I was thinking about the girls of LeRoy — of hysteria, of the way that young women fall in line with one another, sometimes powerlessly — while watching a new film from debut writer-director Anna Rose Holmer about the mysterious era of female adolescence. The Fits follows 11-year-old Toni, portrayed with nuance and grit by newcomer Royalty Hightower, on her journey from standoffish tomboy to member of an elite dance squad.

At the beginning of the film, we see with the dedicated hours Toni spends in the boxing gym alongside her older brother, learning complex footwork and combos, throwing hooks, jabs, and uppercuts until her body gives out for the day. Just down the hall from the boxing ring is a gymnasium, where the center's award-winning drill team practices. It might as well be a different world: Girls clad in spandex exercise gear practice complicated dance routines. Their hips aggressively roll, daringly and provocative, hinting at a budding power that has not quite yet risen to the surface. During breaks, these girls sashay to the doors of the boxing workout room, peek through the glass, and sometimes venturing inside.

Toni watches them, mesmerized, aware of the chasm between herself and these young women, as well as the girls her own age who stream by her on the way to dance practice, never registering her existence as she drags big bags of freshly laundered towels back to the boxing ring. But one afternoon, Toni finds herself in the gym alone — and she begins to dance, borrowing the moves that she's seen while secretly peering at rehearsals.

Not long after, she attends a drill team tryout. Toni makes friends with a few girls who are also new to the team — one named Beezy and another called Maia — and does her best to keep up with the challenging routines. She also begins to emulate other aspects of the team captains, their overt feminine displays. Toni pierces her ears, the small gold hearts in her lobes keeping her from getting back into the boxing ring again any time soon; she allows Maia to paint her nails in the hallway one afternoon. Small shifts, meaningful nonetheless.

And then, one day during practice, Legs, one of the team captains (played by Makyla Burnam), begins to convulse: She falls to the floor in the circle of girls, seizing and shaking, looking both fearsome and afraid. No one knows it yet, but this scene will play out again and again as other girls are inexplicably befallen by "fits," one after the next. As in LeRoy, parents and guardians will gather at the recreation center and demand to know what is going on with the girls and the cause of their affliction.