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Flash Review 1, 9-27:
Hip-hop is in the HOUUUUUSE
Harris and Crue Show the Dance World What Time of Day It Is
By Paul Ben-Itzak
Copyright 2000 The Dance Insider
When Rennie Harris stepped
onto the stage of the Joyce Theater with the mic before "Rome &
Jewels," I was a little skeptical. Homey don't play that! When he
shared that last night was his first night stepping into the Universe,
I was like, "Yo, what's up with that!?" Well check it, G: I'm here
to represent that this Old School B-Boy walks, as we used to say
back in the day, the talk. With his hip-hop dance-drama-DJ take
on "Romeo & Juliet" (sort of), Harris -- and crue, props to them!
-- succeeds where many (including Harris, on previous attempts)
before have failed, and earns hip-hop its place at not only the
concert dance, but the narrative concert dance table. And, not incidentally,
shows the Joyce and its aging audience what time of day it is, dance-wise.
Harris, in his intro,
advised us to let go of any expectations. Being a somewhat hardened
NYC critic, I was skeptical about this remark, too; "What, are you
saying don't believe the hype?" But after seeing the piece, I'd
go further and suggest one specific expectation, the dropping of
which might help you proceed quicker than I did to seeing this show
on its own terms. Here, hip-hop doesn't so much serve the story
of "Romeo & Juliet," as Shakespeare and his tale serve to provide
a much-needed fresh way to tell the by-now broken record story of
the gangsta paradise: One-time homeys come to blows, someone dies,
much weeping and remorse at the funeral, until the next time.
But first, some background:
Hip-hop's attempts to go Concert Dance are usually marked by awkward
-- and to my view unnecessary -- attempts at a plot line. (Ooh,
the reference to Concert Dance just gave me a Flashback: To 1996
and a Dance Magazine proofreader not knowing what House music is.
:D ) To my mind, hip-hop dance on its own terms deserves to be seen
in concert. It thrills; when at its best it demands technical brilliance
and fit bodies; it expresses personality; it can even be spiritual;
and you can't get much more kinetic than spinning on your head,
suddenly freezing with your legs in the air, knees bent but legs
still, then switching the legs while still balancing on your head.
Then there are the flips as athletic and unbelievable as any produced
by years of Peking Opera training. Seems like enough, no? If the
Judsonites can pick pedestrians up from the streets, plop them down
on stage to walk across it and call it Dance, then the B-Boys and
B-Girls, who have earned their props actually performing in the
streets, can sure enough win an audience performing on a proscenium.
And yet, the few hip-hop
artists I've seen who bring their dance to the concert stage somehow
feel the need to frame this virtuosity with a Story. Happened with
Jam on the Groove, a company made up of some of the original Ghetto
Jam crue; Akim Funk Buddah, who made his debut at P.S. 122 last
year (the actual dance was killer, particularly a tap-martial arts-hip
hop one-off between Buddah and a kimono and clog wearing woman named
Cat); and even Harris in an earlier incarnation. The story always
seemed like something the B-Boys and Girls thought they had to do.
But tho they had the physical props, they didn't have the dramatic
chops, and thus we had the unfortunate result of a dance form in
which, in fact, the performers had been working on their dancing
since they were youngsters and had it finely honed, nonetheless
appearing like amateurs because of the scripts.
Enter Rennie Harris,
with an able assist from Will Shakespeare, the dramaturg and narrator
Ozzie Jones, a KILLER and TIGHT DJ trio of DJ Miz, DJ Cisum, and
DJ Evil Tracy who had the Joyce audience rocking during the musical
break, and an able group of dancers many of whom are as able at
declaiming slam-style poetry and Shakespeare as they are at locking,
popping, and spinning. "I bet you didn't think I was going to go
there," Rodney Mason, as Rome, tells the audience in an early aside,
after he's quoted verbatim from Shakespeare. Smoove! Throughout,
the actor-dancers mix easily between the rich original and an almost
as rich Slam-Street style poetry, their sampling as smooth as the
DJs mixing. The result is that the Shakespeare and the street poetry
equally contribute a certain heft -- and it ALL seems natural, as
does the blending. The street poetry seems equal in poetry to the
Shakespeare (okay, almost!), and the dancer-actors make the Shakespeare
their own. (By the way, this is not a patronizing, "Oh, they're
from the streets and they can speak proper English" remark; any
actor not specifically trained in Shakespeare has difficulty keeping
it real.)
One of the things I was
skeptical about, going in, was whether Harris could make of the
hip-hop vocabulary a language whose phrases speak specifically to
the situation at hand. As, for instance, at the same time last night
about forty blocks uptown, the Birmingham Royal Ballet was doing
in David Bintley's choreography for "Edward II." A grisly tale,
that -- but all told with the existing, actually ballet vocabulary.
After last night's viewing, I'd have to say the verdict is still
up in the air as to whether anyone has so utilized hip-hop.
However, what we can
say is that Harris has succeeded, hip-hop into narrative dance phrase-wise,
on at least one count -- using the hip-hop movement style to express
character. This happens most notably in the clowning of Clyde Evans,
Jr. as Mercutio (loved the MC Hammer oldie but goodie, G!); and
in one moment where Rome, upon meeting Jewels and convincing her
to walk with him, suddenly slumps, one shoulder lower than the other,
arms sanctifying, inna hip hop mode.
Did I say upon meeting
Jewels? Well, not actually. Harris's idea is to have Jewels actually
only indicated by Rome -- she is as seen by him. (Think Harvey the
rabbit!) In general, with the notable exception of Jules Urich in
the Capulet Crew and another woman unidentified in the program,
this is a man's world, G! And yes, part of that seems to be that
terms like "ho" flow freely. (Example: Sabela Grimes's Ben V./Benvolio
tells Mercutio that Jewels is Rome's "Special Ho.") However, my
female dancer companion of last night said this slackness didn't
bother her because, indeed, the world being portrayed was a man's
world, from a man's point of view. Or rather, that this particular
slice of the hip-hop world, especially the saga of gangs and turf
battles, is.
My companion also noted
an aspect in which these dancers stood out from much dance: They
were very connected with the earth; their movement, she said, seemed
to come from it rather than take place above it. This seemed almost
literally to be the case with the spinning of the Capulets, led
by the virtuosic and legendary Ron Wood, a.k.a. Zen One. (At one
point, Jones, throwing a party to which he'll invite both crews,
tells Wood he should 'Come by and do your spinning thing,' in such
a nonchalant manner that the audience laughed at its off-handedness.)
Where the dance truly
seemed, for the first time I've seen in any hip-hop piece, to be
part of the story, is in the penultimate confrontation between the
two squads. Dudes, this square-off makes the Jets-Sharks rumble
of "West Side Story" look like child's play. Again, in the past,
the one-upsmanship in these one-offs has not seemed particularly
dangerous to me -- I didn't get a sense that either side seriously
thought anything was at stake. In this face off, however, well,
it's more than just a one-off -- it's not just competitive, but
aggressive, so that we're not surprised when it suddenly escalates
to a fight, with the time-honored result: Mercutio and then Tybalt
are killed. The way Harris has Evans's Mercutio take leave of Rome
is poignant and real. We get your slow-mo (a bit over-used in general
in this ballet, as is the dry ice or chalk), the usual business
of Mercutio pretending it's just a scratch, and then he suddenly
eludes Rome's circled arms, but the arms stay circled; the impression
is that the figure we see is really Mercutio's released ghost. To
hear Evans's pained "A pox on both your houses," which Harris changes
to "all" your houses, is under the circumstances chilling, and played
so by Evans.
And then....then the
story stops. That's right. No sleeping potion, no denouement of
Romeo killing himself because he thinks she's dead, and then her
doing the same upon awakening and finding him there. The closing
speech, from Shakespeare, delivered by Jones. Some more slow-mo
squirming by the players. And then lights.
It's at this point where
I figured that, as mentioned above, Harris was using this story
as a new way to explore what's become a very old story about gangsta
life. (Rather than giving a full hip-hop visualization of the play.)
And that the many divergences from the old story -- into poetry
and sometimes dance having to do with that life in general -- suddenly
made sense. As did Harris and posse's achievements. B-girls and
B--boys, hip-hop is definitely in the concert dance HOUUUUUUSE.
And props to Linda Shelton and Martin Wechsler, director and chief
programmer of the Joyce, as well. In past years, they might have
berthed Rennie Harris Puremovement in their Altogether Different
festival for a couple of seasons first, banking only on the company
getting its niche following in the house. Instead, they've opened
their first full season of the new millennium with him. This relatively
mainstream theater has checked its watches and its clocks, and they
definitely know what time of day it is now!
Rennie Harris Puremovement
plays at the Joyce Theater through Sunday. For more info, please
visit the Joyce web site.
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