Stream It Or Skip It: ‘10Dance’ on Netflix, A Sumptuous, Sensual Japanese Drama Where Ballroom Pros Find Love On The Dancefloor

When two guys, wired totally different but both top ballroom dancers in their discipline, decide to collaborate, they push each other to be better. But they also pull each other closer. 10Dance, directed by Keishi Ōtomo (the Rurouni Kenshin live-action films) and adapted from the popular manga series by Inouesatoh, stars Ryoma Takeuchi and Keita Machida as two men named Shinya, Suzuki and Sugiki, one Japan’s Latin Dance champion and one chasing Standard Ballroom’s world #1. At first, their team-up is strictly professional. But right around the time Suzuki strips down in the studio – “Watch how my body moves” – it starts getting really personal. Hips continue to not lie.    

10DANCE: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT? 

The Gist: “It may look glamorous, but it’s actually a triathlon.” That’s Shinya Suzuki (Takeuchi) on 10-Dance, the grueling professional dance competition that combines five styles each from the Ballroom and Latin categories. Together with his partner Aki Tajima (Shiori Doi), Suzuki dances the samba, the rumba, the jive, paso doble and cha cha cha with a fiery look and feel that has brought national championship honors. And Suzuki knows all about his countryman’s prowess in Standard Ballroom – while “I hate this guy” is an early dismissal, it’s also a form of grudging respect. Shinya Sugiki, with partner Fusako Yagami (Anna Ishii), has held down second in the world rankings for years. Waltz, tango, Viennese waltz, slow foxtrot, quick step: Sugiki dances it all with an impressive level of control.

What if they collaborated, trained together, taught each other their mastery of these styles? They could each go higher in the world rankings. Chilling in his Cuban-flavored bodyshop-turned-hangout, Suzuki is at first wary. But everyone notices the spark, the second they dance together at Sugiki’s sleek, black-toned studio. “Lower your sense of contact, from the stomach down to the knees. Pelvis moves, too.” As the professional terms fly, and they hold each other in rigid but pliable dance forms, both men sense the energy pooling where their fingertips meet. “He keeps throwing me off my game and keeping me on edge” – Aki smiles. It sounds like her professional partner is falling in love.

As 10Dance moves between interesting locations in Tokyo and Blackpool in coastal England, home of the world championships at the gorgeous Empress Ballroom, it also shows off some wonderfully graceful dancing, and shifts easily between Japanese, Spanish, and English as Suzuki and Sugiki forge their partnership – and romantic relationship. For them, it’s kind of a devil and angel thing, an intrigue between who will lead, and eventually, a realization that what drives the other is what’s missing within each of them.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of? Ballroom competition in Blackpool and unlikely romance are also part of Masayuki Suo’s beautiful 1996 film Shall We Dance?, which became the 2004 American film Shall We Dance? – and the latter with a stacked cast, including Richard Gere, Jennifer Lopez, Susan Sarandan, and Bobby Cannavale.

And with 10Dance stressing ballroom’s athletic demands alongside the emerging spiciness between its two male leads, we feel like this film can also be a part of your next Heated Rivalry viewing party. (The movie and the series are also both adaptations from the page.) 

Performance Worth Watching: As the two Shinyas circle each other, their professional partners in ballroom are observers, sometimes supporters, and we get to know Shiori Doi as Aki more than Anna Ishii as Fusako. It’s Aki who first notices Suzuki’s attraction to Sugiki, and calls it out with care.

Sex and Skin: 10Dance is all about that passion, and less about actual skin. But the film’s celebration of the human form is evident throughout the training and performance sequences.

Memorable Dialogue: Is it getting hot in here? “If the waltz is an elegant courtship, then Latin dance is raw eroticism.” Suzuki knows what he’s doing. “Arouse them, seduce them. Don’t stop ‘til you make ‘em wet.” 

Our Take: We love the lengths 10Dance goes to establish Suzuki and Sugiki as whole people, whose respective upbringings, personalities, and emotional impulses are entwined with their compulsive need to move on the floor. This is a setup that requires a good chunk of the film’s run-time, but it pays off huge. With his cool vintage Pontiac, hangout zone inflected with Cuban culture, and speeches about the hot wind of Havana and beaches that call to lovers, Suzuki embodies his chosen professional discipline. He lives it. But so does Sugiki, a man raised partly in Blackpool, that classic hotbed of ballroom, whose flawless technique is imposing to other dancers. Once we see them in action – on the dancefloor, and up close with each other – what we’ve learned about these guys begins to merge and change. It becomes something else, a fully defined, new form of passion.

There is romance in the 10Dance aesthetic, too. This film moves with a fluidity that suits its subject, is shot with sumptuous visual elegance, and uses music as a wonderful counterpoint to silence, when the dancers’ breath, the folds of their clothes, even their footwear sliding and cutting on the wood floors of a dance studio is all we can hear. It all plays up that palpable sense of passion, which possesses 10Dance from the start.

Our Call: Stream It! There is a ton of heart and a lot of lush looks in 10Dance’s portrayal of the burgeoning romantic bond between two pro ballroom dancers. They’ve each got work to do on themselves, and their craft. But it turns out they can’t take their eyes off each other. 

Johnny Loftus (@johnnyloftus.bsky.social) is a Chicago-based writer. A veteran of the alternative weekly trenches, his work has also appeared in Entertainment Weekly, Pitchfork, The All Music Guide, and The Village Voice.