Hip-Hop Dancers 'Break' Down Racial Barriers

Author: Alexandra Hay

From walking onstage in an ape-suit to dodging bullets "matrix" style, Clyde Evans and his dancers played with the absurdly humorous while delivering an engaging and thoughtful presentation of hip-hop culture.
Gathering early outside the Dance Theatre doors on Friday night for the 8 p.m. show, the crowd proved to be an equal mix of college students, town kids and older Middlebury residents curious to see what a hip-hop performance would include.
The show maintained an informal atmosphere throughout, with Evans introducing himself at the start and complaining of the cold weather and road conditions: "Our car was blue when we left Philadelphia, by the time we got to Vermont, it was gray."
Evans and the four support dancers, Andreas Johnson, Andrew Ramsey, Ryheem Thomas and Timothy Zimnoch, arrived late Thursday and spent the evening eating at The Grille or "breaking" with the College's break-dancing group, G.T.V.T.
After the performance Friday they joined the average Middlebury student in the search for a party and spent the evening hanging out on campus.
Indeed, most of the dancers seemed like college kids -- more like a group of friends having fun on stage than professional performers. But the informal atmosphere and the personality of the dancers made the show engaging and spontaneous: a spectator could tell that the dancers regularly forgot their moves, or played off of each other in the skits.
The moves weren't improvised, they were real. There weren't characters onstage but Johnson, Ramsey, Thomas and Zimnoch being themselves. As Evans said, "This is us onstage, this is our life we're sharing with you."
Evans was obviously the more experienced performer, and the show centered on his dance skits, story-telling and abstract representations of hip-hop culture, while the others played supporting roles.
With dialogue and mime, they performed exaggerated handshakes, slinking around an imaginary city-block to show off for the girls before moving into a hip-hop routine with standard break-dancing moves delivered in less-than-perfect unison.
The real strength of the performance lay in the athletic beauty of the dancing itself, but some were disappointed that the show involved so much play-acting and story-telling, as Lauren Fredston-Hermann '06 commented, "I wish they did more dancing!"
In general, however, audience members loved the show and showed how their appreciation with a standing ovation.
To finish the show, the group invited the G.T.V.T performers onstage and formed half of a traditional break-dancing circle, facing the audience.
One at a time the dancers up-rocked into the center and showed what they were really capable of with breathtaking handstands, spins and turns.
The natural, spontaneous movements generated by the atmosphere of the circle were the highlights of the show.
If only moves like those could be choreographed into a full dance production! But the true power of hip-hop would be lost without its spontaneity.
College students and Middlebury town residents got a chance to attempt Evans' hip-hop styling at two workshops Friday and Saturday.
Evans warned the participants to expect to feel silly, and as they hopped across the floor head-first, trying to emulate the smooth, cool undulation of his body as he demonstrated the move, many felt, and in fact looked, very silly indeed (including the writer of this article).
But with Evans' cheery enthusiasm and encouragement, everyone had a great time.
Entitled "Belittled Pieces of the Puzzle," the five pieces that made up the performance presented the city life that developed hip-hop, reciting "yo-mama" jokes after spoofing the "poetic voice" and bemoaning the fate of black men in America.
The audience didn't seem quite sure whether to laugh or watch respectfully as the dancers played a slow-motion parody of a baseball game in order to tell the audience to "take your opportunity when it comes, and if you miss, that's okay, it's America," as the dancer at bat misses the first slow-motion pitch and hits a home-run on the second pitch.
Jenny April Kaplan '06 commented that the performance "could have been more serious about itself," and at times it seemed as though the humor was used as a protective mask freeing the dancers to express themselves.
At one point in the show Evans told his own story of coming to America from Trinidad & Tobago, and how his friend Trevor showed him the ropes. "When people call you names like nigger, Trevor said, you have to get mad and prepare to fight to defend the integrity of your color," he said.
But as Evans pointed out, "the only people calling me names were the same color as me. I kept waiting for somebody different to come around that I could fight, and when it finally happened and I had someone to fight, I realized it wasn't me."
Evans ended the show by thanking God and asking the audience to repeat after him: "Love and respect equals peace for everyone.
"The only time, I said the only time, I mean the only time, I will look down on a person, is when I'm helping them up!"