Debbie Allen spills the hot cocoa on new documentary Dance Dreams: Hot Chocolate Nutcracker

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Debbie Allen and Shondaland have always been good at dancing it out.

When it came to finding the best position (no, it wasn't first, second, or fifth) from which to launch on Netflix, Shonda Rhimes knew they couldn't top focusing on her longtime collaborator, Debbie Allen. Dance Dreams: Hot Chocolate Nutcracker, which marks Shondaland's Netflix debut, is about Allen and her remarkable career — but it's also about so much more.

Since Allen established the Debbie Allen Dance Academy, fondly known as DADA, in 2000, she's been shaping and teaching young dancers seeking to learn their craft (regardless of their financial status). Beginning in 2009, DADA has performed The Hot Chocolate Nutcracker, a modern retelling of the classic Tchaikovsky ballet that serves as a showcase for the Academy's students and an annual fundraiser.

Conceived of by Oliver Bokelberg, who is both a DADA parent and was a producer/director on Scandal, the documentary celebrates both Allen's incredible journey as a dancer and the parallel stories of the young students she educates through the Academy and The Hot Chocolate Nutcracker.

"What we're doing is we're just uplifting lives every day," Allen tells EW of the work at DADA. "I've been growing generations of young people who bring a humanity and a joy and a positive look on life into the world. That's what I've been doing for 20 years or longer, even before I had the school."

The documentary began as Bokelberg's more casual recordings of rehearsal footage and Academy classes before being shaped into something more defined. "When Oliver asked me if he could come and shoot, I was really busy," Allen recounts. "I said, 'Just stay out of my way, and I don't want to know you're in the room.' So, he really captured something that I would say is cinéma vérité, the behind the scenes of it all, because we would forget he was there. Every aspect and every bit of that footage is very spontaneous and true to the moment."

The idea to turn Bokelberg's footage into a documentary came from none other than Rhimes herself. "After two years [Oliver] said, 'Debbie, we should put this together,'" Allen explains. "So we got an editor that helped us put it together. He said, 'I'm going to show it to Shonda.' She's like, 'Debbie, I have to have this. I want this.' I stepped back because I'm the director and the creator and the choreographer of the stage production. I let this become what she thought it should be. It turned into being a lot more about me than I would ever have done, but I'm humbled by that. She wanted to tell the story. So, here we are."

In what seems a story made for Hollywood, Rhimes and Allen actually first met through DADA. Rhimes' daughter was a student there for over a year before the two struck up a friendship that led to Allen appearing on Grey's Anatomy and eventually transitioning to the role of actor, director, and executive producer within the Shondaland family. "Our relationship was purely dance master, mother-daughter," Allen says. "That was our real first relationship. As a parent, I didn't even hardly speak to Shonda for the first year. I thought she deserved anonymity. I thought she deserved to just be her daughter's mother."

For Allen, there's a special something to this full-circle moment, moving from meeting Rhimes at DADA to working with Shondaland to returning to DADA to tell this story. "I was a student of the classics at Howard University," she notes. "There's something about fate and destiny, hubris, hamartia, all of those qualities that makes sense to me. Sometimes things are supposed to be."

Her relationship with Rhimes isn't the only thing that's full circle about the documentary for Allen. For most of the world, they first were introduced to Allen as a dance instructor, albeit a fictional one: Lydia on Fame. Now, audiences can revisit her career through that lens. "It is my truest self. I have been dancing through every aspect of my career," Allen reflects. "I was on camera dancing. I was choreographing the Oscars. You name it. I have been dancing through it all. So, this is very appropriate. Dance has always influenced and informed my ability as a director. That is a very strong aspect of my style. It's just innate."

As Allen mentions, the documentary is partly biographical, delving into Allen's early experiences with dance, including a life-changing scholarship, as well as her Broadway success and more. Allen says she has plans to write a memoir, but this is the most up close and personal glimpse of her life she's offered thus far.

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Bokelberg conducted the on-camera interviews, but Allen says it was simple shifting from their professional relationship to this more personal experience. "You can be yourself when you're with someone you trust," she says. "My life is somewhat of an open book. People are always curious about me in interviews and how we started, what happened, the whole thing. There's a lot to navigate there from Houston to Howard [University] to Broadway to Hollywood. I trusted Oliver, so I could say whatever."

In addition to trusting Bokelberg with her story, Allen had the reassurance that he knew DADA inside and out. The documentary features the journey of several of Allen's students, whom she gave him free rein to select. "Oliver is a DADA parent," she notes. "So, you're getting a story that's deep on the inside. It wasn't just the Hot Chocolate Nutcracker. He had photographed recitals and other things before this, so he was aware [of who these students were]. It was great to have someone who really understood the dynamic of DADA to be doing this, not just someone you hired. He would know what to capture. And he did."

Dance Dreams: Hot Chocolate Nutcracker is the story of Debbie Allen, but more resoundingly, it's the story of dancers hustling to realize their dreams and the teachers who open their hearts to get them there. It immortalizes Allen's legacy training the next generation of artists and the incredible program she's built with DADA (even if this year, things have evolved to continue classes safely during the coronavirus pandemic, including shifting to a drive-in gala at the Rose Bowl in lieu of their traditional Hot Chocolate Nutcracker performances).

But for Allen herself, she's not all that concerned with her legacy. She's got too much to do.

"I'm not really thinking about being remembered right now. I'm thinking about what is needed," she confesses. "DADA has given me a real purpose in life beyond something greater than myself. Everyone should be so lucky to find a purpose in life, no matter what it is. It can be something small, but something where you are somehow making the world better."

Dance Dreams: Hot Chocolate Nutcracker hits Netflix Dec. 27.

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