New documentary explores the art of Crutchmaster Bill Shannon

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COMING UP IN NOVEMBER!

CRUTCH, a documentary about the life and artistry of dancer Bill Shannon, will stream its world premiere through DOC NYC on November 11 and be accessible through November 19. A project of award-winning directors Sachi Cunningham and Chandler Evans (aka Vayabobo), the film follows the development of Shannon in his native Pittsburgh as an energetic youngster with a passion for skateboarding, hip hop and basking in the gaze of whatever audience he could find. His diagnosis with Legg-Calvé-Perthes disease--a degenerative condition of the hip--complicated but did not stop his trajectory as a performer. Instead, with crutches that alleviate the pain of walking and dancing, he built a unique movement technique and began experimenting with ways in which performers and audiences interact and how disabled and non-disabled people relate to one another.

CRUTCH is an introduction to Shannon's origin story and family life, his personality and creative process. I recall being immediately smitten with this dancer so sparked by the pulse, intensity and joy of the streets. That might have been in the early 2000s. I have not seen his work since his 2010 excursion through Lower Manhattan, Traffic: A Transit-Specific Performance, with his audience following and viewing him from inside a bus. In the intervening years, New York City's dance presenters and critics have grown more familiar with the spectrum of disability artistry, and this makes me hope that the worth of Shannon's skill and ideas will be better understood today than they were nearly twenty years ago.

CRUTCH (USA, 2020) 

SEE CRUTCH at DOC NYC, November 11-19

Instagram: @crutchdoc
Twitter: https://twitter.com/crutchdoc
IMDb: https://pro.imdb.com/title/tt4441460

 

Ellice Patterson of Abilities Dance Boston (photo:

 AND THIS THURSDAY NIGHT!

Dancer-choreographer Ellice Patterson's troupe, Abilities Dance Boston, which includes performers with and without disabilities, uses dance as a tool to tell stories, process emotions and promote intersectional disability rights with an emphasis on artists of color and queer artists.

Celebrity Series of Boston will stream Abilities Dance Boston's concert (with audio descriptions) this Thursday, October 29 at 8pm EST. 

Tickets for the digital concert are free with your RSVP here.

 
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DISCLAIMER: In addition to my work on InfiniteBody, I serve, at Gibney, as Senior Director of Artist Development and Curation and Editorial Director. The postings on this site are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views, strategies or opinions of Gibney.

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Shamar Wayne Watt and family revisit "Gully spring" at JACK

Shamar Wayne Watt
(photo: Scott Shaw)

This week, Brooklyn's JACK performance space is presenting a new version of Gully spring: Di exhortation, a dance piece by Jamaica-born Shamar Wayne Watt, originally shown on a Gibney program curated by Nora Chipaumire. (See my review of that late 2017 engagement here.) Just short of an hour, the piece centers Afro-Atlantic spirituality as a landscape of resistance to colonial power and the constraints of Eurocentric Christianity. The work embodies and elevates family with the presence of Watt's mother, Valerie Davis, who contributes her choir-singing joy and, now at JACK, brother Lamar Jerome Watt, a Florida-based student athlete and krump dancer.

The center of Gully spring, though, remains the prophet Watt, mounting a platform and revolving and testifying beneath the ongoing baptismal drip of a gallon jug of water suspended above his head. I recall, from Gibney's promotion, that he declared a new religion of his own making, drawn from African-Jamaican traditions and Pentecostal worship as well as the political awareness and urgency of the moment. Is it not fitting and right that he administer his own benediction?

You have one last chance to witness this performance I called "exhortative, magnetic, formidable" this evening at JACK (8pm). For information and tickets, click here.

JACK
505 ½ Waverly Ave, Brooklyn
C or G train to Clinton-Washington

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DISCLAIMER: In addition to my work on InfiniteBody, I serve as Senior Curatorial Director of Gibney. The postings on this site are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views, strategies or opinions of Gibney.

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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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These Full Circle Souljahs refuse to be “Boxed in”

Kwikstep (left) and Rokafella
of Full Circle Souljahs
(photo: Ian Douglas)

From start to finish--and even throughout its post-show Q&A--Full Circle Souljahs's Boxed In aims to smack down barriers between dance techniques and traditions as well as who can and should perform what. If you think you've got classical ballet over here in this corner and street dance way over there on that far end and maybe a few discrete modern and postmodern things floating between, this hour-long show will simply break up alla that.

Holding court at Danspace Project now through Saturday evening, the troupe is the winning handiwork of two famed Bronx street dance veterans--the married couple of Kwikstep and Rokafella. Diverse in race and ethnicity, Full Circle Souljahs collective is also remarkable for its performers' diverse training background. And that's the point of Boxed In. What all have in common is a passion to do their art, to perform, and most have eagerly soaked up experience from all sectors of their art. Watch stately Shaneekqua Woodham and gymnast-sleek Odylle "Mantis" Beder switch gears from ballet to b-girl moves, you realize that you're looking at the smart, multiple dimensions of today's youth and their can-do spirit.

The show includes sequences that suggest the two choreographers might have Broadway audiences in mind--for example, the cirque nouveau-style Cyr wheel hooping of Gabriel "Emphasis" Alvarez who eventually puts distance between himself and some vaguely menacing characters in commedia dell'arte masks. The piece deals with issues of ambition, the temptation to sell out and the wonder of freeing your creativity to work outside of set rules, categories and expectations.

It’s the sort of show that would be great for youngsters, and there were many in the smallish opening night audience with parents plus a contingent of college students. People I did not see: the typical “downtown” Danspace Project audience. The troupe has two more shows, and—who knows?—that might change. But maybe the message they’re bringing—step out of whatever box confines you—needs to reach more of us.

Performers: Raymond “Spex” Abbiw, Jennifer “Beasty” Acosta, Gabriel “Emphasis” Alvarez, Odylle “Mantis” Beder, Michael Bond (pianist), Gabriel "Kwikstep" Dionisio (aka DJ KS 360), Deana Richline,  Sharmaine Sheppard, Gene Shinozaki(beatbox), Janice Tomlinson, John “Flonetik” Vinuya, Shaneekqua Woodham

Lighting: Carol Mullins

Boxed In continues through Saturday, May 19 with 8pm performances at Danspace Project. For information and tickets, click here.

Danspace Project
131 East 10th Street (at 2nd Avenue), Manhattan
(map/directions)

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At Harlem Stage, e-Moves celebrates contemporary dance artists of Africa and diaspora

Nubian Néné, one of the pop-up performers
for this season's e-moves festival of dance at Harlem Stage
(photo: Alain Wong)

Omari Mizrahi on the move for e-moves
at Harlem Stage
(photo: Robert Bader)

OMG! How to decide what shows to see this season? There's an abundance of worthwhile--indeed, downright exciting--dance productions around the city. I know the struggle well! So, please don't start throwing things when I urge you to get to yet another one: Monique Martin's e-Moves dance festival at Harlem Stage, running only through this weekend.

Martin's focus for this season is on Africa-based or Africa-diasporan artists exploring contemporary dance, as opposed to more-expected folkloric work from the continent. She has chosen Zimbabwe-born Nora Chipaumire, Lacina Coulibaly (Burkina Faso) and Ousmane Wiles/Omari Mizrahi (Senegal). Each evening also highlights dances by women choreographers in pop-up performances curated by Adesola Osakalumi. Viewers will see new, commissioned works as well as pieces re-imagined for the unique (and uniquely beautiful) space at Harlem Stage.

Chipaumire has reset her famous solo, Dark Swan (2007), on Shamar Watt, a man. Years ago, I saw the choreographer dance it; quite recently, I was fortunate to see Watt show it in a tiny corner of Chelsea's Rubin Museum where I sat perhaps not more than a foot away from him. Both artists are electrifying. But the visual intensity of this iteration for Harlem Stage is enhanced by the meeting of the brooding darkness of the space and the stark, handheld light trained on Watt and his white shirt. Dark Swan re-purposes a Russian ballet archetype as a symbol and expression of resistance, paying tribute to the determination of Africa's women.

Coulibaly adapted to the loss of his partner, Ibrahim Zongo--due to visa issues--for this world premiere of his duet, Sen Koro la (The Rite of Initiates). He adapted so beautifully, in fact, that when the audience was later informed that the "solo" we had watched was meant to be a duet, some of us gasped in surprise. I can't say that I saw much of Coulibaly's stated intention to promote "the humanity and culture of Africa, compelling the audience to appreciate its great diversity and immense cultural wealth," and I doubt this particular audience was in need of that sort of prompting. But we were treated to a solo of poetic sensitivity around timing (inhabiting the lush, flowing music but finding its own inquiry, thoughtfulness and response within it) and its own validity as a work of art. I do look forward to seeing Zongo some day, though--and, of course, much more of what Coulibaly has to offer.

A group of performers, billed as Les Ballet Afrik and led by Wiles (who dances as Omari Mizrahi), brought the house down with the celebratory Sila Djiguba (A Path to Hope). Here, music and moves of West Africa, AfroBeat, House and Vogue styles seamlessly and joyfully intersect. The young dancers making their unforgettable debut as a troupe alongside Wiles were Craig D Washington, Eva Moore, Milerka Rodriguez, Shireen Rahimi, Algin Ford, Yuhee Yang, Yuki Sukezane. I also enjoyed the masterful "pop-up" performance by Nubian Néné (of A Lady in the House Dance Company) in her solo, S T A N C E, another tribute to the self-determination and courage of women of the Black diaspora.

e-Moves continues tonight, Friday and Saturday with all performances at 7:30pm. For information and tickets, click here.

Harlem Stage
150 Convent Avenue, Manhattan
(map/directions)

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Memories: FAB x MR DANCE BLOCK SALON Spring '17

FAB x Movement Research: DANCE BLOCK SALON

Abrons Arts Center -- March 28, 2017

facilitated by Eva Yaa Asantewaa

All photos 

©Deneka Peniston

Fourth Arts Block (FABnyc) paired up Movement Research for their first collaborative Dance Block Salon. The organizations invited artists from their respective communities to show work in an atmosphere of non-judgmental sharing, radical support and community building. 

I was honored and thrilled to be asked to facilitate the evening and guide the feedback sessions.

Artists showing work included Rina Espiritu, Jenny Boissiere & Dancers, Cain Coleman of ColemanCollective and Shantelle Courvoisier Jackson.

Staff, presenting artists and dancers
gather in Abrons's studio G05 before the salon.

Introducing the evening:
Nadia Tykulsker, FABnyc Director of Programs (above)
Lindsey Dietz Marchant, Movement Research Managing Director (below)

Eva Yaa Asantewaa

Above: Jenny Boissiere talks about her work.
Below: Cain Coleman performs.

Choreographer Shantelle Courvoisier Jackson,
above and below

Shantelle Courvoisier Jackson's troupe performs.

Above: Rina Espiritu listens to audience feedback.
Below: Dance artist Heather Robles hugs Espiritu after feedback session.

Small, intimate feedback groups for each choreographer
encouraged easygoing participation.

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We always win: Marguerite Hemmings and friends at JACK

Marguerite Hemmings
(photo: Delwin Kamara)

Look and see. Black women make and hold space within dance for everything to come through.

The latest example of this is To Make Ready Again, an evening of performance and discussion offered by Jamaica-born dance artist Marguerite Hemmings, four dance colleagues, singer/musician Solo Woods and drummer Themba Mkhatshwa. It opened at JACK, the small Brooklyn venue famously decorated with crinkly aluminum foil; its run concludes tonight at 8pm.

Inspired by the writing of Ta-Nehisi Coates, JACK plans a year-long focus on exploring and expansively defining concepts of reparations in a program entitled Reparations365: From Memory to Movement (February 2017-January 2018). One primary insight already surfaced in community discussions is that monetary value cannot be placed on historic trauma, true justice and healing. It's hard to imagine and calculate in any realistic, satisfying way. Repair and restoration come not from the outside but from within vulnerable yet profoundly resourceful individuals and their communities.

Hemmings's we free multimedia series, of which To Make Ready Again is a part, draws from her knowledge of African diasporan street dance styles, social dancing, hip hop and dancehall, and her work, she says, centers around liberation. In TMRA, she's joined by powerhouse dancers--Courtney J. Cook, Jaimé Dzandu, Katrina Reid and Italy Welton--who whisper and conspire, laugh and vocalize, activating the space in ways both protectively intimate and boldly assertive. A loving circle, a sinuous warrior force, a reservoir of care and uncomplicated joy, they channel and filter even the male vocal energy of hip hop through grounded bodies. Their frequent broad stance roots them into the floor and earth below, freeing up torsos, shoulders and arms for hair-trigger action whenever, wherever necessary. They dance the ancestors through and make their mark on a world they wish to manifest.

Black women like Hemmings--a founding member of the emerging Black women and gender non-conforming collective The Skeleton Architecture--are dancing liberation and reparation. "Bring it down, and spread it all around." And remember, "We always win."

Lighting design: Nikita Maturine
Set design: Zunnania Anderson

To Make Ready Again concludes with a performance this evening at 8pm. For information and tickets, click here.

JACK
505 1/2 Waverly, Brooklyn
(map/directions)

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12th Annual Barnard/Columbia Dances at New York Live Arts

No, these Barnard and Columbia dance students do not play. In several performances this weekend at New York Live Arts, they stepped up and nailed four demanding works--Sasha Waltz's Fantasie (2006), staged by Kevin Quinaou, and three world premieres by David Thomson, Joanna Kotze and Jennifer Archibald. And if yesterday's matinee left me absolutely sure I've seen enough of dancers running--Waltz, I'm looking at you in particular, though not exclusively--it also underscored the strengths of the Barnard College dance training. The quicksilver versatility, commitment and stamina of these young performers are impressive. As for the new works, I can say--again, with utmost certainty--that Archibald's Shades ruled the day. Dramatically lit by Tricia Toliver, it's the perfect hip hop video gone live at New York Live Arts, and some movement looks compelling simply because it's danced in unison, spread over and magnified by a mass of fourteen bodies. But the dancers bring everything into lasar-sharp focus. This one's worth a repeat. Presenters, I hope you're reading this! Worth a repeat.

Congratulations to all the dancers, all the choreographers and everyone at Barnard College Department of Dance.

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Phife Dawg, 45

Tribe Called Quest star Phife Dawg dies aged 45
by Mark Savage, BBC News, March 23, 2016

Meet Mix’d Ingrdnts, Oakland's all-women street dance troupe

‪Women Dancers Redefine Oakland’s Street Dancing Scene
by Emma Silvers, KQED Arts, November 12, 2015

Hip Hop showing and workshop with David Sincere Aiken

TOPAZ ARTS is thrilled to present Queenz Finest David Sincere Aiken for an informal showing of his latest choreography and Hip Hop workshop. As one of TOPAZ ARTS’ early dance video projects back in 2001, we are proud to present this rising star, David Sincere who is back from Los Angeles, originally from South Jamaica Queens, to bring a taste of his new moves. David Sincere’s style is a fusion of NY Hip Hop, African and Reggae style dance topped off with a technical approach. Come for an informal showing and take a workshop as Sincere and Friends prepare for upcoming shows in April 2015.

Hip Hop with David Sincere Aiken

Sunday, March 22, 4pm

Free, suggested $10 donation encouraged

RSVP by email: rsvp@topazarts.org or on Facebook

For complete details, click here.

TOPAZ ARTS
55-03 39th Avenue, Woodside, Queens
(map and directions)

ASAP Yams, 26

ASAP Yams, Creative Force in Hip-Hop, Dies at 26
by Emma Fitzsimmons, The New York Times, January 18, 2015

A Hip-Hop ‘Spirit Guide’ and Online Taste Maker

ASAP Yams, of ASAP Worldwide, Bridged Hip-Hop Regions and Generations
by Jon Caramanica, The New York Times, January 18, 2015

Larry Smith, 63

Larry Smith, Hip-Hop Producer, Dies at 63
by Jon Caramanica, The New York Times, December 22, 2014

Black Violin schools 'em in Brooklyn

Black Violin co-founders
Kevin "Kev Marcus" Sylvester, left, and Wil "Wil B" Baptiste
(photo courtesy Black Violin)

The entire world, it seems, knew about Black Violin...except for me. I feel really bad about that. Here are a couple of Black guys from South Florida who became virtuosos of classical strings and then proceeded to turn all that upside down/inside out by folding in hip hop, blues, roots music, rock and more. No lumps in that batter, just streaming, massive energy that does not quit or let you just sit there stony-faced.

Photo: Colin Brennan Photography

Kevin "Kev Marcus" Sylvester (violin) and Wil "Wil B" Baptiste (viola, piano, vocals) and fellow band members have appeared everywhere from Harlem's Apollo Theater to Obama's Inaugural balls to three Super Bowls. They have accompanied Alicia Keys, opened for Kanye West and collaborated with Aerosmith and Aretha Franklin. They've played for our troops in Iraq and wowed a lot of school kids while advising them to "reach for the stars."

So it was time for my ears to join in and, happily, Brooklyn Center for the Performing Arts set the stage, yesterday afternoon, with a brilliant, family-oriented show.

Black Violin, including bandmembers DJ TK on turntables and Nathaniel Stokes on drums,
at Brooklyn Center for the Performing Arts, Brooklyn College
(photo:Tracey Wood Mendelsohn)

Completely informal and accessible, Kev Marcus and Wil B have great spirit. They also know how to rev up a crowd with a show that flows steady, hardly ever easing off the intensity. They allow no time to question the mix of genres or the unusual way instruments can be played. It's only too bad that the sound muffled quite a lot of their lyrics at the Brooklyn show, but here's the ultimate message, courtesy of....Yes, folks: Last year, they made a TED Talk! Check out the performance of "Virtuoso" at the end.

I promise I will not miss future Black Violin performances in New York, and neither should you. Keep up with Black Violin here.

For news on future events at Brooklyn Center for the Performing Arts--including appearances by Sweet Honey in the Rock, Ladysmith Black Mambazo, The Klezmatics, National Dance Theatre Company of Jamaica and Eddie Palmieri's Latin Jazz Septet--click here.

Brooklyn Center welcomes South Florida's Black Violin

Black Violin:
Wil B (left) and Kev Marcus

Brooklyn Center for the Performing Arts

presents

Black Violin

Saturday, November 22, 2pm

They've played Harlem's Apollo (and won Amateur Night three times). They've played Obama's Inaugural Ball. They've collaborated with everyone from Aerosmith to Aretha Franklin. And now they this classically trained violin duo and their band return to Brooklyn with their unique blend of classical, hip-hop, jazz, blues, and R&B in a program for youth and everyone who loves irresistible music.

Recommended for ages eight and up. 

For more information and ticketing, click here.

For more information on Black Violin, click here.

Brooklyn Center for the Performing Arts

Walt Whitman Theatre at Brooklyn College

2/5 trains to Brooklyn College/Flatbush Avenue
(map/directions)

Brazil's passinho dancers in US debut at LC Out of Doors

A Batalha do Passinho dancers
Below: Batalha host Zuzuka Poderosa
(c)2014, Eva Yaa Asantewaa

When New York's summer weather cooperates, as it certainly did last evening, Lincoln Center Out of Doors can be a great way to soak up and savor the positive energy of arts from nearly everywhere in our world. Last night's show brought an organized group of performers of passinho, the Rio de Janeiro party dance, in their US debut together with Rennie Harris Puremovement, the celebrated Philly troupe that revolutionized a sophisticated blending of hip-hop moves with more conventional dance theater techniques and aesthetics.

Three luminaries of New York's urban and contemporary dance scene
served as the passinho battle's judges.
Left to right: Rokafella, Akim Funk Buddha and Doug Elkins
(c)2014, Eva Yaa Asantewaa

A Batalha do Passinho dancers (c)2014, Eva Yaa Asantewaa
The showcase was created in 2011 by co-artistic director Julio Ludemir
after this Rio favela dance trend went viral on YouTube.

Opening the two-hour show, the Brazilians burst on the stage with a rawness and sense of adventure and fun that would be hard to top. Rapidfire twisting of their feet made their bent legs look like massive, lethal grinders. The daunting contortions of flexing and bone breaking, the smooth illusions of moonwalking, b-boying acrobatics, Cossack folkdance and even voguing all flow through passinho, offered in a spirit of good-natured competitiveness. The batalha (battle) format of the Brazilian presentation, facilitated by the merry host, Zuzuka Poderosa, gave the Lincoln Center audience an active investment in the proceedings as we watched closely to make distinctions between the competitors' styles and specialties.

Marcelly Miss Passista,
champion of the Lincoln Center batalha
(c)2014, Eva Yaa Asantewaa

The Brazilian dancers trained our eyes for a kind of reckless derring-do that seem combed out of the silky, glamorously sexy Puremovement with Harris's oddly safe, placid approach to arranging dancers across a stage--line them up, slide the frontal lines side to side. It's funny to come away feeling that I would have preferred to see Puremovement "where they belong now"--in formal, and well-managed, indoor staging. Put a frame around them.

The interesting encounter and dialogue of troupes that could have been did not pan out. Maybe next time both crews could be tossed together in a residency to experiment and cook up something surprising.

New York knows and loves Rennie Harris's endless seductions, the way his dancers' bodies bounce like rubber against air as if it were a hard surface; the way they float inside and around the edges of music's rhythms, each body addressing multiple, discrete segments of time in individual ways even when everyone's working the same moves. Puremovement demonstrates the basic silliness of trying to make dance where everyone looks exactly like everyone else, where visual homogeneity is privileged. Everything offered up is going to be a little different, according to who gives it, and that's a fine, instructive thing.

*****

There's much more to come from the Lincoln Center Out of Doors festival, running through through August 10--all programs absolutely free. Click here for a schedule of events including tomorrow's 1pm Family Day dance class with dancers from A Batalha do Passinho!

Lincoln Center Out of Doors
Damrosch Park Bandshell, Lincoln Center
West 62nd Street between Columbus and Amsterdam Avenues, Manhattan
(map/directions)

What I learned: Cuba's Danay Suárez, "Yo Aprendí"

Danay Suárez Web site

Danay Suárez Facebook page

Latin Alternative Music Conference

(New York City, July 8-12)

Esther Bejarano: Her voice rings clear, still

Amid the Rap Music, Echoes of an Orchestra Playing in a Dark Past
Survivor of Auschwitz Ensemble Teams Up With German Hip-Hop Duo
by Sally McGrane, The New York Times, June 27, 2014

HyperISH: Taking it from street to stage

Who's afraid?

These two words are the first uttered in HyperISH, an hour of power presented by the Amsterdam-based troupe ISH at The New Victory Theater, now through May 18. Dancers begin by creeping out under hazy light, wobbling atop a row of drab, ungainly platforms to woozy music--the first and last time you'll believe that any of these seven rambunctious men and women have ever suffered a moment of fear.

Founded in 1999 by Marco Gerris, ISH draws from diverse sources--hip hop, club dancing, acrobatics, ballet, Kathak, capoeira and other martial arts. A choreographic collision for sure, but you'll be happy to know that it works, thanks to Gerris's imagination and the outlandish talent and charisma of dancers like Micka Karlsson, Shailesh Bahoran and especially the unbelievable Martin Barnes. What does not work so well is Gerris's well-intentioned concept, a mess of dramaturgidity obviously aimed at young audiences.

When it is not just about fantastic dancing, HyperISH is sort of about alienation, about finding one's True Self despite the distractions and pressures of conformist, consumerist society, about our obsession with cyber-connectedness and being liked and...Liked. And so forth. The Catcher in the Rye has been cited as an inspiration. It tries way too hard.

But let the dancing help you forget all that. Don't overthink this show. Just go and watch what happens.

HyperISH runs through May 18. For program and ticket information, click here.

New Victory Theater
209 West 42nd Street (Times Square), Manhattan
(map/directions)

Securing New York's hip hop history

Hip-Hop Pioneers Plan a Museum for the Bronx
by Winnie Hu, The New York Times, March 12, 2014