Reflections on Puremovement

Choreographer Rennie Harris talks about 15 years at the helm of his groundbreaking dance troupe.

by Deni Kasrel

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Published: Jan 17, 2007

During a rehearsal for his company's upcoming appearance at the Kimmel Center, Rennie Harris instructs a trio of males working on a dance sequence to make their arm movements less punchy. "Be more aesthetic," he says, stretching his arms wide. That directive could just as easily sum up Harris' abiding vision for hip-hop dance; a style born in gritty urban streets that he has taken to the concert stage to much acclaim.

Since his teen years Harris has been cutting a hip-hop rug, first with the Step Masters, and then with the Scanner Boys, an early, innovative force in the genre. In 1992 he founded Rennie Harris Puremovement, where he has truly blossomed as a choreographer who aims to stretch expectations, including his own, of what constitutes hip-hop dance. With this troupe, Harris has created many challenging works that explore the heart, soul and spirit of hip-hop while also making personal and sociopolitical comment. We're set to see a fair share of these pieces, when Puremovement celebrates its 15-year anniversary with a three-day engagement at the Kimmel Center in February. Each date offers a different program, making this stint a compact retrospective.

Harris reckons it's "about time" the Kimmel called him in to perform, as do we. His appearance there is cause for celebration, as well as good reason for conversation about his Puremovement experience.

City Paper: Back when you started, could you have envisioned how things have worked out for Rennie Harris Puremovement? Are you surprised about lasting 15 years?

Rennie Harris: I don't think I ever had a vision for the company. I wanted to have a school and that kind of stuff ... but I am surprised with where I am with the company, because right now it feels like I'm starting all over again. I've made a lot of changes. But it's a good thing, because the first 15 years was school. It taught me how the dance system works, which I wasn't clear about. ... Now it makes more sense and I'm excited to think about whether I can do another 15 years.

CP: Are you thinking about retiring?

RH: I tried to quit. I did retire from teaching for two or three years, and then I started getting offers to teach at universities, and I began to change the way they were thinking with regard to the importance of hip-hop in school. Now I am teaching hip-hop at UCLA where I'm not just coming in to do a hip-hop dance class. I was able to teach hip-hop technique, composition and dance history. That's more interesting, and I think, as I get older, OK, this is helping give me a foundation, once my feet can't move anymore.

CP: You've had to become a businessman, too. It would seem like when you started that's not what you'd be thinking about. It's more like, "I gotta get a gig," or "I want to create a new dance," right?

RH: Before Rennie Harris Puremovement, everything was just work, and everything was just about getting a gig so I could pay rent. It wasn't about operating funds and things like that. It's just like anything homegrown, you just do. The hard part is realizing that you're not making any money because you are spending as much as you make just to get the gig. We never put any money away for the company, and to be honest we came close to bottoming out. When you have to have your company on the road and the only way your office gets paid is to have the company out there dancing, that's a lot of stress.

CP: Yet you've managed to last 15 years whether you were making money or not. What do you attribute that success to?

RH: I think we caught the wave. I think Rennie Harris Puremovement could have just as easily been Deni Harris Puremovement, if the timing was right. All the stars were aligned. It was the right moment for what we had.

And we weren't raised in a passive way. ... I didn't know about the Brooklyn Academy [of Music], or the Kennedy Center, or any of the major places we performed, and I think that helped because I wasn't afraid to say when something wasn't right. They would say, "Don't you know how prestigious it is to come here?" And I would say, "I don't even care. I don't know who you are. Don't sell me on how great you are, I don't sell you on how great I am." I'm like, "This is what the deal is." And that was rough waters. They sent police to our performances and it was crazy stuff. So it was the right door for us to walk in, but only creatively. Not from a cultural place. Culturally we were still majorly different.

CP: When you first started hip-hop, dance theater was a relatively new genre. Now more people are getting into it and there's a greater appreciation for the art form. Do you take some responsibility or credit for being a pioneer here?

RH: I wouldn't necessarily say I take credit for bringing it to the concert stage. I would take credit for forging forward hip-hop as concert dance: really playing with and exploring the vocabulary. Versus as an exhibitionist thing. Where it's a celebration — that's what the tradition is. Now we're talking about death and these other things, and we're using it to tell a narrative. If anything, I take credit for forming a hip-hop aesthetic and pushing the vocabulary.

CP: Your early work was deeply personal and it dealt a lot with the black man's plight in the mean urban streets. More recently there's Facing Mekka, which is very different in its presentation and sensibility. Do you feel the content of your work has changed or evolved due to your life experience?

RH: I think it's the music that I listen to now that changes my context. It changes my inspiration. I'll hear Zap Mama and think, "Oh, I can see this," versus what I was listening to in the 1980s. Now I'm listening to Stravinsky and I'm doing a piece to his music.

CP: So it's not just that in the beginning your choreography was a way to get things out — to purge yourself of what happened in your youth?

RH: For me, I think that will always be there. You never get over it. The layers start to come off, and I'm still addressing it.

CP: Your life has changed during these 15 years. You've traveled all over the world; your company tours to great acclaim. Even so, you still feel like you're back in the 'hood?

RH: It's always with me, I just know how to navigate it better. ... For me I'm still in the machismo thing. But I'm also stepping away from it, because I can see two different worlds now. Before I couldn't think. I just reacted. And now I'm really contemplating. ... Every morning I get up and pray. I meditate. I should stretch more, but I don't.

CP: You're working on a book. What's it about and what prompted you to write it?

RH: It's called Losing My Religion. I think I have one chapter done [laughs]. I did get some support to go off and write and I'm doing that in March. It's about my life, and my family, how I went from the Scanner Boys to Puremovement. Some of it's poetry, some of it's metaphoric, some of it's straightforward. ... There are so many people who write about me. There are maybe two books coming out about me. And I got a chapter in one lady's book, and although they're close, and I make notes on what she's writing, it's not really exactly how I think about things. So here it will be that I wrote it and hopefully people will understand my work and what I'm saying, versus being very academic and scholarly.

CP: Two people are writing books about you. That's impressive. How does that make you feel?

RH: It's not the things that you would think that impress me. I am hard to impress. When I was younger they called me Stoneface for a long time because I never had a reaction to anything that happened. Somebody would get shot and I'd be like, "OK, let's get something to eat." Even in my relationships, I've been accused of not having passion or understanding. So it's part of my DNA. ... Things that happen do not impress me. I'm not impressed by people's talent, and I'm not impressed by my own talent. I always think that people's talent, their so-called intelligence, is what's given to you, so that's not impressive. That's your voice, and if we all thought about it that way, rather than it being a specialty act, then we'd all be on the same plane. There's nothing deep about being human. We all have the same abilities. The difference is our abilities are applied on different levels; like where someone may be a genius but he can't figure how to change a toilet-paper dispenser.

(d_kasrel@citypaper.net)

Rennie Harris: Puremovement: A 15th Anniversary Retrospective, Feb. 2-4, $34-$46, Kimmel Center, 300 S. Broad St., 215-569-8080, www.kimmelcenter.org.

 

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