Character Analysis
(Avoiding Spoilers)
Grew Up… with her single mother, Joanne, and Mia’s younger sister Tyler. Joanne is immature and irresponsible, and the family lived in poverty all their lives.
Living… at home in East London. Mia is in high school, but doesn’t care about her studies. Her mother shares Mia’s maturity level, which, at fifteen years old, isn’t saying much. The two of them fight constantly, about as much as Mia fights with her younger sister. To say it is a broken family is an understatement. Mia’s only solace is hip-hop dance, which she practices constantly and takes very seriously. She doesn’t have many friends, and spends most of her time alone in an empty apartment, practicing dance.
Profession… student. Mia spends more time wandering around her impoverished English urban landscape than she spends learning things at school. She aspires to one day become a professional dancer.
Interests… hip-hop dance, fighting with her mother and sister, and fighting with rival hip-hop dancers.
Relationship Status… single. She is pursued by a young man named Billy, but doesn’t seem to have too much interest in him. Instead she is more interested in her mother’s new boyfriend, Connor, who takes Mia and Tyler on a nice drive through the country. Of course, that only makes things more complicated with Mia’s mother.
Challenge… becoming a professional dancer. Hip-hop dance is an extremely competitive field in which hundreds of tough and able youths practice ceaselessly to be the best. Mia first hopes that she can beat out her competition with personal insults, but soon realizes she must be resilient and hard-working if she ever expects to compete on a professional level.
Personality… tough and independent, a loner. She has had a falling-out with her best friend and now spends all of her time alone, at least when she isn’t screaming at her mother. Mia has enough sass for three teenagers, and only wants to do what she wants to do, exactly when she wants to do it.
