Ha Chan, Shake Your Booty Takes Us Ballroom Dancing Through Grief

Sometimes you cry. Sometimes you scream. And sometimes you put on your dancing shoes and shake your booty.

I went into Ha Chan, Shake Your Booty with zero expectations and walked out wondering: What would Elisabeth Kübler-Ross think about ballroom dancing through the five stages of grief?

Because that’s essentially what this beautifully strange, visually delicious film does.

We first meet Ha Chan and her husband, Luis, in their home, surrounded by an enviable collection of vinyl records. They sit down for a Japanese soup dinner prepared by Luis while casually switching between speaking Japanese and Spanish. Each playfully correcting the other. On the table is a video of the couple ballroom dancing competitively. Ha Chan watches her husband and delivers the ultimate wife critique: “You’re pigeon-toed.”

Then bam we’re transported to the dance floor.

Ha Chan and Luis dance in a dreamlike sequence, floating above the other dancers as if they’ve entered their own romantic universe. And just as we’re settling into the fantasy, Luis suffers a heart attack on the dance floor.

Cue the emotional gut punch.

Suddenly, Ha Chan is navigating life without the person who was her dance partner, husband and best friend. Luis’ Mexican father and sister enter the picture, along with the very real cultural collision surrounding death. We watch a Japanese cremation ritual where the family uses chopsticks to collect the remaining bones. Luis’ father insists his son be taken back to Mexico for burial.

The film doesn’t sugarcoat grief. You feel it.

Ha Chan slips into an intense, surreal mourning period where reality and fantasy begin to blur. Her deceased husband appears to her as a giant black bird—a strange, haunting symbol of the person she can’t quite let go. She cries. She talks to him. She puts on a vinyl record and dances passionately with his spirit.

And then there’s Fedir, a Dancing With the Stars instructor who enters Ha Chan’s orbit just as her sisters decide she has wallowed long enough. They push her back toward the ballroo

m, and into a complicated new relationship that becomes part of her messy journey through grief.

Visually, Ha Chan, Shake Your Booty is a feast. Ha Chan is frequently dressed in blue, mirroring her melancholy, while her dramatic blue eye shadow and sculptural black afro give her a striking, almost otherworldly presence.

And then comes Día de los Muertos.

Ha Chan creates an ofrenda for Luis, surrounding his memory with the rituals of remembrance before finally beginning to say goodbye.

What makes this film fascinating is that it doesn’t present grief as a neat five-step checklist. Instead, grief is messy, sexy, surreal, cultural, funny and sometimes completely bonkers.

And maybe that’s the point.

Sometimes healing doesn’t happen by sitting still and waiting for the pain to disappear.

Sometimes you have to put on the heels, hit the dance floor and shake your booty.

About the Author

Ersilia Pompilio is the Editor in Chief of SQUAD Magazine, a Palm Springs guide for bachelorettes and ladies who love to leisure. With over two decades of experience in performing, producing live storytelling shows, and hosting a podcast, she has also taught storytelling classes and written professionally for several media outlets. Originally from Los Angeles, Ersilia is also a twenty-year resident of Palm Springs, California.