Dance Center of Columbia College Chicago Presents B-Rooted Festival This Weekend

The Dance Center of Columbia College Chicago partnering with national and local dance artists and organizers, continues its B-Series with "B-Rooted," a mini dance festival exploring underground hip hop and street dance culture. Taking place this weekend, April 3 and 4, 2015 at The Dance Center, 1306 S. Michigan Avenue, Chicago, B-Rooted features local, national and internationally recognized artists, including members of Venus Fly, established in 2005 as one of the first all-styles crews in the Midwest and first female all-styles crews in the U.S., and NINJACHURCH, a locally based all-elements crew with members spread across the world. All events are free and open to the public.

B-Rooted is co-curated by Bgirl El La Katrina, co-director of Breakin' The Law: International Festival of Urban Movement and part of NINJACHURCH Crew and Goddistas, and Kelsa Robinson, lecturer at The Dance Center and member of Venus Fly.

"Community is a central facet of the underground street dance scene, where members come together to celebrate birthdays, anniversaries and weddings; to raise money for local causes; or to support a grieving family," said Robinson. "The organizers of B-Rooted invite everyone to join in this community celebration of tradition, sisterhood, tough love, shifting cultural landscapes, challenging conversations and exaltations through dance and hip hop culture." B-Rooted welcomes everyone from veteran street dancers who have won international titles to those who have never set foot inside 'the scene.'"

B-Rooted activities include workshops, verbal cyphers and build-sessions (participatory "panel" discussions), performances, social dancing and battles (a form of competition specific to hip hop and street dance culture). The schedule of events is as follows:

Friday, April 3
Venus Fly Composition Workshop (4-6:30 p.m.)
Members of Venus Fly crew will co-lead a workshop that engages participants in understanding and embodying technical foundations behind several different street dance forms (popping, breaking, locking, waacking, house and robot) and employing these in the creative process of composition (choreography). Students will learn set phrases, then be guided through steps to develop original phrasing (choreography) using the same foundational techniques and vocabularies, as well as elements from their own dance/movement backgrounds.

Cypher-Style "Panel" Discussion (7:30-9:30 p.m.)
Members of Venus Fly will situate their 10-year history as a crew within the shifting landscape of the underground street dance scene and its wider sociopolitical context, joined by additional members of the hip hop and contemporary modern dance communities, who will lead both small- and large-group verbal cyphers (discussions) around the impact of social, cultural and political factors on the landscape of dance in America. How the are the values and directions in our dance communities being affected by the politics around gender and race, and the popularity of dance in competitive reality TV shows and Hollywood films? What opportunities and concerns are we grappling with as dancers are more compelled and expected to train across myriad styles and forms? How do we want to shape the next decade?

Saturday, April 4
Sister-to-Sister: A "Build Session" Around Relationships
and Gender in the Scene (1-2 p.m.)
Venus Fly members have been battling, performing, organizing and educating within the male-dominated street dance community for around 15 years each and 10 years as crew. With "senior" members of the scene, VF will provide an opportunity to build with the younger generation. This session is open to all people of any sex, sexual orientation or gender identity.

Workshops and Master Classes (2-4 p.m.)

B-Rooted All-Styles Jam (4-9 p.m.):
B-Rooted will transform the Dance Center's theater into an underground dance party extravaganza, including dance battles, cyphers (where everyone is invited to join in the dancing), performances and more!

B-Rooted celebrates the 10-year anniversary of Venus Fly, a crew of women who have been battling, performing, organizing and educating within the male-dominated street dance community. The festival also takes an in-depth look at the all-styles phenomenon, a movement bringing together myriad embodied expressions that have grown out of a diverse set of youth sub-cultures within African American and Latino urban communities during the last 40 to 50 years. The most recent decade of the all-styles movement signifies a meaningful shift in the degree of openness around accepted movement vocabularies and gender expressions, all within a culture that strongly values foundation, lineage and tradition. These shifts mirror and intermingle with similar conversions happening within pop culture and the worlds of concert dance and academia. This fluctuating landscape is posing a wide set of challenges and opportunities for the next generation of dancers. B-Rooted provides a rich set of engagement opportunities around these issues.

Venus Fly
Established in 2005, Venus Fly is the first female all-styles crew of the U.S. underground street dance community. VF specializes in dance styles that were born within U.S. urban communities of color between the 1960s and 1980s, including popping, locking, breaking, house, waacking and hip hop. VF features seven highly accomplished street dancers, including: "B-Girl Teena Marie" Custer, "B-Girl Vanicia" Flores-Messick, Jocelyn "Evillynn" Eckhout, Kelsa Robinson, Marie "Pandora" Medina, Amber "Pringlz" Rowlett and Tracy "Ti-en-T" Yang. VF members are also teaching artists, community organizers, academics, contemporary and hip hop dance theatre choreographers and multimedia artists who have each spent 15-plus years training, ciphering, battling and building within the underground hip hop, house and street-dance communities. They have performed and taught classes across the country and around the world. Along with numerous commercial achievements, including television, film, video and concert performances with major music artists, their dedication remains firmly rooted in community.

Members of Venus Fly specialize in community-based art forms, born within rich social and cultural environments. Their mission is to root themselves and others in the histories and contexts of these dance styles, pay homage to the lineage of dancers who came before them and give back through education, mentorship, community-building and artist expression.

NINJACHURCH
NINJACHURCH is an all-elements, international hip hop crew, based in Chicago, that began as a collective of friends who shared a love for hip hop culture, creative innovation and the ability to construct well-organized art experiences for the community that elevate the soul. B-Rooted features DJ Fast$Mike and DJ VilasParkSniper, two internationally known breaks, all styles and funk soundsmiths who are also the resident DJs for Numb3r Runners, a growing dance party experience in the Chicago club scene. Additionally, the B-Rooted Masters of Ceremony are NINJACHURCH MCs AMS-King of Nerds, a South Side Chicago lyrical and comedic phenom, and Bgirl El La Katrina, a Chicana hip hop superhero and tradition bearer in movement and message.

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