Rennie Harris is Just Teaching the Facts

Growing up surrounded by hip-hop culture in North Philadelphia, Lorenzo “Rennie” Harris is the choreographic trailblazer who brought street dance to the concert stage. He formed his company, Rennie Harris Puremovement (RHPM), in 1992; in those days, not everyone thought break-dancers, poppers, and DJs belonged on stage at all—audience members sometimes walked out mid-performance. Three decades later, even as hip-hop is an enormous cultural force and RHPM draws enthusiastic, sell-out crowds to major venues, Harris, at fifty-nine, is still working to change how audiences, critics, and academics perceive street dance and its history.

“Hip-hop is a living art form,” says Harris, whose often deeply personal work has explored Black masculinity and systemic racial violence in America. Those themes propel the drama of Rome & Jewels (1999), an evening-length, hip-hop version of Shakespeare’s tragedy and one of RHPM’s best-known works. The first of his many ambitious hybrids of dance and theater, Rome & Jewels “catapulted us on to a different platform,” says Harris, who chose the work to headline a multicity tour celebrating RHPM’s thirtieth anniversary.

With this milestone, Harris, currently artist-in-residence and co-director of hip-hop studies at the University of Colorado in Boulder, marks a long career of accomplishments and accolades. Highlights include a collaboration with Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and participating in a cultural exchange program during the Obama administration, to name just a few. But he is hardly slowing down. With the support of a $1 million grant from the Mellon Foundation, Harris will strengthen his ongoing educational efforts through Rennie Harris University, a teacher certification program, and two major works on the horizon. At home in Philadelphia between trips to Los Angeles and New York, Harris spoke with us about his latest project, the origins of hip-hop, and more.

You’re a dancer and choreographer, as well as an educator. Your latest project, Rennie Harris University, is a hip-hop curriculum for teaching artists. The program is unique in that it teaches how to teach street dance, not just the technique. What is the missing knowledge?

Most institutions that offer hip-hop technique are actually teaching a form of commercial dance that’s influenced by hip-hop. So, it’s important to straighten that out, and say what hip-hop dance actually is; that it falls under the umbrella of street dance, which is really a shorthand for different dances coming out of the community. A lot of those dances aren’t hip-hop, because they weren’t around when hip-hop came to the forefront in 1984 or 1985. And prior to that, you had popping and break dancing, which were not hip-hop either. I want to give educators that history so during their classes, they can provide context for the movements, which most studios don’t do.

What is the common misperception of hip-hop in the dance world? That it is not a “legitimate” form of dance?

Institutions look at hip-hop as a visceral, acrobatic, energetic thing, and therefore it doesn’t have history or technique. That’s an old trope about any form of culture that comes from African American communities, which is just another way of saying it’s not intelligent.

Where does the history of street dance begin? How clear is the starting point?

It’s very clear. It starts with slavery.

You’re creating a new pedagogy, a curriculum where there wasn’t one. Does it feel like that’s a lot more work for you?

I’m not creating this. I’m just teaching the facts.

It’s hard work, but it’s not hard work. It’s simple. It’s just about reminding people who they are, why they’re here, that they have voice. Hip-hop culture does that, as did rock ’n’ roll, jazz, rhythm and blues, funk—all the music that came out of the African American experience.

That music inspires us to take action. If you go back to each of those genres, as well as punk and heavy metal, you’d find a revolution or something happening around the music. Because the establishment wants everybody in their place, as Black and White. But music fights that, it fights against the establishment.

In addition to hip-hop, you’ve set choreography to gospel, nu tempo jazz, and even a track by 1990s downtempo electronica band Portishead. Out of curiosity, what have you been listening to lately?

Jacob Banks, Moses Sumney, Brittany Howard.

RHPM is currently working on two major productions: American Street Dancer, an anthology of numbers in a range of styles, and a revival of Losing My Religion, inspired in part by your personal experiences, in which you will perform a solo. When did you last perform? How do you feel about returning to the stage?

That’s the plan. I think the last time I performed was 2013 or 2014, and I am looking forward to doing it.

As a teenager, you became co-captain of your first dance company, the Step Masters. Is stepping a precursor to street dance?

Philadelphia street dance has a lot of speed, and I think that has to do with the tap dance history here. Legends like Nicholas Brothers and Honi Coles were from here. Because of that history, people thought we were tappers, but we were steppers. The dance style was also called GQ, like the magazine. It evolved from Black social dance clubs in the sixties, when everybody dressed up. So, most of the kids who did GQ dressed like they were going to a wedding. Slacks. Proper attire. Sometimes you’d see a tuxedo, a bowler hat, or spats. That’s what I grew up doing. I started learning in the mid-seventies, and my generation is the last generation of GQ dancers.

That sounds worthy of a comeback—maybe you can lead a GQ revival?

You know, I keep thinking I need to do it, but all the other stuff takes precedence. We are doing a GQ piece in American Street Dancer, though. That’s still a few years away—well, it feels like tomorrow to me.