One more to see: Rennie Harris gets funky at New Victory

Performers from
Rennie Harris: Funkedified,
a world premiere at New Victory Theater
(photo: Brian Mengini)

Two acclaimed Philadelphia dance crews--Rennie Harris Puremovement and The Hood Lockers--are tearing up the stage at New Victory Theater, now through June 10. If you love popping, locking, breaking and all things street dance, go see Rennie Harris: Funkedified.

The premise of this expert world premiere production is a remembrance of the funk music and dancing of the 1970s--think James Brown and Soul Train--that set Harris on his path to becoming one of the world's best-loved masters of hip-hop artistry. A marvelous five-piece band, led by guitarist Matt Dickey and drummer Doron Lev, brings the funk in a big, joyous way. Several cloth panels, hanging above the band like a quilt, capture projected imagery--some hazy, some abstract, some psychedelic--as well as Bob Steineck's luscious, saturated lighting as we hear Harris's musings on his cultural past. His voice--echoey and phantasmal--seems to emerge from out of a cloud or the depths of a dream--but the ingenious, passionate dancing and music speak for themselves.

The New Vic is a family-oriented theater and, at this Saturday matinee, most folks in the audience were small kids in booster seats sitting quiet and polite throughout the show. I kind of longed for an audience of Black teens who'd know just what to do with what we were seeing and hearing! It took a while for any heads to start bopping to the fantastic music--and they were adult heads. I just hope there were youngsters in the audience checking out, in particular, Puremovement soloist Leigh “Breeze-Lee” Foaad whose fluidity, range and poignancy should prove a powerful inspiration.

Rennie Harris Puremovement: Shafeek Westbrook, Katie Cruz, Joshua Culbreath, Phil Cuttino Jr., Tatiana Desardouin, Leigh “Breeze-Lee” Foaad, Mai Lê Hô-Johnson and Yuko “Uko Snowbunny” Tanaka

The Hood Lockers: Ricky “Glytch” Evans, Joshua “J Peazy” Polk, Andrew “Riot” Ramsey and Marcus “Epic” Tucker

Musicians: Shareef Clayton (trumpet), Matt Dickey (Music Director; guitar), Doron Lev (Music Director; drums), Nicholas Marks (keys), Osei Kweku (bass) and FKAjazz (saxophone)

Sound design/composition/production: Darrin Ross
Visual design: Jorge Cousineau
Lighting design: Bob Steineck

Rennie Harris: Funkedified runs through Sunday, June 10. For information and tickets, click here.

New Victory Theater
209 West 42nd Street (between 7th and 8th Avenues), Manhattan
(map/directions)

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Jabo Starks, 79

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Charles Neville, 79

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Keith Spera, The New Orleans Advocate, April 26, 2018

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Ronald Dunbar, 78

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Leon (Ndugu) Chancler, 65

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by Jon Pareles, The New York Times, February 7, 2018

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Clyde Stubblefield, 73

Clyde Stubblefield, the ‘Funky Drummer’ for James Brown, Dies at 73
by Jon Caramanica, The New York Times, February 18, 2017

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Artist activists talk on self-determination, funk and jazz, Saturday

Creative Time and Weeksville Heritage Center

in collaboration with

The Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture

present

Conversations on Self Determination: 

Funk and Jazz

at Weeksville Heritage Center

Saturday, October 4, 3:30-5:30pm

Free 

with required RSVP

Explore music as a soundtrack for social justice. Leading contemporary Brooklyn artists reflect on their art while revisiting the anthems that fortified and consoled the African-American-led struggle for desegregation and equal rights.

Moderator: Una-Kariim A. Cross, artist, writer, and educator

Speakers: Willard Jenkins, jazz writer and radio/TV host; Toshi Reagon, activist, singer, songwriter, and musician working in genres from folk to blues and funk; and Carl Hancock Rux, interdisciplinary performative artist, writer, and playwright.

Performer: Martha Redbone, singer-songwriter and community activist

Click to RSVP

Weeksville Heritage Center
158 Buffalo Avenue (between Bergen Street and St. Marks Avenue), Brooklyn
(map/directions)

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Teenie Hodges, 68

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by Ben Sisario, The New York Times, June 25, 2014

Wayne Henderson, 74

Wayne Henderson, a Founder of the Jazz Crusaders, Dies at 74
by Douglas Martin, The New York Times, April 9, 2014

Let's dance! Rennie Harris rules the Joyce

 

Top: Kyle Clark, Bottom: Ryan Cliett
of Rennie Harris Puremovement
(photos by Brian Mengini)

Rennie Harris Puremovement's just-opened retrospective at The Joyce Theater, running through Sunday, finds Philadelphia's fiery hip hop ensemble dropping knowledge about the best way to stream street and club dance moves through conventional dance venues. We're talking two different worlds here, mainly because of who pays attention to the social, vernacular sphere vs. who pays attention to contemporary theatrical dance and how they pay attention and respond. If those aesthetic borderlines have gotten more porous for dance artists since Harris founded RPHM in 1992 and went on to win strong popular and critical success, give credit to the man for meticulous leadership--laying down a foundation of technical authenticity and skill.

Watching b-boying, voguing and related arts of the body in an official Hall of Dance shifts one's way of seeing: You're looking for a less sporadic and less frontal presentation, something more kaleidoscopic and something with interesting context. You're also looking for kinds of variety and subtlety that the excellent Harris crew are perfectly prepared to show you over a leisurely stretch of time--rhythmic precision, uncommonly supple physicality, footwork that can rival tap dancers for agility and complexity, and a gymnastic approach to the body that utilizes more body surfaces and levels and directional orientation and speed that we're used to. Crazy stuff. It's particularly great to watch the ensemble's women dancers--Danita Clark, Katia Cruz, Mai Le Ho Johnson and Mariah Tlili--no less forceful for adding a gleeful, distinctive juiciness to their propulsion.

The Joyce program, nearly two hours with an intermission, includes the 1997 Rome & Jewels (Harris's striking, award-winning take on Romeo and Juliet crossed with West Side Story, Shakespeare filtered through the ways and lingo of a couple of "star-crossed homies"), Continuum (1997), P-Funk (1992), March of the Antmen (1992) and Students of the Asphalt Jungle (1995).

Rennie Harris Puremovement continues at the Joyce through Sunday, February 2. For schedule and ticketing details, as well as the January 29 Dance Chat and January 31 Master Class information, click here.

The Joyce Theater
175 Eighth Avenue (corner of 19th Street), Manhattan
(directions)

The Apollo celebrates James Brown in dance: my review for TDE

The amazing Derick K. Grant
in Live by Otis Sallid
(photo by Shahar Azrari)

I reviewed the just-closed James Brown: Get on The Good Foot, A Celebration in Dance show at The Apollo Theater for The Dance Enthusiast, and you can find my review by clicking here.

We love Toshi!

By the time you get to the end of January, you might already find 2012 a little played out. But not if you celebrate with award-winning singer/songwriter/musician Toshi Reagon!

Toshi Reagon
(c)2008, Sharon Farmer 

Join Toshi for one of her four annual birthday shows at Joe's Pub (January 26-29) and catch the spirit. Get all the details and your tickets here.

Joe's Pub
425 Lafayette Street (between East 4th Street and Astor Place), Manhattan
(directions: scroll down)

Hollering space in the African diaspora

The Caribbean Cultural Center African Diaspora Institute

presents

Hollering Space: Ring Shout and Leadbelly Tribute

featuring two special performances:


RUN MARY RUN
Rashida Bumbray and the Dance Diaspora Collective
with Special Guest Adenike Sharpley
music by Matthew Hill and Christian Almiron

Leadbelly’s Last Dream
featuring Terence Etc. and The Et Cetera

Tuesday, November 29
Doors open at 7pm.

@Dwyer Cultural Center
258 St. Nicholas Avenue (on the corner of West 123rd Street), Manhattan
(map/directions)

Admission: $10 (free for kids)

RUN MARY RUN
Rashida Bumbray and the Dance Diaspora Collective
With Special Guest Adenike Sharpley
music by Matthew Hill and Christian Almiron

For the premiere of her new dance work, RUN MARY RUN curator and choreographer considers the complex intersections between inspiration, re-interpretation, and creative process, using the harmonic ideas and tonal vocabulary of the McIntosh County Shouters—master ring shout artists—as a point of departure. Developed in collaboration with and performed by the Dance Diaspora Collective with special guest master dancer, Adenike Sharpley, and the Dance Diaspora Collective take us on a ride through the cosmologies of the Low Country, Geechie Sea Islands, Tennessee Blues, P Funk, and Hip Hop relating the shout to the history of Black music as well as to her personal development as a choreographer.

Leadbelly’s Last Dream
Terence Etc. and the Et Cetera

Leadbelly’s Last Dream is a musical experience during which Terence Etc. and The Et Cetera relive the last dream of legendary southern folk musician Leadbelly. Through Blues inspired re-imaginings of Terence's compositions.

For more information, call 212-307-7420 ext. 3008 or email.

Ndegeocello's Prince

Meshell Ndegeocello Covering Prince
by Nate Chinen, The New York Times, June 16, 2011

Olu Dara comes to SummerStage

The renowned Olu Dara comes to Queensbridge Park for a free SummerStage concert this Wednesday, July 29 (7pm).

The veteran avant-garde player combines jazz, simple blues and Caribbean dance rhythms with his unique cornet and trumpet playing to depict stories about life’s simple joys.

Olu Dara Jones is an avant-garde jazz artist known for his eclectic mix of blues, reggae, Caribbean rhythms and funk that connects the dots between his small Mississippi rural hometown and modern urban life. His fusion of free-form jazz with deep blues creates a sound Rolling Stone has describes as a “kind of unpretentious cross-cultural hybrid that feels like real life... music powered by beating hearts and energized by radical collisions.” Dara’s vignette, “Jungle,” from his album In the World From Natchez to New York features his son, rapper Nas, and is a prime example of his ability to link African music with other genres, including hip-hop narratives.

Queensbridge Park -- map and directions
info@SummerStage.org or 212-360-2777