Contemporary Hip-hop, Streetdance Converge at On the Boards

Those who snatched up tickets to Bruno Beltrão’s Grupo de Rua H3 show this weekend at On the Boards are in for a treat. The contemporary hip-hop dance group out of Brazil is embarking on its debut US tour and is in Seattle for four nights ... at this point ~~only Sunday evening tickets are still available~~ is completely sold out.

Beltrão - then based in Rio de Janeiro - started streetdance lessons in 1993 and created his Grupo de Rua de Niterói dance company three years later. The Brazilian choreographer has since evolved his style into a unique hip-hip/contemporary dance mix, seeking “to enrich hip-hop with the infinite possibilities of choreography.” Currently, the Grupo de Rua company consists of nine powerful, athletic men - veteran hip-hop and street dancers who apparently warmed up last night by playing a game of soccer on stage.

The short program (50 minutes) opens peacefully enough, with a several men facing off in a quiet shifting stance - no music, no props, just a weaving, combative manner of establishment, drawing the audience in while drawing out the suspense. Eventually, in turn, each of the dancers in the troupe quietly ease onstage and settle into a seated position, at first simply watching, then increasingly adding their energy into the mix. The show then explodes into a form of controlled kinetic madness ... and never really lets up.

Beltrão’s choreography is a whirling dervish of contemporary hip-hop with the casual controlled presence of streetdance performance. You can expect high-energy, acrobatic choreography, the men sometimes scurrying across the stage like monkeys, other times running, running, running, or popping the occasional B-boy freeze, with the inevitable capoeira creeping in. The aesthetic it brought to mind, actually, was that video game (yet no specifics; we don't play video games), especially with H3’s re-occurring theme of walking backwards, head hung back, as the players are disengaged from the florescent-rimmed arena.

At times things seem improvised, and maybe parts actually are, but you can see the strong choreographic structure in the way Beltrão plays his dancers against one another as they weave in and out of the performance arena. Still, it’s movement like we’ve never seen before. We were sitting there wondering - how the in the heck do you even teach this stuff? (If you feel so inclined, head to the Grupo de Rua Master Class on Saturday to find out.) Check out the video below for a general idea of what you can expect if you’re heading to On the Boards at some point this weekend.