Rennie Harris Puremovement's hip-hop "Heaven' at the Perelman

Rennie Harris is Philadelphia's own legendary pioneer of hip-hop dance who has brought this indigenous street dance into concert halls across the world. Through a half dozen evening-length works that have toured the world, as well as history courses in hip-hop dance that he has created, Harris has demonstrated that this uniquely vibrant dance form with African roots has universal appeal and embraces a variety of narratives, social issues and psychological states, even while creating a movement vocabulary all its own.

It stands to reason that the world premiere of Rennie Harris's Heaven, presented as part of the Philadelphia International Festival of the Arts, is a major event in our city's cultural life. How unfortunate that it didn't open to a full house at the Perelman.

Blood-lusting women

Heaven spins a rather murky tale enacted by bare-chested male dancers in flaming red pants. Bewildered and lost, they fall victim to a group of avenging, blood-lusting women in white costumes. The presentation of mono-dimensional women was rendered almost ludicrous when the men suffered additional, gratuitous deaths by their hands at what appeared as a curtain call at the work's conclusion.

Harris explained to the audience after the performance that a source of the narrative was a Japanese story told by a woman about grandparents desiring entrance to heaven, with the grandfather killed so that he might enter heaven. No program notes about the work or its sections were provided, nor was there a dramaturg in sight.

Brooding urgency

The muddiness of the narrative, including largely inaudible voice-overs, undermined a work that included some sterling and riveting hip-hop dance. These movements were especially captivating in sections accompanied by the music of Stravinsky's Rite of Spring. The tense, brooding urgency of the music, its motor rhythms and percussive velocity were brilliantly captured in the dynamic movement of Harris's dancers.

Male dancers suggested other species when they traversed the stage in succession, swinging their bodies low to the ground in 180-degree arcs while supported on one arm. They did repeated back flips and dove over other bodies to somersaults onto the floor. At a few times— and I would have welcomed more— the entire ensemble was arrayed in almost contrapuntal groupings of varied hip-hop movements.

But then the rather disheveled narrative returned. The women stood praying, then moved to another area, then cried, then laughed. I found myself wishing that this work were a Rennie Harris Puremovement Rite of Spring. He had the essence here of one that could have been memorable.