Here to set it off: "FLEXN" comes to Park Avenue

Klassic (Joseph Carella) with the cast of FLEXN at Park Avenue Armory
Now, try re-creating his pose.
Klassic counsels, "If you have the imagination,
[you] can do anything you want because the body is able to do it."
(photo: Stephanie Berger)

FLEXN co-directors Peter Sellars (l) and Reggie (Regg Roc) Gray
(photo: Stephanie Berger)

Flex is Brooklyn street, not Park Avenue street. Yet, thanks to FLEXN, you'll find the Brooklyn street dance form known as flex at the Park Avenue Armory behind a set of thick wooden doors that, when closed in front of you, don't exactly say, "Welcome!"

Pull those heavy doors, though, and you'll find a huge, dark space re-imagined for sensation and spectacle--STREB's action heroes "kissing the air" comes to mind--now given over to some of Brooklyn's most extraordinary young street dance performers. This ninety-minute production, a collaboration between choreographer Reggie (Regg Croc) Gray and director Peter Sellars, is a magnet intended to engage New Yorkers with issues like racism, policing and youth incarceration. The co-directors began work on FLEXN against the backdrop of #BlackLivesMatter, aware that the Armory commission could offer a platform not only to introduce flex to a broader audience but to raise awareness of the realities that drive the art.

Audiences are encouraged to come at least an hour early for pre-show panels on topics such as "Profiling Stop & Frisk" and "Judging the Juvenile Justice System," moderated by Sellars and Gray. As you wait for the panel, you can view photography by Richard Ross documenting the lives of teenagers in solitary confinement and a range of visual art by Akira Somma creatively tracing several years in the development of flex. The show's segments have been arranged to underscore the multiple challenges of city life for young people of color while highlighting these critical values--self-awareness, dedication and community.

FLEXN, from evidence of last night's show, mainly attracts a New York mix of the hip and the affluent only slightly more diverse in race than your typical concert dance crowd--in other words, largely a white audience--but spanning a wider range in age. Many appeared to have arrived only for the performance, although they are probably most in need of what FLEXN's Race and the City panels have to offer.

The dancers, I read somewhere, hoped audiences would feel free to voice their pleasure and support all through the show, the way it's done in flex culture. But, aside from a smattering of applause after segments or particular solos, the armory crowd watched in complete silence and stillness. I saw only a few people, at least in my immediate vicinity, acting on the show's invitation to take photos and videos for upload to Facebook and Twitter. But the evening ended with many standing in ovation, and friends turned to their companions with happy murmurs and exclamations of awe. As we all filed out past the massive, hall-spanning platform stage, the dancers sat along its edge, waiting to receive our individual greetings. That was a nice touch--and smart--giving us a chance to finally share whatever feelings we held back during the show itself.

At 14, Germany-born Android (Martina Heimann) almost abandoned
her training in conventional movement techniques, but her mother challenged her:
"Are you sure you want to live with the thought of not being a dancer?"
Today, she is a star of flex and FLEXN.
"I want flexn to be accepted as a full-blown art."
(photo: Stephanie Berger)

At center, Sam I Am (Sam Estavien)
One of FLEXN's most talented performers, Sam I Am writes,
"I feel like dance is my connection to the divine....
One of my goals is to raise the status quo of how dancers are respected."
(photo: Stephanie Berger)

Lookin at my watch its about that time
I done patiently waited
And I hate
That I'm so underrated
I hope you hear this song and know I'm singing from the heart
And I'm kinda faded
I wasn't created to be so underrated

-- Tank ("Underrated")

FLEXN uses solos, duets, ensemble pieces and a creative range of music (reggae, hip hop, R&B) to tell archetypal stories of complicated relationships, temptations and their consequences, violence and loss, the meaning of friendship and mentorship. Flex offers its young dancers not only a way to show clever and robust virtuosity--the flashy contortions called bone-breaking, the smooth knee glides, the minute, jerky isolations--but to define and speak for themselves.

I will no longer be defined by
What someone else believes that I am
Now that I have dropped the weight
I am light as a feather
It's time to elevate

-- India.Arie ("SoulBird Rise")

Performers to watch for include: Dayntee (Deidra Braz), marrying willowy, undulating flow to flex's more angular distortions of the body line. The masterful Banks (James Davis) who, as a teenager, took two bullets to the knee--which only made him more fervent about dancing. Sam I Am (Sam Estavien), deeply gifted, totally connected and coherent from head to toe. The theatrically expressive Android (Martina Lauture). And Karnage (Quamaine Daniels) with the abrasive solo he calls "Fuck the World."

But through all the bullshit I throw up a sign of hope…

-- Ace Hood ("Fuck Da World") 

FLEXN speaks of chaos, confusion and pain but also demonstrates two beautiful things: art as the key and community as absolute necessity.

Lighting sculpture/design: Ben Zamora
Sound design: Garth MacAleavey
Costume design: Gabriel Berry
Music: Epic B

Performers: Ace (Franklin Dawes), Android (Martina Lauture), Banks (James Davis), Brixx (Sean Douglas), Cal (Calvin Hunt), Deidra (Deidra Braz), Dre Don (Andre Redman), Droid (Rafael Burgos), Droopz (Jerrod Ulysse), Karnage (Quamaine Daniels), Klassic (Joseph Carella), Nicc Fatal (Nicholas Barbot), Nyte (Ayinde Hart), Pumpkin (Sabrina Rivera), Regg Roc (Reggie Gray), Sam I Am (Sam Estavien), Scorp (Dwight Waugh), Shellz (Shelby Felton), Slicc (Derick Murreld), Tyme (Glendon Charles), Vypa (Khio Duncan) and YG (Richard Hudson)

FLEXN continues through April 4 with Thursday-Saturday performances at 8pm and a Sunday matinee at 3pm. For information and tickets, click here.

Watch FLEXN-related YouTube videos here.

Park Avenue Armory
643 Park Avenue (between 66th and 67th Streets), Manhattan
(map/directions)

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STREB ascending

If STREB Extreme Action could hold onto the Park Avenue Armory indefinitely, the troupe's new show could easily keep running for years on the strength of New York's tourist trade alone. Oh, yes. STREB: Kiss the Air! is that kind of show and a world-class triumph for the mad genius (MacArthur-certified) Elizabeth Streb ("action architect and choreographer," according to her current self-labeling), her company of "action engineers" (not just dancers, thank you) and a regiment of technical and artistic collaborators. Forget Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark and whatever Julie Taymor thought she was doing.  STREB: Kiss the Air! happens to be the real thing.

The visionary Elizabeth Streb steps up to the challenge of the Armory's enormous drill hall, filling it, from one end to the other, with lighting, huge video projections (including live videocam footage), massive scaffolding and equipment, a large, shallow pool of water, big sound and the formidable energy of her tribe of action heroes. She has developed and shown various components of STREB: Kiss the Air! over time, clearly honing and enhancing the choreography and risk-taking until it all stands before us like a mainstream-friendly hybrid of nouveau cirque, movie stunt work and the Olympics cranked up, like that Spinal Tap amp, to 11.

STREB DJ/MC Zaire Baptiste, wearing a row of lights up each leg of his pants, gets the action rolling by instructing us to disregard the standard theater announcement we just heard. "We want you to take out your cellphones, your iPhones! Take photos! Take videos! Upload them to Facebook...!"

How refreshing!

And for the audience--heavy on families with small kids--STREB: Kiss the Air! is refreshing indeed. The souped-up hybridization of everything Americans love--from extreme sports to action hero animations on big screen TVs--works because the discipline and skill necessary to pull it off are so much in evidence. Which makes me wonder if the reason most folks aren't drawn to just-plain-dance is because the actual skill and discipline it takes are not as nakedly obvious unless--as with certain big ballet companies or the Ailey troupe, for instance--it absolutely is. Dance, possibly, might not seem sufficiently hardcore. STREB? Now that's hardcore.

Hardcore and entertaining, not at all averse to showing its audience a good time, even if a good time means sitting there with your heart in your mouth because, at any moment, something could go wrong and someone could get seriously hurt. Elizabeth Streb herself might have started off in the rarified, purist territory of early post-modern experimentation, but today's STREB machine is built for people who love race cars, high-speed car chase scenes and Philippe Petit. It's built for the masses.

The 70-minute, multi-sectioned Armory program opens with harnessed performers, one after another, zooming over the heads of the audience and smacking into big square pads. They move on to Swing, in which bodies hurl--one at a time or in duets or trios--at and swing by two huge hoops dangling from metal scaffolding. Their movements on and around the swings grow more elaborate, their attack more daring, their cries, on impact and landing, more bloodcurdling. And if you somehow forget that these "action engineers" are, in Streb's mind, not just dancers but athletes--or military on maneuvers, even--they get an official break for re-hydration before moving on to a "pop action" drill lead by Associate Artistic Director Fabio Tavares Da Silva. As for that drill, think of it as an edgy kind of aerobics or yoga for action heroes, if repeatedly falling flat on your back were a kind of yoga.

In the daredevil world of STREB, weight and gravity are your frenemies. They make everything at once frustrating, thrilling and terrifying. Hence, the excitement of pulling or dropping away from bungee cords, slamming into mats or into one another, fine-tuning the velocity of a revolving metal ladder, and standing just millimeters away from the end of that ladder as it spins. For the audience, seated along either side of the long expanse of the Armory's drill hall, being close to all this action is a constant source of tension and rush.

Towards the latter part of the show, it can also be a frequent source of hydration--and I don't mean hydration of the healthful kind. Audience members in the mid-range of the hall are (imperfectly) shielded by Plexiglas and rain ponchos for good reason. All the belly flops and backflips in the pool kick up quite a lot of water, and a fair amount of it clears those Plexiglas walls. Hilarious fun to watch from a distance!

Not as much fun to watch at a distance--but still lovely, in its way--is Streb's Human Fountain section where the performers repeatedly climb up and leap from three levels of scaffolding to mats below in rhythmic patterns. This scaffolding is set up at the far end of the space. So if you happen to be closer to the hall's entrance, as my wife and I were, the action looks and feels remote--almost as if you were seated towards the back of a big, conventional theater. That's the only downside to the way Streb has arranged and utilized this great gift of space.

There is absolutely no downside to Elizabeth Streb's courageous Action Engineers: Sarah Callan, Jackie Carlson, Leonardo Giron Torres, Felix Hess, Samantha Jakus, Cassandra Joseph, John Kasten, Daniel Rysak, and Fabio Tavares Da Silva, with additional performers Tyler Ashley, Uys Du Buisson, Jessica Kreuger, CaCa Macedo, Mercedes Searer, McCurry Sherman, Ashley Caroline Walters.

Original music and sound design by David Van Tieghem
Lighting design by Robert Wierzel
Costume design by Andrea Lauer
Projection design by Erik Pearson
Set and installation design by Elizabeth Streb and Hudson Scenic

STREB: Kiss the Air! continues through Thursday, December 22. For complete schedule and ticketing, click here.

Park Avenue Armory
643 Park Avenue (between 66th and 67th Streets), Manhattan
(map/directions)