The Rennie Harris Puremovement American Street Dance company is coming back to Miami to present “Nuttin’ But a Word,” and Executive Director Rodney Hill is warning audience members to expect “the unexpected.”
Still, he recommends coming in with an open mind — one ready to make its own interpretation.
Hill described “Nuttin But a Word,” which will be performed at the Adrienne Arsht Center this weekend, as a suite of movements whose music will surprise viewers. Contrary to the “flipping and rap music” often expected to coincide with hip-hop, he said the show has something different in store.
An image of the company performing “Rome & Jewels.”
(Rennie Harris Puremovement)
“We have a piece with Al Jarreau, which is something totally unexpected when you think of hip-hop,” Hill said. “The movement is challenging to that music. And as hip-hop dancers, when we perform to any type of music we just adjust.”
On that end, principal dancer and Miami native Joshua Archibald agrees.
Principal dancer Joshua Archibald.
(Rennie Harris Puremovement)
“It’s going to be incredible,” he said. “A lot of people hear ‘hip-hop’ and ‘street dance’ and they either think about the old-school ‘Breakin’ movies or people battling in … the ‘Step Up’ movies, or they’ll think about performing artists like Beyoncé or Kendrick Lamar or Drake, who have dancers on stage with them. So if that is the basis of (the audience’s) understanding of this dance, they might be surprised.”
Movement with meaning
Joshua Culbreath in “Nuttin’ But A Word.”
(Rennie Harris Puremovement)
Archibald likens the Rennie Harris Puremovement company to Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater or A.I.M. by Kyle Abraham, two dance touring companies telling stories and expressing ideas and artwork through their choreography.
“We’re doing the same exact thing,” Archibald said. “The movement language is just different.”
Though born in Kingston, Jamaica, Archibald was raised in Miami, graduated from Terra Environmental Research Institute and studied dance at the Miami-Dade College Kendall campus.
He says Rennie Harris has a broad definition of hip-hop.
Company founder Rennie Harris.
(Rennie Harris Puremovement)
“A lot of his work, while it may have larger-than-life themes, or may focus on key sociopolitical perspectives on the world that we live in … they all utilize hip-hop language in movement and other street dances as well,” Archibald said.
He said the upcoming show at the Arsht may give rise to feelings that can’t exactly be articulated with words. And, he says, therein lies the reasoning behind its curious title.
“I describe it as a through-line of a few different stories that all follow a central theme, and basically the core behind the work is the statement of how actions speak louder and more to power than words,” Archibald explained. “This is where the phrase ‘nothing but a word’ comes from. When people say things to you in certain communities, your response would be, ‘Alright, you ain’t said nothing but a word.’”
Company Executive Director Rodney Hill.
(Rennie Harris Puremovement)
Archibald said the phrase isn’t meant to be disparaging, “but it’s your actions and the things that you do that ultimately decide who you are in this world and how you are perceived as you go about your life.”
Archibald has toured in the show and is interested in audience members’ responses to the varied styles of dance.
“It’s like how people can look at an abstract painting and take their own ideas of it. The viewer just pieces it together on their own,” he said.
“The takeaway that you get from a lot of people who’ve seen the show is Rennie’s ability to tell stories and evoke emotion using this physical movement,” he added. “I think it amazes people to see how they can be drawn in so much without a story that’s being spoken about or written in front of them.”
Miami connections
Hill touched on the Rennie Harris Puremovement company’s long history with Miami.
“We’ve been to Miami several times, even dating back from the early 2000s. We’ve been coming to Miami since 1999, so there’s a long connection,” he said. “The Miami Light Project, under (artistic director) Beth Boone is really prevalent in the performing arts community, so we work with them a lot. And of course, we’re coming back and forth to the Arsht Center.”
He also mentioned the semi-annual cyphers that are held in Miami and sponsored by Harris’ educational division.
“Rennie Harris University is a hip-hop university where people register cohorts,” Hill said. “We have cohorts in Miami and Boulder, Colorado, and we have cohorts from all around and what they do is they take online classes. And then every spring or winter, we either have our winter cypher in Boulder, or spring cypher in Miami. And this is when all the cohorts come together and then we have workshops and performances.”
Archibald described Rennie Harris University as “the educational side of what Rennie Harris likes to do with his work.”
“So on top of producing these shows and setting work at these different universities and choreographing for different movies, he also has a side of the organization that archives hip-hop history, and not just movement-wise, but as a cultural context,” Archibald said. “He started creating a process of teaching hip-hop in a more holistic manner in an academic setting, because you see a lot of like universities now starting to pick up hip-hop dances and social and street dances as part of their curriculum.”
Archibald said these were among the first intensive dance workshops he had attended.
Before the opening performance, The Arsht will host a free hip-hop workshop and freestyle cypher on Oct. 30 at 6:30 p.m., open to all ticket holders.
“Kids will be learning social dances from hip-hop social dances, dating from the ‘80s all the way up to present,” Hill said, “Everyone loves taking hip-hop classes. They’re going to have fun.”
“Nuttin’ But A Word” will run Oct. 30 and Nov. 1 at 7:30 p.m. at the Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts. Tickets are $71 and can be purchased at the Arsht Center’s website.