Dance - NBAF: Dancing the B-Boy Hop

By Thomas Bell


With all the toprocking, pop-locking, six-stepping, flares and freezes going on, better beware of the ’80s flashbacks. (Though I recently found parachute pants deeply discounted at the Gap, so maybe it’s best to just give in to the retro.) Rennie Harris Puremovement is coming to town for a headspinners’ ball like nothing we’ve seen since Jennifer Beals lifted street cred from the Rock Steady Crew.

Harris created his Philadelphia hip-hop dance company in 1992 to preserve the hip-hop form and spread the word after the anti-dance grunge “sway of ennui” sent hip-hop underground for a while. He grew up watching Don Campbell and the Campbell Lockers dancing early hip-hop on television, and later founded the Scanner Boys, an influential crew in early-’80s Philadelphia. For Harris, as for many, hip-hop eventually became more than dance. It became a culture, a set of political and aesthetic values, and an avenue for activism. His dance company expresses all of these dimensions.

Some of Puremovement’s work is straight-up old-school hip-hop. “Continuum,” in particular, is a no-frills exhibition battle, with several dancers (all men) keeping the rhythm in a semi-circle while each enters the center and shows off his best moves. Some are stylish toprockers (fancy footwork while standing), some are muscular gymnasts, and some dive into freezes (held poses) that would make a yoga master look like a weak-wristed sissy. Harris himself dances with great kinetic humor, clowning with the memes of pantomime.

But Harris has not merely dipped hip-hop in a bell jar of preservative and Dep. Applying formal choreography to the improvisational tradition, Harris takes hip-hop beyond its “Look at me!” machismo and gives it new levels of artistry.

In the mournful “Antman,” worms (a rippling body movement that sends waves along the legs and spine) recall soldiers crawling in a battle zone, and military marches mourn the passing of a brother.

Set to drums, synthesizer and a distorted speech by Martin Luther King Jr., “Students of the Asphalt Jungle” alludes to marching band high-stepping and has some of the craziest superhuman freezes you’ve ever seen: balancing on one hand with legs straight out horizontal; a gorgeous quotation mark of an arched handstand. But the grandstanding is organized by larger shapes and ideas.

Throughout the show, Harris brings rounded backs, closed curves, bent legs and thrust-out asses into conversation with more traditional modern movement, with hip-hop’s African and Brazilian roots, and — here’s a new one for Brooklyn and Philly — with butoh.

A thorough explanation of butoh would take up all the space I have here, so let’s just call it the entry of traditional Japanese dance and theater into the global fusion of avant-garde movement. Both meditative and muscular, it gives a spiritual depth to hip-hop’s style and spectacle in works such as “Endangered Species,” danced by Harris to a soundtrack of fast, rhythmic breathing with a clunky but sincere voiceover monologue.

The solo has some moments of overly literal choreography: an air guitar, a thumb-and-index finger gun. But on the whole, Harris’ long, strong body speaks with eloquence and sophistication, writing rage with ratcheted movements and desperation with agile urgency.

Though Harris sometimes relies on narrative more than he needs to, as though he doesn’t yet fully trust the maturity of his movement, his hip-hop fusions are thrilling. In truth, this is not a nostalgic retro fad, but a look toward the enormous artistic territory hip-hop dance is only beginning to explore ... and, let’s be honest, it’s also an “ain’t it cool” exhibition of these dancers’ acrobatic strength and powerful bodies, no matter what decade’s pants they decide to wear.

Thomas.bell@creativeloafing.com


Rennie Harris Puremovement performs July 18, 7 p.m. at 14th Street Playhouse, 173 14th St. $10-$20. 404-730-7315. www.nbaf.org .Harris will also participate in the panel discussion “Hip Hop: A Movement,” July 18, 2 p.m. at the 14th Street Playhouse. $7. 404-730-7315. www.nbaf.org.??