British hip hop dance company Far From the Norm’s show, BLKDOG, premiered rather quietly at The Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center Monday night.
A spotlight shone on a lone dancer who sat cross-legged on the floor. Several dancers sat a few feet away, shrouded in shadows. Ambient industrial noises gradually swelled in the background as a sense of unease crept in.
Suddenly, a gunshot rang out. The dancers slowly slumped to the floor. The dancer in the spotlight writhed and thrashed in pain as the others slowly crept away.
The award-winning show, created by Far From the Norm artistic director Botis Seva, centers around various forms of trauma faced by youth. BLKDOG barely uses dialogue, apart from sparse, terse narration, to focus on abstract choreography.
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“I start with working with themes, and then from the themes I take ideas and start exploring it in my body,” Seva said. “I work with the dancers quite a lot, so the artists who I work in the room with collaborate with me quite a lot in terms of bringing movement and improvisation.”
Seva founded the hip hop group to fill a niche in the London dance scene after he didn’t find appeal in contemporary dance spaces, he said.
BLKDOG debuted as a 25-minute show in 2018, but Seva expanded the show to an hour after winning an Olivier Award for Best New Dance Production — a prestigious award for excellence in British theater — in 2019.
Seva said he drew from intense themes to compose brisk movements in BLKDOG, such as in the performance’s depiction of gun violence. The dancers form a circle, and synchronize stiff movements to the sound of cocking pistols.
Each dancer took a turn cautiously pointing finger guns at each other until one ran away, soon collapsing as gunfire rings out. After a failed resuscitation, the fallen dancer uses their final moments to comfort a mourner.
Tariq Darrell O’Meally, The Clarice’s former artistic planning coordinator, said the theater planned BLKDOG’s debut at this university in 2020, but the COVID-19 pandemic ultimately forced them to scrap the idea.
Four years later, O’Meally said he believes this is an opportunity for attendees to view hip hop through different, more intimate mediums.
“Both as an artist and a choreographer, there was something that was honest and vulnerable and dark about the world,” O’Meally said. “But [BLKDOG] was telling this kind of story earnestly … the vulnerability of it, that was exciting to me.”
As BLKDOG reached its end, the dancers aggressively thrashed around the stage with frenzied movements. Silence soon fell over the stage as the dancers took off their hoods to reveal their faces one by one.
“It’s OK, they’re just like him; it’s OK, they’re just like her,” a voice rang out. “It’s OK, they’re just like me.”
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Seva said the spoken affirmations were intended to reassure audience members that they were not alone in their struggles and that there is a real human behind every traumatic experience. To him, the show is a healing experience, Seva added.
Essence Smith, a Washington, D.C., resident, was immediately “enraptured in their performance” within BLKDOG’s opening scene. The empathetic, raw and visceral movements were important to connect with the performance’s message, Smith added.
“It was such an empathetic performance, it really made you feel like you were there,” Smith said. “Because you have been there, either spiritually or mentally or emotionally or physically.”
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