The Boston Globe

Sunday, June 13, 2004

ROXBURY

Legs spin, bodies flip, in a contest so hip

Dance competition sells out at college


By Matt Gunderson
GLOBE CORRESPONDENT

The audience erupts, as the boy in khaki pants stands on his head and spins his legs around, faster and faster, like the blades of a helicopter. A feeling of electricity is in the air.

With his black baseball hat tilted to one side, Jeremy Ryan of Quincy leans against the wall of the Roxbury Community College's media arts center and surveys the scene. Bodies in the audience sway to the rhythm. Hands wave in the air. A sqeaky violin arpeggio skips over a hip-hop beat on the auditorium's speakers.

"Check this out," Ryan says. His voice is tinged with respect, as two break-dancers flip over each other and land. Their timing has a hypnotic precision, a frenetic cadence.

Numerous other dancers, from elementary school children to high school adolescents from across the Boston area, exhibited their stylized dancing skills at the Third Annual Hip Hop Off the Hizzy Dance Competition last Saturday.

Some routines looked like popular music videos. Teams of boys in baggy pants and girls in glitzy skirts that climbed up the knees synchronized their moves to 30-second phased-in blips of popular rap instrumentals.

Other performances were less conventional, including inventive choreography, short introductory skits, and quirky attire. Jam'nastics walked away from the night with the grand prize of $1,000 and a first-place trophy. Veering from the norm, the team performed its dance routine in camouflage fatigues and clown outfits.

The event was not only an opportunity for Boston-area youngsters to showcase their talents, but also the major annual fundraiser for Revealing Artistic Works Inc., a nonprofit outreach program for urban youth.

Cofounder and president Susan Flint, a Mattapan resident, began the program in 2000 with Bernice Mark of Dorchester to help troubled urban youth tap their artistic abilities.

The dance competition has drawn a crowd all three years it has been around. This year, the show sold out, and organizers had to find extra chairs to seat everyone in the media center's auditorium.

Flint moved the show to Roxbury Community College this year, after it spent its first two seasons in the Strand Theatre in Dorchester.

The college setting has not only been less expensive but also improved the event, Flint says. Though smaller, the facility was cleaner and more centrally located than the Strand, she says.

See the photos of Jam'nastics' routine.