Review: A History of Hip-Hop Dance in Breakin' NYC

Is it a good sign when an audience member can steal the show from the onstage performers? Well, that’s partly by design at Breakin’ NYC, the endearingly good-natured if somewhat unshaped hip-hop dance history lesson at Theater 555.

Audience member Larry initially announced himself when MC Ajalé Olaseni Coard opened the show by soliciting dance moves. Larry, declaring he was 73, immediately obliged from the back row. When Coard later invited ‘90s babies in the audience to shout out their birth years, Larry hollered, “1952 can keep up with you!” And at the show’s post-curtain call celebration, when anyone can come onstage to freestyle, three guesses who was first up and out of his seat popping and locking down the aisle?

Breakin’ NYC, which director and choreographer Angel Kaba referred to in a post-show speech as a “show in development,” thrives best in its unspoken thesis that hip-hop belongs to the audience, the culture, and, thus, the people.

The ensemble of 10 dancers demonstrate the evolution of hip-hop dance in vaguely chronological fashion, bouncing genially from step to b-boying to electric boogaloo to litefeet (the style exemplified by subway performers). Between each short dance segment, there’s usually snatches of archival footage from hip-hop history.

Much of the educative portion of the show gets farmed out to decades-old voiceovers, and it’s not a huge help that we see moves exhibited on-screen by hip-hop legends before they’re emulated, charismatically but less extraordinarily, by the live performers. We don’t need the videos (except for the bemusing time capsule of former Police Commissioner Bratton condemning subway dance performances). All the teaching and the dancing could be left to the artists in front of us.

When we do hear the stories of the dancers themselves, the movement then comes into greater focus. Justin S. Herbin, who goes by Ice-o (as in, “isolation”), offers a captivating mini-lecture-recital on popping, thrillingly modeling the control he has over each body part before putting it all together. Nicholas Porter introduces krump, an expressionistically explosive freestyle form, with a powerful personal narrative. “Krump is medicine,” he explains, sharing how dance saved him. “Krump takes the mask off.”

More of that, please. If these engaging artists aren’t at the vanguard of hip-hop performance, they are still part of a complex legacy. The narratives of the artists who have grown up with hip-hop in their bones seem to be central to communicating why the story of hip-hop matters. Greater attention to celebrating the individual journeys of these dancers might illuminate that history more powerfully. How, for instance, did two Romanian dancers wind up in this troupe?

Where Breakin’ NYC succeeds most is in the invitation for anyone to join in the dance. In that post-performance celebration of the audience’s talents, it was surprisingly touching to see strangers bust a move, surrounded by the cheering pros. One teenage boy duetted some nifty choreography with his mom, two little girls took turns stepping and clapping, a tiny kid tried break-dancing on the floor before his dad faux-reluctantly joined him. And as Coard wrapped things up, Larry stood by her, soaking it in, until it was just the two of them left onstage, the MC and the guy from the back row, together in the spotlight.