| Robert Hoffman Dances His Way Through 'Step Up 2 The Streets' |
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| Thursday, 21 February 2008 | |
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Evigan co-stars as Andie, a rebellious newcomer to the school who catches Chase’s eye.
Hoffman says their onscreen relationship was easy to capture because the two clicked right away. “I had read with a couple other girls and nothing was really happening,” said Hoffman about the casting process. “I was like, ‘Oh, no!’ And, that was back when this movie wasn’t expected to do much. It was just going to be a straight-to-DVD release. I was like, ‘Oh, no, this is going to be tough.’” And Briana was the last girl they brought it. It was magic, right off the top. We just gelled. We understood each other. We hadn’t been directed to, and everyone else had just done the lines as is, but she and I went right off the script and started bantering, and it was there from the first minute. The jabs, and yet the undertone of attraction, was right in place from the beginning.”
No matter how dangerous the dance moves got, Robert Hoffman did them all himself. The Step Up 2 The Streets star says not to look for any stunt doubles in his place. “It’s definitely dangerous. I’ve trained since I was a toddler, so I’m as capable as you can get to execute it safely. But, there’s injuries. I don’t think we had a single injury on this, though. I had a terribly sore back and my knees were just banged up to all hell. It’s just one of those things where you train since you’re a kid to be as hyper-coordinated as possible so you can pull those things off under any circumstance. The trickiest thing to do wasn’t just the tricks themselves, because we do those tricks. We perfect them and have them ready.”
“The trickiest thing to do was in the rain scene, and I didn’t even see it coming,” revealed Hoffman. “I had a jacket, a t-shirt and jeans on, all of which were completely drenched in water. So, a very basic move, with me just kicking off my back onto my feet, I could not do because I had 10 pounds of weight on me. I was trying and was like, ‘Oh, my God, I can’t do this!’ As good looking as the rain scene turned out, it was actually dreadfully hard to maneuver with so much weight on.”
The cast worked on the rain scene for two nights, doing over 20 takes just to get it exactly right. But according to Hoffman, working that hard on one dance sequence is nothing new. “Me and everyone in the film are all dancers. Dancers are the least respected and least paid, but the hardest working of anyone in the industry. We’re treated below extras, but we work harder than anybody. Doing the number wasn’t the hard part. We’re used to dancing a lot. What was hard was when we did re-shoots. We had to do re-shoots to get a better angle on one part, and it was on a night that was 30 degrees outside. We were at the Sepulveda Dam re-shooting, and they had these big tanks of water that weren’t insulated, whatsoever, so it was like ice needles hitting your skin. We just had a short amount of choreography that they needed to cover better, so we would do it, and then they’d play the music back and we would do it one more time. They had hot tubs and we’d sit in the hot tubs, jump out and they’d say, ‘Okay, go!.’
We’d do it one time and they’d say, ‘Okay, one more time.’ Every single one of us, on the second take, got these really weird eyeball headaches. Our eyes started to have these terrible pains in them. I don’t know what it was, but the cold and the moves caused it. That was Hell day.”
Director Jon M Chu allowed Hoffman a lot of freedom, even encouraging the accomplished dancer to develop his own choreography. “Any of my solo stuff is all my choreography,” explained Hoffman. “As far as the rest of the choreography, Dave Scott was the choreographer for the MSA Crew, the 410 was done by ‘Hi Hat’, and Jamal Sims was the overseer of all the choreography, and worked on Briana’s solos and stuff like that. Anything I did with Dave Scott was just a collaborative thing. He would come in and bring the choreography and set everything up, and then me and all the dancers would just fine tune everything and tweak and pitch ideas. So, Dave was the choreographer, and we all just pitched in and made it happen.”
Hoffman’s a huge fan of the reality TV show So You Think You Can Dance and the way it’s helped would-be dancers get a foot in the door. The show's also done a great job of getting young people to not only learn how to dance but really enjoy the spirit of the art form, as well as learn the importance of developing your own style. “I was a very privileged young boy. I had great training, and I had a lot of people supporting me,” said Hoffman of his own upbringing in the world of dance. “But the one thing I could relate to is that I did have a lot of people telling me, ‘Oh, if you want to be a dancer, you have to do ballet. You have to do this, that and the other.’ They guided me and I never got the privilege of having someone say to me, ‘No. It’s already in you. Your style is within you. Just know your voice and scream it as loud as you can,’ which is what I tell kids now. Know your voice and scream it as loud as you can.”
“Wade Robson is a good example of someone who was taught that at a young age. Michael Jackson told his mom not to put him in classes and just to let him do his thing and explore that, and he was encouraged. It’s only been in more recent years that I’ve finally figured out that creativity comes from somewhere inside. There’s no way to explain it. It isn’t definable or teachable. It’s just an instinct.”
    
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