An exuberant yet somber show celebrates 30 years of Rennie Harris Puremovement’s mission to elevate street dance
Through 11 short works, the evening celebrated the dance company and honored lives lost to gun violence in the city.
The enormous poster currently decorating the Walnut Street side of Penn’s Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts honors a genuine hometown hero: hip-hop legend Rennie Harris, whose eponymous dance company is performing inside the venue this weekend.
To mark the end of the first part of a three-year residency at the center, and to celebrate his troupe’s 30th anniversary, Harris invited everyone who had been a member of Rennie Harris Puremovement to return to Philadelphia. Many did and on Friday night they were all acknowledged onstage, creating the warm atmosphere of a family reunion. Quite a few Harris alumni also danced in the ambitious retrospective program that followed: 11 short works created between 1993 and 2017, ranging from emotionally wrenching narratives to abstract displays of physicality.
The evening began with a brief video tracing Harris’ fascination with the various types of street dance he learned while growing up in North Philadelphia, and stressed Harris’ multipart mission: to present street dance in theaters, giving it the gravitas long accorded to ballet and contemporary dance.
The first half of the program emphasized classic Harris creations, including P-Funk and March of the Antmen, both from 1993. Like the Parliament Funkadelic music to which it is performed, P-Funk combines rich dynamic changes and strong rhythms with broad humor. The unison dancing of eight men was admirably crisp yet left room for individual styles to shine. The audience roared at the seemingly impossible head-spins, flips, and freezes, as dancers routinely launched themselves into the air and twisted their limbs into pretzel shapes. Harris veteran James “Cricket” Colter was a particular crowd favorite for his acrobatic skills.
In contrast, Antmen, set to music composed by the company’s award-winning sound designer and musical director Darrin M. Ross, uses street dance techniques for entirely different emotional and political purposes. Dancer Rodney Mason set the scene by performing a witty monologue that segued into a stylized group representation of a drive-by shooting. Filled with grief and rage, the dancers’ movements called to mind the German Expressionist prints of Käthe Kollwitz or Kurt Jooss’ masterpiece of antiwar modern dance, The Green Table.
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This RHPM program is part of a broader, citywide initiative, “Toll the Bell: A Cry for Peace,” intended to honor victims of gun violence in Philadelphia and beyond, and to search for ways to stop this epidemic. Also relevant to this theme was A Day in the Life. Here, against a red backdrop, two men were beaten by unseen police officers; one of the dancers mimed being shot and the other, unable to save his friend’s life, mourned.
Another extraordinary monologue was delivered by spoken-word artist and dancer d. Sabela Grimes. Sometimes talking and sometimes singing — a cappella, in a soul-stirring voice, while executing smooth, slow gestures — Grimes commented on everything from the practice of posting images of violent death on social media to Donald Trump’s new line of sneakers. The otherwise-exuberant audience was riveted, remaining silent throughout this segment.
Other pieces were far more lighthearted, combining rapid-fire footwork and crisp hand and arm movements with languorous, sensual passages — notably a sequence for three women, led by the spectacular Melanie Cotton. Women played a prominent role in the second part of the program, where Angel Anderson stood out for the fierce intensity of her dancing.
Audience members started cheering during the first seconds of the evening’s final work: Students of the Asphalt Jungle. Five young men, wearing white workout trousers plus sneakers, but no shirts, showed off their dazzling virtuosity — whether executing unison jumps and kicks or trying to outdo one another in brief solos. As exciting as these dancers were, the crowd was even more welcoming to the three RHPM veterans, identically dressed, who joined the group. While they left the most daring, gravity-defying elements to the youngsters, the older performers held their own, and contributed extra layers of meaning to the proceedings.
On opening night there were a few minor glitches: The video had to be restarted; the endings of several pieces were unclear; and the printed program was singularly unhelpful in determining which dancers were performing in which works. But Rennie Harris, the creator of some 30 dances — including several evening-length narrative pieces, and who keeps expanding his educational outreach activities — is going strong at 60. It will be exciting to see what he does during the rest of his Annenberg residency.
Rennie Harris Puremovement American Street Dance Theatre through Saturday, Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts, 3680 Walnut St. Tickets $39 — $69. 215-898-3900 or PennLiveArts.org.