With her dreams of becoming a professional ballerina decimated by the accidental death of her mother, Sara Johnson (Stiles) is forced to move from her quiet Midwestern town to her father's ghetto apartment on the south side of Chicago. The stark urban environment's contrast of race and class compound Sara's loss and her misplaced guilt, which are both exacerbated by the fact that her mother had been en route to her dance performance at the time of her death. But when she meets Derek (Sean Patrick Thomas), a popular black student with a passion for hip-hop and a future brighter than his troubled past, her repressed ambition and sorrow are released through a revitalized interest in the cathartic and expressive power of dance. Their friendship and mutual interest in dancing inexorably lead to a passionate romance that raises the sadly typical, bigoted resistance from Sara's white father and Derek's black friends. Widely hailed by critics for being as sophisticated and intelligent as it is viscerally passionate, SAVE THE LAST DANCE enjoyed the top of the American box office in its first weekend in release, playing to sold out shows across the country, a landslide affirmation that Sara and Derek are not as alone as they think.