The Emelin Film Club’s screening of “Gotta Dance” — about the first-ever New Jersey Nets senior citizen hip-hop team — was something special, made more so by the emergence, after the lights came up, of director Dori Berinstein and a half-dozen of the dancers, who performed on the stage.

The film was even sweeter the second time around and Marshall Fine, my former JN colleague, did a fine job of framing the post-show conversation.

I got a chance to chat with Betsy Walkup, a Bronxville woman who figures prominently in the story. By day, she teaches kindergarten on Long Island. But this dance team gave another side of her personality a chance to emerge: a woman named Betty who shakes it like there’s no tomorrow and who can’t get enough hip-hop.

She was charming, as was her husband, Jim, a marriage counselor by trade who joked with me that he has adjusted to living with Betsy and Betty.

Next week is a big one for “Gotta Dance.”

On Thursday at 11 a.m., the NETSensations senior dance team and all of the Nets dancers and mascots will join some Broadway folks in Duffy Square in Midtown for a giant dance party, at which they’ll teach anyone who’s game the “Gotta Dance Slide.”

On Friday, “Gotta Dance” gets its official New York theatrical release, at the Beekman Theater, and some of the dancers will perform after each screening.

It’s not just a cutesy show about old folks shaking their booties. Berinstein has mined it for a deeper meaning.

It becomes an affirmation of the possibilities and speaks volumes about how you’re only as old as you think you are. One of the most memorable scenes comes late in the action, when generations separated by 50 or 60 years connected through dance.

Director Berinstein—a Broadway producer whose credits include “Thoroughly Modern Millie” and “Legally Blonde The Musical”—has more magic to do. There is talk of a fictional feature film based on the documentary and of a Broadway show.

I’m writing a full story for Sunday’s editions….