KVT – Hip Hop Dance “Faces”

THE WRINKLY ONE HIP HOPS

If I was a kid again I just know that I’d be into the hip hop dance scene and I’d be breaking, locking, and popping with the best of them and if I had real talent I’d try to follow in the footsteps of dancers like Raphael Hillebrand and Sebastian Ramirez who have been able to take the moves off the street and into the realm of good contemporary dance theater. They’ve often removed the choreography from its street music roots and away from the predictable ‘battle’ scenario, in fact I can even imagine them choreographing a piece to the third or fifth Brandenburg concertos in their original form, but more specifically to music especially composed for them. As a brilliant example see the following:

At the Youth Theater on Friday night it was invigorating to be amongst all the adolescents there to cheer some of their iconic Vietnamese dancers as they performed a piece collaboratively devised by them and the German maestros. The testosterone floating up the tiers of seats was palpable. They all knew about their mob’s successes in hip hop competitions in Korea and Singapore.

The performance was a reprise of one done by the ten boys plus one girl a couple of years ago. At times it was really good theater, occasionally it was very good contemporary dance, and mostly it was an exceptionally good and refined version of what some of the best hip hopsters/hoppers/or whatever in East Asia can do. The music, mostly played really well on Vietnamese classical percussion instruments, was foot tapping and hand clapping stuff.

As Vietnam has a young population, full of energy and often with body rhythms that dazzle it’s no wonder that hip hop is a huge sub culture and its really good that Goethe has been able to fund the two German dancers to assist the locals push their talent in challenging directions and it’s obvious that the next challenge is not to be content with just another reprise of ‘Faces’ but rather a new dance that pushes, breaks, drops and pops into new dimensions.

I was one of the few wrinklies in the audience and enjoyed it as much as the cheering kids all around…..and if all of my hip hop terminologies are out of sync then please forgive me…but if I was 16 again I bet I’d be able to give the best of you youngsters a run for your hip hop money (except for those head-spins which I certainly wouldn’t do without a hard hat on…..but, then, if I was 16 ….!! ).