"Leading Ladies" being filmed at Jerry's IGA in Champaign, Illinois. Photo by James Kyung

Besides the annual Ebertfest film festival in April, Champaign doesn’t seem to harbor much activity from Hollywood — until now.

This summer, the independent film Leading Ladies is being shot in downtown Champaign, currently filming at the Rialto Theatre. The movie is a musical about family, love and ballroom dancing.

The plot of the film follows the lives of a family of women, led by the mother, Sheri, an overbearing stage mother who focuses all her energy on her youngest daughter, Tasi, a ballroom dancing prodigy. The older daughter, Toni, is a wallflower who quietly supports the rest of her family. When Tasi becomes pregnant unexpectedly and Toni finds a female partner, Sheri must learn how to love her daughters in a different way as their lives change.

“Dance plays a major part throughout the story,” co-director Erika Randall Beahm said. “Not just in the dancing scenes but also using dance as a way to describe where we lead and where we follow in our lives on a metaphoric level and how to look at life through a dance lens.”

Beahm began working on the script for the movie in 2004 with her writing partner Jennifer Bechtel when she was teaching at the University of Illinois. Each Monday night, the two would meet and craft the characters and music for the film. Flash forward to 2009, where the film has a budget of more $100,000 and has attracted the eye of Paramount Pictures.

Beahm has been a dancer her whole life. After attending such schools as Juilliard, University of Washington and Ohio State University, Beahm began teaching dance. Currently, she is a professor at the University of Colorado at Boulder.

But of all places to shoot a movie, why pick Champaign? Beahm has a multitude of reasons. Since Beahm and Bechtel are both Midwestern girls, they knew that a Midwestern town would be generous and less

expensive, and with Beahm’s teaching experience, she was able to get in contact with many dancers in the Champaign area. Beahm was also quick to point out that being in Champaign makes them able to get dancers from Chicago without having to spare the extra money to shoot in the city.

However, shooting in Champaign hasn’t been without its problems. With the constant construction work being done, shooting has been interrupted a few times. Beahm was quick to compliment the workers for hurrying their work and allowing shooting to continue.

Beahm is co-directing with her husband, Daniel. While Erika has zero experience in filmmaking, Daniel has worked on such independent projects as Chillicothe and Hoodwinked! However, this is by far the biggest production Daniel has worked on. Daniel is more in charge of the technical aspects and design of the film, whereas Erika is in charge of making her script come to life from a visual perspective.

“These last weeks have been like film school for me,” Erika said.

When asked who her directorial inspirations are, Erika was quick to say Baz Luhrmann, citing his sense of magic and respect for dance as factors she strives for. She also mentioned that the film has a Robert Altman feel since the cinematographer of Leading Ladies, Pete Biagi, worked on two films with the famous director.

After Leading Ladies wraps, Erika has four scripts in the works, three of which Paramount Pictures expressed interest in last December. The other four scripts are not as music-oriented as Leading Ladies, but all hold the same sense of magic from the female perspective as this film does.

One thing is for sure: This won’t be the last you hear of Erika Randall Beahm.