Christina’s Score 2 stars
Two Crews at Carriageworks is an attempt to bring Hip Hop street dance battle to the theatre space as part of Sydney Festival 2020. Choreographed by Nick Power, Two Crews sees a combination of both freestyle and choreographed movements performed by two crews, all female Parisian crew Lady Rocks and Sydney crew Riddim Nation.
Somewhat ambitious in his intention, Power’s challenge was to translate, what is still in Australia a definitely sub-cultural artform, by bringing the Hip Hop dance battle into the performative space of the theatre floor whilst maintaining its form and essence. Power did this by interweaving the work of two unrelated crews together (Lady Rocks and Riddim Nation) structured both as a battle and as a series of choreographed sections. Staged on a musical landscape composed by Jack Prest, Two Crews brought an international groove to the Sydney Festival stage.
What was lost in bringing the ‘battle’ into the theatre space, was the rawness, the dirt, the competition and heightened emotion that is usually palpable in both the crews and onlookers in a real street battle. Part of this was impacted by placing the crews within a choreographed structure to create a ‘show’. The other thing that is lost is the close relationship that the street-dancer has to the audience, traditionally locked in a symbiotic relationship where the audience ‘hypes’ the performer, feeding energy to the dancer, leading the dancer to respond by dancing harder and harder.
What was gained by bringing this style of dance to the theatre space was in creating the battle as a spectacle. The most beautiful moment happening when Riddim Nation member, Gabriela Quinsacara stepped out from her crew into the light, working herself gently across the stage using Polynesian dance movements interspersed with pops which truly offered something new and interesting. The lighting of the stage by Matthew Marshall and the concentrated rhythm of Prest’s musical movement combined to create both stillness and a mounting intensity.
Both Power and Sydney Festival both profit and suffer from an environment where Hip Hop dance is still not given the respect and due that it deserves. Whilst other dance forms that have greater representation within the neo colonial landscape are treated with a critical eye and honour and hold up dancers and choreographers that showcase the best that hard-work and dedication have to offer, Hip Hop dance is still in a holding pattern where ‘any-one will do’ and is not treated with the same rigour and artistic attention that they deserve and any kind of bastardisation of the real thing is treated as ‘just as good’ as the real thing.
Whilst I applaud Sydney Festival for investing in a Hip Hop piece, for me, placing an assortment of dancers some trained, some not, with sloppy locking, popping that lacked the finesse and finetuning that comes with time, training and practice on a platform that harder-working more highly-skilled Australian dancers have been denied for decades is insulting to say the least. I found the show as a whole very one note and unsurprising which as a lover of Hip Hop dance continues to be frustrating.
Much of the audience enjoyed the repeated grooves, house rhythms and party atmosphere that was created and sustained by both crews throughout the performance, proclaiming to be emotionally moved. Children within the audience enjoyed the show equally and its short duration lends itself to a young audience.
Christina Donoghue, Theatre Now
