Versa Style Dance Company: Feel Our Rhythm

Inner City Arts and The Flourish Foundation

present

Versa-Style

Co-Artistic Directors:
Jackie "Miss Funk" Lopez
Lee "Breezelee" Foadd

Company:
Raymond Basa
Nina Flagg
Alli Gray
Michael Lor
Onisha Moore
Lilian Ortega
Diane Palaganas
Angelo Paulos
Harry Weston
Maya Zellman

Special Guests:
Marie "Pandora" Medina
Adrian "Lobo" Miramontes

DJ:
Stefan Ilea aka DJ Persyst

Hip Hop dance company VersaStyle, in collaboration with the Flourish Foundation, shared a stunningly tight multimedia dance spectacle this weekend. Thriving on diversity, artistic collaboration, youth outreach and education, VersaStyle dance company brings to the city a vision of dancing versatility and style. Anchored by artistic directors Jackie “Miss Funk” Lopez and Leigh “Breeze-lee” Foadd, VersaStyle aims to “perform for the youth of Los Angeles to instill the roots, history and social and political issues surrounding the art of our generation.” The company’s interest in re-representing Hip Hop Culture as a philosophy and way of life, rather than a marketing ploy selling a brand, is evident in their evening of work titled “Feel Our Rhythm.”

An announcement from company DJ Stefan Ilea, aka DJ Persyst, fills the space, “…the dancers need your energy, if you enjoy what you see please let them know…” to which the audience erupts with marvelous applause, hoots and hollers. It sounds like a dance battle or ball, something of a competition feeling.

- I will admit, the black queen in me slips out a sassy, albeit timid “work it,” before I’ve seen any of the dancing. Perhaps I have been watching too much of RuPaul’s Drag Race on Bravo. I digress.

Divided into 5 distinct parts, “Feel Our Rhythm” relies on a basic, yet effective, structure. Each section opens with an informative documentary-style video excerpt and is followed by various styles/techniques of choreography reflected in said video. Each section briefs us with, and entertains, hip hop’s flavorful history. The show opens with House Dance legend Marjory Smarth describing the beginnings of house dancing; an excerpt from the documentary Bhudda Stretch Street Styles. Iconic figures like the Nicholas Brothers and Fred Astaire smear the screen, reminding us of a genius past: rhythmically complex shuffling, swinging, tapping and digging, Cakewalk, Charleston and Black Bottom, New York dancing at its best, innovative and unyielding. Linked directly to these great masters (and the many others featured) we learn that house dancing developed in the clubs during the 70’s and 80’s as Hip Hop dancers came together, from various backgrounds, to celebrate and battle with the diversity of Hip Hop dance styles. Various social dance techniques from Samba to Salsa, disco to new wave; poppin’ and lockin’ to wackin,' boogaloo, ticking and waving – were being nurtured, blended and performed under one roof, one house.

Here is my disclaimer - I have to admit, I am not terribly experienced writing about hip hop choreography. My experience in creating conversations about contemporary modern dance and academic forms of concert dance-making has garnered attention around the small, yet budding contemporary dance community of Los Angeles. Nowhere in this repertoire of writing is a review of a hip hop show. Perhaps my fear of not knowing enough about hip hop, or not being skilled as a hip hop dancer is speaking for me at the moment. - Should I reveal this?

More interviews, including one of old-school lockin’ diva Ana “Lollipop” Sanchez, pave the way for one of the most exceptional dance sections of the evening. The women take the stage introducing us to a more flamboyant style of hip hop called wackin,’ choreographed by Nina Flagg. A sassy blend of vogueing and disco, wackin’ involves a constant flow of steps, turns and poses; a kind of cat-walking while the arms wack, smack and swing, framing the face through the constant flexion and extension of the elbows. Miming putting on make-up, primping of hair and giving shade accompany fierce sashaying, tight formations and diva behavior. Dressed in 80’s attire, the cast of women is fiercely dynamic, and Maya Zellman, Diane Palaganas and Flagg are killin' it.

- I went home and put on one of my off the shoulder numbers and practiced wackin’ for hours, imagining I was Jennifer Beals.

What I find to be most successful about "Feel Our Rhythm" are the ways in which each choreographic idea/segment transition into the next. Similarly to how the dj spins his records, sampling and cross fading, so do the style and content of the dancing. Basic house steps like jacking, skating and cross ball changing, with the assistance of light changes and new group formations, aid in the seamless transitions. Quick entrances and exits and spatial positioning of bodies, using foreground and background, create multiple moving images on the stage. It’s like watching a kaleidoscope changing shape, color and design with little effort. These transitions transport the dance through a haze of effortless historical storytelling, spanking our senses into raw enjoyment. It’s like a live music video, pulsing and driving, quick cutting and dissolving, right before our eyes. It is, in a matter of words, magical.

Lopez and Foadd have an incredible company with an impeccably talented group of dancers. It is a shame the show had a wee 3 day run. The city needs to see more of this work, not just to be entertained, but because of the rich history and service VersaStyle is providing the community.

Check out their company reel:


Check out their community class on House Dancing:

Surveillance Solos

Photo: Ashley Hunt


Surveillance Solos by Rebecca Alson-Milkman
Highways Performance Space, Santa Monica, CA
Feb 15-16. 2010

By: Joel Smith 1/15/10

Richly gestural, delicately nuanced, subtly subversive - Surveillance Solos provokes questions about privacy, government control, and human contact.

Rebecca Alson-Milkman began the process of making Surveillance Solos in 2007 in response to her frustration with continued surveying of suspected foreign and domestic (terrorists), with little or no ground, by the US government. Wiretapping, web monitoring and record pulling continues as citizens are denied their civil rights. Alson-Milkman protests to remain vigilant, vocalizing her rights amidst a new era of Obama Change that has yet to make good on its promises. With little to no movement in recouping some of these privacy rights, new questions are provoked about what our privacy means to us. Do these questions hold any weight given our contemporary involvement in social networking sites, such as Facebook, Twitter and MySpace, where we brand all of our own personal data onto the super-web for almost anyone to see?

Inspired by these questions, Alson-Milkman worked individually with Carol McDowell, Ally Voye, Christine Suarez and Taisha Paggett to construct solo movement studies based on each dancer’s own connection to notions of surveillance. Documenting text from conversations and notes taken by the dancers, a score/script/dialogue was woven together in order to create an evening-length piece. At just under fifty minutes, ‘Solos’ illuminates intimate details of each dancer to metaphorically express the importance of one’s privacy. Each solo, different in movement vocabulary, use of text, video projection and props, reveals ‘real’ details about each dancer, including the use of their real names, in order to doubly connect to the question, “what is private and what is public, and ultimately, what is real.”

Central to the piece is Alson-Milkman’s role as ‘agent bureaucrat,’ reading various documents on stage as a narrator would. Speaking in a monotone telephone operator voice, different kinds of texts are read to accompany the dancing: words that describe the dancing, words that illuminate the dancer’s ‘real-life’ predicaments, words that are read verbatim from government documents, and words that reveal the choreographer’s (Alson-Milkman) neurosis of making the dance. The documents read appear as a large projection on the back wall to create a double effect, both to overemphasize the language used, as well as to inscribe the text into the performance as a scenic device.

The documents range from direct quotes from the Patriot Act to Facebook profile pages, traffic violations to the mundane activities of a woman’s morning routine. For example, in Carol McDowell’s solo, the text read by Alson-Milkman is of McDowell’s personal Facebook profile. Notions of a strong, independent woman looking for companionship are read as McDowell subtly references the text through mimetic gesturing: flexing biceps, surfing and Yoga practice. Intermittent references to body positioning in her photos reflect specific movements that she executes on stage, including “bent knees” into a standing balance on one leg, with free toe pointed and arms stretched wide…something similar to flying, hovering or scaling with an acrobatic feel. She continues with gestures that reference falling, gathering clouds and wallowing in the wind. Lovely, by the way.

Ally Voye’s solo involves exaggerated gesturing of a California girl driving a car, putting on make-up, checking herself in the mirror and oblivious to traffic laws. The most playful of them all, Voye’s solo dissolves into a feeling of isolation, trapped by the laws that govern the streets. She spends half of her solo on the floor, sideways with little momentum to move. Standing and effortlessly falling, Voye’s persistence of getting back up, flanked by moments of suspension before falling again, creates an emotional impact.

Layers of meaning are added as Christine Suarez flitters quickly about the stage while a man reports the “mundane actions of her morning routine.” Acting both as agent and ex-husband, Justin Zsebe positions himself in the center of her world. While gesturing the actions of cleaning house, getting ready in the bathroom and cooking breakfast, Suarez is performing an unspecified, triple-meter folk-like dance. This kind of parallel processing makes for a delicious performance.

The dance continues with intermittent disruptions of solos that turn into duets that turn into trios. Taisha Paggett performs at a desk and with a chair, frantically, yet precisely and quite successfully, gesturing the actions of an office person having to deal with an angry public. She is frontal and direct, and at one point mimes being finger printed. A projection of documents flips vigorously on the back wall, occasionally stopping to reveal such words as confidential and UK Border Agency. She sits, patiently watching the documents pass.

The work concludes with Alson-Milkman dancing her own solo as Zsebe speaks directly to the audience about the agent’s life, aka Rebecca. From the experiences of living in Los Angeles, to taking yoga classes, to having rehearsals and meetings with each of the dancers, we begin to see her accumulate most of the information (dancing) of the other dancers. Wallowing in the wind while doing a triple-step folk pattern, striking familiar poses to losing balance, Surveillance Solos becomes incredibly self-reflective, as the choreographer and her process is finally staged. We see the vulnerability of her experience making this work and sharing it with us. Poetically, the work ends with Alson-Milkman evaporating in, and finally out of, our consciousness.

The work is patient, specific to its goals and performed beautifully by some of LA’s most revered dancers.

The Surveillance Solos opens Friday, January 15, 2010 at Highways Performance Space in Santa Monica and runs through Saturday, January 16^th..

You can find more specific information about Alson-Milkman’s process of making Surveillance Solos on her website. Click on ‘Current Work’ to read about the specific solos as well as her inspiration for making the work.

Dates: Friday and Saturday, January 15-16, 2010

Location: Highways Performance Space, 18^th St. Arts Complex, 1651 18^th St. Santa Monica, CA 90404

Tickets: https://ww03.elbowspace.com/servlets/cfd?xr4=&formts=2006-05-23%2012:16:21.515002

Alson-Milkman Dance: http://alsonmilkmandance.com