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. Sara is wracked with guilt and gives up ballet. She moves to the South Side to live with her estranged father Roy, a jazz musician who plays the trumpet at nightclubs. Sara also transfers to a majority-black high school, where she is one of a handful of white students, but quickly befriends Chenille Reynolds, a teenage single mother who is having relationship problems with her ex-boyfriend Kenny. Chenille invites Sara to a dance club called Stepps, where she has her first experience dancing to hip hop rhythms. At Stepps, Sara dances with Derek, Chenille's brother and a student with dreams of attending Georgetown University to become a pediatrician. Derek decides to help Sara develop her dancing skills by incorporating more hip hop into her style. He takes a reluctant Sara to the Joffrey Ballet and, afterwards, she confides in him about her mother and her dreams. Later, they return to the club and amaze others with their dancing. While performing, Derek's ex-girlfriend Nikki interrupts the two and begins dancing with Derek, making Sara retreat to the bar. Afterward, Derek returns to Sara and apologizes for pairing up with Nikki; they subsequently make up and return to Roy's apartment. Having achieved his dream of being accepted into Georgetown, Derek convinces Sara to follow her dreams of Juilliard; they eventually begin a romantic relationship. At school, Nikki picks a fight with Sara. Later, Chenille tells Sara that she did not approve of the fight, but can understand the bitterness since Sara, a white girl, is