Despite its lead-footed title, Stomp the Yard is a Romeo-Juliet love story played out on the campus of Atlanta's Truth University, where the good-girl daughter of the school's provost falls for a new student who was involved in a fight that left his brother dead.

There's also plenty of gymnastic-style dancing, or stomping, in the film which involves lots of foot stomping, arm waving, cartwheeling and somersaulting. Stomping is supposed to be the descendant of the "Boot Dance,'' which came from the stomping done by black slaves who worked the coal mines. But it looks more like breakdancing on speed. Certainly it suits the talents of star Columbus Short, an actor-choreographer who once was on stage in the touring company of Stomp and was the lead in the film Save the Last Dance 2.

Short plays DJ Williams, whose problems with the law in his home town of Los Angeles prompt his aunt and uncle to bring him to Georgia. His uncle, a maintenance man at Truth University, pulls strings to get him a scholarship and a job as a gardener on the campus.

During registration, the pretty April Palmer (Meagan Goode) catches his eye. She already has a possessive boyfriend. Even before her father, who chose her law-student boyfriend for April, discovers that DJ has been in trouble with the law and lied on his scholarship application, he disapproves of him. He's a part-time gardener and very urban, after all. Nevertheless, DJ pursues April and eventually there's electricity between them.