Oh, one painfully obvious thing to keep track of is character types and psychology, such that it exists. Who is the protagonist? Of what race, class, gender? Do patterns emerge over time as the genre develops? Step Up 2 seems a fairly self-conscious attempt at experimentation in the genre or at least departure from norms. In several of these instances, the departures are more feigned than actual, as say with the black dancers being the gatekeepers, who in reality just get robbed of their meaningful free-time activity, sense of self, achievement, and community. Who are the usual love interests? Comic relief characters? Dance team members? Villains? Character types are important to keep track of.

On inoffensive and virtually undetectable ideology:

He used to think of the world of language (the
logosphere) as a vast and perpetual conflict of paranoias.
The only survivors are the systems (fictions, jargons)
inventive enough to produce a final figure, the one which
brands the adversary with a half-scientific, half-ethical
name, a kind of turnstile that permits us simultaneously to
describe, to explain, to condemn, to reject, to recuperate
the enemy, in a word: to make him pay. So it is, among
others, with certain vulgates: with the Marxist jargon, for
which all opposition is an opposition of class; with the
psychoanalytic jargon, for which all repudiation is avowal;
with the Christian jargon, for which all denial is seeking,
etc. He was astonished that the language of capitalist
power does not constitute, at first glance, such a systematic
figure (other than of the basest kind, opponents never
being called anything but "rabid," "brainwashed," etc.);
then he realized that the (thereby much higher) pressure of
capitalist language is not paranoid, systematic, argumentative,
articulated: it is an implacable stickiness, a doxa, a
kind of unconscious: in short, the essence of ideology.
-- Roland Barthes, The Pleasure of the Text, p 28

The Law no longer needs to be written or recognized since it is being made everywhere ... The Law disappears by spreading over everything. And as it's absent, it's always right.
-- Sylvere Lotringer, in dialogue with Paul Virilio, Pure War (New York: Semiotext(e), 1983), p. 27

It might prove useful to pay attention to the DVD synopses of these. Even if we never quote them, they do a lot to suggest a particular audience, as well as making pretty clear the "themes" at work.

Footloose, for example:

Footloose jumps with spirit, dazzling dance numbers, and an electrifying musical score. It portrays the timeless struggle between innocent pleasure [Oh really?] and rigid morality, when city-boy Ren McCormick (Kevin Bacon) finds himself in an uptight Midwestern town where dancing has been banned. Ren revolts with best friend Willard (Chris Penn) and the minister's daughter [!!] (Lori Singer). Features a treasury of Top 10 songs -- Kenny Loggins' "Footloose," Shalamar's "Dancing in the Streets," Deniece Williams' "Let's Hear It For the Boy," Bonnie Tyler's "Holding Out for a Hero," and the Footloose love theme, "Almost Paradise."

Also features commentary by Kevin Bacon. Additional commentary by producer Craig Zadan and Writer Dean Pitchford. The front reads: "He's a big-city kid in a small town. They said he'd never win. He knew he had to."

Another one I just picked up, which is, I believe, Moroccan, is called Making Of. I picked it up for the first second sentence:

Twenty-five-year-old Bahta (Lofti Abdelli) has no job, no degree, and no prospects. His one passion is breakdancing, but even that outlet is repressed by the police who regularly harass him. After attracting the attention of a group of fundamentalists, Bahta is recruited into the violent and dangerous world of terrorism.

Movies I've obtained thus far:
Breakin'
Breakin'2: Electric Boogaloo
Step Up
Step Up 2 The Streets
Footloose
You Got Served
Beat Street
Save the Last Dance
Bring It On
Bring It On Again
Bring it On In It To Win It
Bring It On All or Nothing

Center Stage? http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0210616/