
Performers
Hatim Kamel Ryan Chappell Lil Flex Martine Muncaster Rachel Yau Tristan Coulter Caramel Lil' Cesar DJ Hazze Teneisha Bonner Safwaan Shoshoni Tommy Franzen Any Butterfield Anika Berhang
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Bounce
Sadler's Wells 24 August - 14 September 2002
All art started in the streets, and the newest recruit to the vocabulary of dance and movement has arrived from there too, in the form of break dancing, boogaloo, popping, locking, swing and tap – in short, the whole "hip-hop" dance ethos. It is vigorous, athletic, demotic, and democratic, needing only a driving beat and a flat-enough few square inches of anything on which to spin on your head, leap into a hand-stand, or contort about until the audience is sure all the dancers will get twisted gut. That isBounce, and it is a pleasure to see. Who dances, as well what the dance is, matters: so we need to know that the energetic ensemble includes names to conjure with: WilPower, DJ Hazze and Lil' Cesar, all of them members of LA's "Air Force Crew", which the promotional material says is world-renowned. If sheer motility is a guarantee of universal fame, this crew deserves it. In an effort to vary the tempo and introduce some narrative structure, there is a slow, meaningful section just after half way, with allusions to death and murder, war and sorrow, survival and tenderness. It half-works; perhaps the genre is inapt for this part of the human emotional range; certainly it was a relief when the flow of energy restarted, and with it the wit, dash, dazzle and flight that makes this form of half-dance, half-gymnastics such an enjoyment. For a vicariously cathartic evening it is hard to better. AC Grayling
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