twist in the second flip” I think. Isla, Nate and the others come to the gym to talk to her and tell her to come back where she belongs and they call the others “lowlives” which was not nice at all.
There’s a long scene where Nate Adam and Twist sort of challenge each others, they jump a lot and then Nate admits that they’re good; Isla says “you’re a gymnast, Ariana, you should be at UCLA with me”. It’s been two years now since the accident, she does it, she convinces Miss Val and she’s accepted into UCLA, although Miss Val thinks she’ll never compete but that the other girls might learn her dance moves... still, she’s in.
Ariana makes peace with Isla and takes her to dance with Michelle Twist and the others. Miss Val sees the online video and says she has to choose one or fail at both so she tells her dancers that she can’t do it anymore and they’re hurt, but she can’t compete in gymnastics with the others as she did once. She asks the dancers to help the gymnasts with dance moves, and Adam does a big speech and they accept. At the audition, Michelle’s asma gets worse and she can’t dance so Ariana leaves the gym to run to them and help them out. They’re Team Soul Flow. They start dancing without Michelle and then Ariana jumps in and they continue together. She’s still at UCLA though, and Miss Val has her compete and she competes well, and then she takes the microphone and does a big speech thanking Caity and Michelle and having her friends dance right there on the ring, and Michelle gets her most-viewed video and they won the audition.
It ends with some writings saying how Ariana is one of the most celebrated gymnasts in UCLA’s history; so... that finale, with dancers and gymnasts all dancing together actually happened? For real? That would be so cool.
Anyway, the story is true and it’s amazing.
Miss Val-Jennifer Beals
Isla-Sarah Fisher
Michelle-Asha Bromfield
Assistant to Miss Val-the real Ariana Berlin
TV announcer-the real Miss Val, Valerie Kondos-Field
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