Music Center throws a four-day hip-hop party, and Brazilian dancers of Compagnie Käfig lead the way
The “Käfig” in Compagnie Käfig means “cage” in German, but the hip-hop dance company’s founder, Mourad Merzouki, is determined to bust down the divisions between the humble city street and the rarefied concert-dance stage.
Known for incorporating circus acrobatics, martial arts and contemporary dance, the barrier-breaking Franco-Brazilian company performs at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion from Friday through Sunday and is the focal point of the Music Center’s “Four Days of Hip Hop,” a slate of programs inspired by Los Angeles’ rich history of urban dance, associate vice president of programming Michael Solomon says.
“Four Days of Hip Hop” starts Thursday and will include a panel discussion on the evolution of L.A. hip-hop, roller skating during the Music Center’s deejayed “Sleepless” party and vinyl trading at the Beat Swap Meet in nearby Grand Park. Compagnie Käfig will lead a free (and already-filled) beginners class in hip-hop dance on Saturday.
“We really want to celebrate hip-hop and we want to have multiple entry points for people,” says Solomon, who hopes that the programs will reach new audiences in the place where West Coast hip-hop was born.
“The history of hip-hop, particularly on the West Coast, is literally in the shadows of the Music Center. We're blocks from Central Avenue. We're only blocks north of the Santa Monica Freeway,” he says. Hip-Hop “should have the opportunity to be here and be part of the anchor performing arts center on the West Coast.”
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“Four Days of Hip Hop” also signals a major shift for the Music Center’s educational programming and outreach efforts, says Music Center President and CEO Rachel Moore.
“This is not your grandmother's Music Center,” says Moore, who took over her post in the fall. “Whether it's in a proscenium setting or in a master class, there's all sorts of different ways of entering the Music Center experience. I think this is going to be a wake-up moment for a lot of people about the direction that the Music Center is moving.”
The free class for beginners on Saturday is an opportunity for Merzouki to espouse his gospel and maybe even change a few minds about hip-hop’s place in the world of concert dance.
“A lot of people think that hip hop is only for the street, not for the theater,” Merzouki said by phone from France, where he is the director of the National Choreographic Centre of Créteil and Val de Marne. “When I do the workshop, I try to explain, we dance in the street and we can dance in the theater. We can do the choreography with hip-hop music or with another music. I like to propose this philosophy for the audience.”
Taking hip-hop from the street to the stage has been a driving force throughout Merzouki’s career, since he started melding dance styles with his first company, Accrorap, and then infusing even more athletic, acrobatic and international techniques into Compagnie Käfig when he founded the group in 1996.
Brazilian dance styles and rhythms, such as capoeira, samba and bossa nova, have greatly influenced the company. Merzouki’s travels took him to Rio de Janeiro, where in 2008 he worked with dancers from the region’s favelas to develop “Aqwa,” a dance focusing on water as a precious natural resource. Merzouki then wove together dance modules by other choreographers for the piece “Käfig Brasil” in 2012. Both “Aqwa” and “Käfig Brazil” will be performed at the Dorothy Chandler.
But just as some dance purists couldn’t imagine street dance onstage, some hip-hop diehards were initially skeptical of Merzouki’s importation of it to the theater.
“At the beginning, the hip-hop community didn’t understand why I propose hip-hop up onstage,” he says, adding: “Twenty years later, I think people understand why.”
Merzouki’s mission has been to create cross-cultural dialogue through dance, a passion that dates to his discovery of hip-hop as a French-Algerian teenager growing up in the rough, working-class suburbs of Lyon, France.
“You don't know if you are a French guy or not. I feel like I’m in cage,” Merzouki says. “With dance we can go out of the cage. We want to try to find the link between people in France and in the world.”
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Compagnie Käfig
Where: Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, 135 N. Grand Ave., Los Angeles
When: 7:30 p.m. Friday and Saturday, 2 p.m. Sunday
Tickets: $34-$125
Info: (213) 972-0711, www.musiccenter.org/kafig
Follow The Times arts team @culturemonster.
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