I love when the classic newspaper dance critics describe hip-hop.  They’re called “dance critics” but that really means “mainly a ballet critic” because ballets are frequent, funded, old, organized, and scheduled in advance.  They play well with newspapers.

It’s more difficult to pin down hip-hop.  Where does it happen?  Who is the teacher and who is the star?  Do hip-hoppers know that unlaced footwear is unsafe?  To an old-school dance critic, I would imagine that nothing about hip-hop fits ballet’s mold.  So it can be a little awkward to read a writer, versed in the tightly-zipped ways of classical ballet, tackle street dance.  There’s always a whiff of “oh-my-nerves-those-pants-are-low.”

New York Times dance critic, Alastair Macaulay, is best when he’s dissecting classical ballet.  However his wide-eyed description of Sadler Wells Breakin’ Convention is, in a word, cute:

I was aware of [hip-hop] in Britain in the early ’80s, but I had not appreciated quite how far-flung or how diverse it has become until this event…Junior, a powerfully built young French Congolese man, gave a one-man show in the which his feet often never met the ground.  He specializes in off-kilter handstands; he can run on his hands; once, he skittered across the stage by hopping in triplets - on alternate hands.  At first I assumed he was never going to stand upright!

I doubt that in the hip-hop world, they’re refered to as “off-kilter handstands.”

This entry was posted Tuesday, May 19th, 2009 at 9:23 pm and is filed under Les Bon Mots, Reviews. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.