Robin Knightly

DEEJAY X DANCER : INTIMATE HIP HOP

 

The audience forms a circle. In the middle, to one side, a DJ. Not just a slick turntablist, but the wizard. DJ Total Eclipse is his name; awesome electronics his game. Hailing from the epicentre of breakdance hip hop, New York, he is an International Turntable Federation world battle champion. Today, hip hop icons the world over book his state-of-the-art antics.

On the opposing side, inside the circle: three high voltage dudes ready to discharge 10,000 megawatts of dance per millisecond. Forget gravity. These cats move in a force field that cancels laws of physics.

On the dancers’ side we have Demi Sorono. She rocketed to fame as one of Australia’s top 4 dancers, courtesy of So You Think You Can Dance. Among a host of accolades, she recently facilitated outreach hip hop workshops in Melbourne, Melton, and Ballarat. Cross her path and you are sucked into a vortex of exhilaration.

Also, we have b-boy Anastasios Repousi, hailing from the street-cred south-western sticks of Sydney. Crowned the youngest ever breakdance champion, he went on to become a member of Justice Crew, winning Australia’s Got Talent. Lately, he ignites sparks on rough surfaces as a member of Hybrid Formz Crew.

Completing the dynamic trio is Jackson Garcia, the world-traveling Baryshnikov of hip hop. He spits-fire and throws-flames with battle hardened breaking crews Skill at Will and Team Cream.

The lightning strikes. First round: DJ Total Eclipse throws down the gauntlet, with his magic turntables enticing the dancers to bite the bait he is dangling on his electronic hook of sound. Sorono, Repousi and Garcia take the bait. First singly. Then as a tight-knit team.

Second and ensuing rounds: who is baiting whom? So attuned is the ad-lib wall of sound from the DJ, and the spontaneous improvisation from the dancers, that it is impossible to tell who is controlling whom. The improv of sound and music, pitting dancers and DJ into a sweet duel, is hair-raisingly beautiful.

A huge congrats to choreographer Nick Power for cooking-up and dishing-out this sheer treat for the frisky young and the crusty old alike.

DEEJAY X DANCER  is at The Studio, Sydney Opera House, until Sunday 21st August 2022.

Photography by Jordan Munns

Published by Robin Knightly

Robin Knightly is the nom de plume of a writer whose mother was born in eastern Ukraine, and father in western Ukraine. Both parents survived the Ukrainian genocide orchestrated by the regime in Moscow. The 1932-1933 famine was executed by confiscating the wheat harvests, a seizure that took the lives of six million Ukrainian children, women and men. The writer’s grandfather was humiliated in one of the 1930’s show trials, dragged off and murdered. Both parents escaped to Australia as refugees on forged papers. The writer was born here.