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Rennie Harris Retrospective at Perelman
A hip-hop pioneer pushes the envelope
LEWIS WHITTINGTON
Philadelphia’s most famous choreographer-dancer, Rennie Harris, continues to push the artistic and theatrical possibilities of hip-hop dance. Thanks largely to his efforts, the street idioms that fall under the umbrella of hip-hop now represent a whole genre of dance styles.
For hip-hop culture, the national debate of negative words, images and messages have drawn criticism for misogynist views, propagating racial stereotypes and representing prison societies. Black historian Stanley Crouch even equated hip-hop with those 19th-Century “minstrel” shows, designed to pander to white stereotypes of blacks.
Most recently Harris assembled more than 40 musicians and dancers to deliver his answer by revisiting his continuing narrative— March of the Antmen, P-Funk, Endangered Species, GQ, Breath, 100 Naked Locks (a hip-hop sci-fi work about the last 100 humans), Continuum and two full-length hip hop narrative ballets, Rome & Jewels (2000) and Facing Mekka (2003). On successive nights, the three Kimmel Center concerts covered several of Harris’s most famous dance pieces; but typically for Harris, they also included several excerpts from developing work.
Shakespeare and rap in tandem
Harris uses Romeo and Juliet as a source material for his hip-hop ballet, with both Shakespearean text and rap dialogue as markers to move his version along. The story really is about segregated male street gang society, so “Jewels” becomes an adaptable metaphor. The basic dramatic turf— reflecting gang war and gang families— is rough terrain, so it couldn’t surprise anyone that raw language was used along with racial epithets and sexist remarks. The name “Jewels” doesn’t represent Juliet per se, but an unattainable (and hollow) cultural holy grail. You have to wonder critics of hip-hop would find it as offensive as videos and rappers using the same language.
Dance writer and historian Brenda Dixon Gottschild (who wrote The Black Dancing Body) brought that point up in comments with Harris following the Rome and Jewels performance: Had cultural landscape changed since February, when the performance was originally scheduled? Is Harris’s work subject to this cultural flag?
Men trying to figure out women
Although Harris’s Rome and Jewel contained racial epithets and b-boy locker room talk about women, they’re framed as specific insular street language, not meant to resonant beyond his script. Harris explained that the young men of Rome and Jewels retreat to clumsy machismo in the process of trying to figure out how to figure women out. Most important, the language is all built into an aesthetic purpose— not to pander, but to tell a story.
Unlike rap music, hip-hop dance has been absent from this fray. Hip-hop on the dance stage may reflect street dance vernacular, but it’s far afield on the mainstream controversies. The reason lies in artistry and a reflection of genuine urban life, not in gansta’ society. Harris and Gottschild made the point that as a society we’re still searching, sometimes in vain, to communicate.
The following night, in Harris’s elegiac Facing Mekka, spiritual realms of communication brought both self-awareness, legacy and redemption.
Past contextual concerns, Harris has now completely mixed the athletic break-dancing and Capoeira with such virtuosic moves as torso corkscrews, mach-speed layouts, matrix aerials, hand and head pirouettes. These are just a few of the gyroscopic possibilities of the body that generate pure fireworks on the stage.
LEWIS WHITTINGTON
Philadelphia’s most famous choreographer-dancer, Rennie Harris, continues to push the artistic and theatrical possibilities of hip-hop dance. Thanks largely to his efforts, the street idioms that fall under the umbrella of hip-hop now represent a whole genre of dance styles.
For hip-hop culture, the national debate of negative words, images and messages have drawn criticism for misogynist views, propagating racial stereotypes and representing prison societies. Black historian Stanley Crouch even equated hip-hop with those 19th-Century “minstrel” shows, designed to pander to white stereotypes of blacks.
Most recently Harris assembled more than 40 musicians and dancers to deliver his answer by revisiting his continuing narrative— March of the Antmen, P-Funk, Endangered Species, GQ, Breath, 100 Naked Locks (a hip-hop sci-fi work about the last 100 humans), Continuum and two full-length hip hop narrative ballets, Rome & Jewels (2000) and Facing Mekka (2003). On successive nights, the three Kimmel Center concerts covered several of Harris’s most famous dance pieces; but typically for Harris, they also included several excerpts from developing work.
Shakespeare and rap in tandem
Harris uses Romeo and Juliet as a source material for his hip-hop ballet, with both Shakespearean text and rap dialogue as markers to move his version along. The story really is about segregated male street gang society, so “Jewels” becomes an adaptable metaphor. The basic dramatic turf— reflecting gang war and gang families— is rough terrain, so it couldn’t surprise anyone that raw language was used along with racial epithets and sexist remarks. The name “Jewels” doesn’t represent Juliet per se, but an unattainable (and hollow) cultural holy grail. You have to wonder critics of hip-hop would find it as offensive as videos and rappers using the same language.
Dance writer and historian Brenda Dixon Gottschild (who wrote The Black Dancing Body) brought that point up in comments with Harris following the Rome and Jewels performance: Had cultural landscape changed since February, when the performance was originally scheduled? Is Harris’s work subject to this cultural flag?
Men trying to figure out women
Although Harris’s Rome and Jewel contained racial epithets and b-boy locker room talk about women, they’re framed as specific insular street language, not meant to resonant beyond his script. Harris explained that the young men of Rome and Jewels retreat to clumsy machismo in the process of trying to figure out how to figure women out. Most important, the language is all built into an aesthetic purpose— not to pander, but to tell a story.
Unlike rap music, hip-hop dance has been absent from this fray. Hip-hop on the dance stage may reflect street dance vernacular, but it’s far afield on the mainstream controversies. The reason lies in artistry and a reflection of genuine urban life, not in gansta’ society. Harris and Gottschild made the point that as a society we’re still searching, sometimes in vain, to communicate.
The following night, in Harris’s elegiac Facing Mekka, spiritual realms of communication brought both self-awareness, legacy and redemption.
Past contextual concerns, Harris has now completely mixed the athletic break-dancing and Capoeira with such virtuosic moves as torso corkscrews, mach-speed layouts, matrix aerials, hand and head pirouettes. These are just a few of the gyroscopic possibilities of the body that generate pure fireworks on the stage.
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