Hip Hop and High Wires

Last weekend I had the opportunity to attend a dance performance at Northrop Auditorium. I saw a flier in Coffman for a performance that was free for students, advertising it as “Hip Hop and High Wires”. The performance was in a couple days, and I didn’t have anything going on, so I figured why not?

Knowing this and nothing else, I attended Company Wang Ramirez’s performance of Borderline, which did indeed highlight hip hop and high wires. As explained on Northrop’s website, Honji Wang and Sebastien Ramirez came together in their mutual interest in hip hop and combined skill in ballet and choreography to create a new, unique work: Borderline.

When the performance first began, I wondered what I had gotten myself into. Sounds droned through the speaker systems and garbled French faded in and out behind them. Two dancers onstage appeared to be running towards a cube, but not much else was happening. As this continued, I really wondered what this show was going to be.

Despite its somewhat rocky start, Borderline continued to get better and better. The dancers performed almost unbelievable feats of acrobatics, and they soared around the stage on high wires. A break in the middle for some comic relief, and dances with all possible combinations of the dancers, Borderline truly had it all.

The entire performance had a surrealist feel that stayed true to its intriguing, if confusing, beginning. The dances played with optical illusion and the dancers showed off their superior athletic ability in series of amazing movements.

It turned out to be a really great night, and I would definitely recommend the show to others.