His dance speaks to the streets
Choreographer Rennie Harris's dancers explode onstage, leap in the air, spin on their heads, and flip into somersaults, urging one another on to the percussive beat of hip-hop. Loose and limber in T-shirts and baggy pants, they tell stories with their bodies and astound with their physical prowess.
Long before hip-hop became ubiquitous, Harris put it on the map as a legitimate art form when he founded his company, Rennie Harris Puremovement, in 1992. ''Harris has become the Basquiat of the US contemporary dance scene," a London Sunday Times critic raved.
The years since have seen him continue to transform popular culture into art. ''Hip-hop is a language that speaks to people," Harris says by phone from his base in Philadelphia. ''It emerges spontaneously from the community -- and I'm talking back to its roots in Africa, to urban neighborhoods today. It takes in everything. That's why it's fresh. It's about what's going on right now. If I didn't tap into that, I couldn't create."
Local audiences will be able to see the arc of Harris's creativity when Puremovement performs at Cutler Majestic Theater tonight through Sunday. The repertory program ranges from 1992's groove-filled ''P-Funk" to Harris's work-in-progress solo ''Prince Scarecrow's Road to the Emerald City," based in part on his earlier ''Endangered Species," a searing autobiographical piece about his childhood.
Though some of these works are classics, they won't look exactly the way they did when Harris choreographed them -- or even the way they did last year. That's because hip-hop depends on the individual expression of the dancer. Harris creates the structure of a piece and determines the tone and story line, if any, and then dancers add their own distinctive flavor. If someone's a genius at the graceful boogaloo, at freeze-frame locking, or at down-on-the-floor B-boying, he or she will get a chance to show it.
''It's one of the unspoken rules of hip-hop to highlight the individual," says the tall, handsome Harris, 42, who will perform in the program. ''In our society, individuality is often crushed. Instead we celebrate it. My dancers inspire me. They show me things I haven't seen."
Harris was a professional dancer by the time he was 14 and joined the Fresh Festival, the first organized worldwide hip-hop tour. After starting out choreographing short pieces, he went on to produce two acclaimed full-evening works: ''Rome and Jewels," a B-boy twist on Shakespeare's ''Romeo and Juliet," and ''Facing Mekka," an introspective piece encompassing many cultures that was performed in Boston in 2003.
''I like to investigate," Harris says. ''I'm still a student. I got interested in dance watching old Hollywood musicals, like 'Oklahoma' and 'Stormy Weather.' I loved James Cagney and Ray Bolger. What cats! Could they dance! I've read up on Isadora Duncan and Martha Graham and the innovative Judson Church choreographers. Everything applies."
Harris's openness has made him the idol of many young dancers. When Puremovement arrives in a city, it often draws hundreds of kids. Unlike other choreographers, who audition hopefuls for their companies, he hears about good dancers by word of mouth. He is still deeply connected to his North Philadelphia neighborhood, where he hopes to soon have his own headquarters and school.
''I heard about Rennie as a kid in the ghetto," says Rodney S. Hill, a longtime member of Puremovement. ''I used to watch him in the yard at the YMCA, when he was a member of the Scanner Boys. I always wanted to train with him.
''He gives you something you can't get anywhere else," Hill continues. ''He breaks down the moves in an artistic way. He changes your flow. He choreographs off-beat and on the beat in a very innovative way. But even more important, he relates to our life. 'P-Funk' deals with guys on the street having fun. 'March of the Antmen' [another work on the program] relates the violence on the streets to war. This stuff is about today. He also teaches us about our history. Performing with Rennie is a very spiritual experience."
Harris articulates his vision clearly. ''My goal is to open a small window into the aesthetic of hip-hop culture," he says. ''There's a lot more to it than athletic moves. I use what's second nature to millions of people to tell my stories and theirs. . . . It's what I came up in and where I live. The onlything I did was move it onto the stage."
CRASHarts presents Rennie Harris Puremovement tonight through Sunday at the Cutler Majestic Theatre. Tickets: 617-876-4275, 800-233-3123, www.crasharts.org, www.telecharge.com.
