Tap 'n' clap

Rennie Harris's safe streets

by Marcia B. Siegel

Rennie Harris Pure Movement has reinvented itself since its last visit to town, a year and a half ago. "Jazz Tap/Hip-Hop," produced by Dance Umbrella's Jeremy Alliger, wound up a New England tour at the Emerson Majestic last weekend. It's strictly entertainment. Not that Harris's previous show wasn't entertaining, but the new one has ceded all notions of concert choreography to a revue format. Riverdance, move over.

True to its duplex title, the show comprises two nearly autonomous groups of dancers. There's Harris and his hip-hoppers, each of whom offers cool variations on the usual moves. One does endless shoulder spins. Another fish-dives to the floor, braking with his wrists. One specializes in slides, another in back flips and slow walkovers. The smallest of these guys, a guest performer named Cricket, yanked his T-shirt down over his folded knees and became a midget. Then he'd throw himself in the air like a bundle of laundry and miraculously reassemble into a zigzag shape before landing upside down.

The mostly tuneless, bouncy breakdance rhythm, engineered by DJ Signify and Neil Ochoa on percussion, provided a steady motor for all this dancing, at a pace anywhere from moderate to speeding. The DJ created his own rhythm number by electronically and manually violating a stack of long-playing records.

In between the loose, airborne antics of the hip-hoppers, a trio of tap dancers clattered and strutted with tight, busy feet. Herbin Van Cayseele, tall and elegant, seemed like a classical tapper to me. He respected the rhythms of the masters -- Chuck Green, Honi Coles, Cookie Cook -- and his riffs were the most intricate of the show. Although there wasn't much noticeable music behind any of the tap numbers, when Van Cayseele danced, I thought of jazz piano and lounge singers.

Rod Ferrone, small and muscular, seemed more like a mime in tap shoes, with a repertory that included a bit of Irish step, a mambo, some Marcel Marceau, and a purposely botched vaudeville turn with a derby.

Max Pollak, from Vienna, was lean and tough, no academic tapper. His rhythms incorporated scrapes, thumps, and splattering cadenzas. In one solo, accompanied only by the audience clapping a rhythm he set, he spun out a freeform tap tale that ended with "Yankee Doodle."

Variety, not consistency, is what puts this show over. Tap, the older dance form, appears to have more potential for sustained development than hip-hop, which can't seem to unfold into anything more than tricks and one-upsmanship. Rennie Harris is unique and does show you another side of hip-hop, with his popping, moonwalking moves. A big man who can move small, he's inherently comic rather than athletic. In a wonderful duet with Van Cayseele, he plays a mechanical toy or genie, who does the bidding of the quick-witted tapper but eventually trades him pop for tap in a challenge dance.

Another distinctive personality, Ron Wood, initiated a passage of capoeira, the Brazilian martial-arts form that's related to breakdancing with its slow, revolving kicks and handstands. But capoeira gets beyond individual showing off only when it reverts to its duet form. The dancers/opponents thrust and pull back, fake and dodge in an unpredictable interplay where the object is to risk disaster and not hurt the other guy. Two challengers briefly squared off with Wood, but neither one could match his virtuoso technique.

Other highlights included a duet that Van Cayseele and Pollak began standing back to back. Together they constructed a call-and-response rhythm -- they may have been improvising -- that traveled from their shoulders and arms to their feet, and later to a vocal/body music duet with the audience clapping the backbeat.

Challenge dancing cropped up again and again during the show, as you might expect. Challenge is at the heart of street dancing, from tap to rap, as perhaps the primal scenario for male encounters. But whatever connection "Jazz Tap/Hip-Hop" may have had to the street is long ago and far away. These men are civilized, audience-friendly. Loud, aggressive, yes, but not macho. The crotch-clutching and attitude are good-natured shtick, not defensive displays. For now, Rennie Harris has stowed away the urban crudeness, raw edges, and provocation, along with any message that could pierce our pleasure.