Breakdancing, he points out, “came about as an alternative to fighting”. That function is even more obvious in the latest hip-hop dance craze, krumping. Featured in Madonna’s Hung Up video, and spotlighted in David LaChapelle’s recent documentary Rize, krumping arose in the badlands of South Central LA. It grew from the unlikely soil of another dance style, clowning, developed in 1992 by the social activist and children’s entertainer Tommy Johnson, aka Tommy the Clown.
Despite its distant origins in kiddie’s birthday parties, krumping throws together elements such as African warrior poses and what one krumper describes as “slappy-ass stripper moves”, along with a characteristic back-flexing oscillation of the upper body, like a frigate bird in full court. It is, literally, breast-beating — that near-universal act of intimidation and claim for territory. Dancers, all of whom belong to tribal “families”, face off against each other in arenas or battle zones, carrying out gang warfare by other means.
So, when hip-hop comes to the theatre, the archetype it naturally looks to is Romeo and Juliet. Philadelphia-born Rennie Harris’s Rome and Jewels — which came to Britain five years ago — was a production so caught up in the turf war between the Monster Qs and Caps that it didn’t even bother to cast a Juliet. Rumble, which won a Fringe First prize at Edinburgh in 2004, is another newer take on Shakespeare’s love (and death) story. As its director, Markus Michalowski, acknowledges: “It is the obvious choice, really.”
At least this time we get to see the girl — though she is a contemporary dancer, not a hip-hopper. The confrontations between the families feature all the classic breakdance stunts and spins. But when it comes to the more tender moments, Michalowski says: “We wanted that to be a fusion in styles. A difficulty with hip-hop is the intensity — a dancer throws out everything he has in one minute, and we have to balance using this high energy without having the audience quickly tire of it.” Which begs the question: how versatile is hip-hop, and is there life for it in theatre beyond the quick bits of Romeo and Juliet?
As an exercise, Michalowski would play Miles Davis and ask the hip-hoppers to do their normal moves to this new, more languid beat. “Some resisted — they thought it would change their sexuality, even. But we found if they hold back the energy, it becomes sensual and emotional.” He is planning to use this discovery in a new piece based on Euripides’ The Bacchae. But before that happens, the next few weeks offer a slew of opportunities to assess the rude health of theatrical hip-hop.
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ZooNation’s Into the Hoods is a witty pastiche of Sondheim’s Into the Woods, featuring a cast of cleverly urbanised fairy-tale characters, from Spinderella to Lil’ Red (with her trademark hoodie). ZooNation is as much about social outreach as putting on a show, and the artistic director, Kate Prince, has managed to shoehorn 21 kids on stage, along with a talented cast of 19 professional dancers, who between them have worked with everyone from 50 Cent to Kylie. With its engaging story line, a string of gags and a soundtrack that manages to include Prince and Whitney Houston, Into the Hoods must be one of the most West End-friendly hip-hop shows ever.
On the same bill, Hakeem Onibudo and Impact Dance’s Underworld — inspired by the horror film of the same name — clings to more familiar themes of gang rivalry and integration, this time between werewolves and vampires. It innovates, though, in giving each tribe its own unique dance language — crouched and splay-fingered for the wolfmen, more erect, sharp and faintly voguish for the vampires. Onibudo points out that there is no full-time graduate course for hip-hop in this country, because “they say we don’t have the movement vocabulary”. But hip-hop has vocabulary to burn. From popping to locking, uprock to electric boogaloo, every style, every move is codified, to the point where Jonzi D believes that “hip-hop has more in common with ballet than with contemporary dance”.
His TAG... Me vs The City, also opening this week, is a more abstract piece of hip-hop theatre, using dancers as wiggling, dripping human graffiti to bring alive the inner world of a compulsive “sprayer”. Like Hakeem Onibudo and Kate Prince, Jonzi D is in his thirties. “And I haven’t grown out of hip-hop into ballet,” he says. “And I never will. Like it or not, hip-hop is a grown-up piece of our culture, and it’s not going away.”
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Rumble is at the QEH, SE1, Thu and Fri, then touring until Mar 26; TAG is at Nottingham Playhouse, Tue-Sat, then touring until Mar 18; Underworld and Into the Hoods are at the Peacock, WC2, Fri and Sat