EnCounter Culture

On Sunday the 20th of May, I went to EnCounterCulture in Kresge Auditorium. It was a series of dance performances by groups at Stanford as well as the Boys and Girls Club of the Peninsula. I choose to focus on the Boys and Girls Club of the Peninsula, the Stanford Steppers, and Jam Pac’d, since these were the groups that I felt conveyed their message and style most effectively, and I had to miss DV8’s performance due to a scheduling conflict.

The Boys and Girls Club was a group of four middleschoolers who danced to Soulja Boy as well as several other hiphop songs. For their age, their technical ability was impressive. The main highlights about hiphop that I have picked up are the importance of synchrony, and of sudden, rhythmic and complicated movements that match well with the beat of the song. These girls were well synchronized and matched the beat of the music with movements that were also fluid—which was an unusual combination. In addition, they made the stories written into the songs come alive. One of the songs they danced to was about a girl who was the center of attention, and three of the girls fell back to reveal the girl of attention, who then proceeded to effectively grab our attention with dance movements that matched her character. The quality I enjoyed most about this dance performance was how natural and yet how technical it was. The dance did not feel performative, it felt like hip hop that I might see within a community having fun—and yet it did not look amateur-ish.

Jam Pac’d was an incredible performance as well. The dancers in Jam Pac’d wore face paint that resembled masquerade masks or skeleton masks. Their eyes played a huge role in the development of the piece. Facial expressions were often fixed, and they had a fixed, fierce stare most of the time. Their movements matched the beat in a jerky fashion, imitating the patterns of a robot and a mime. They were very convincing, often to the point where I would forget that there were people on stage. They also played on humor, catching the audience at odd moments and acting out portions of the song in a comical way.

The best act of the night that I saw was the Stanford Steppers. The Stanford Steppers create music through their bodies—by clapping, slapping, stomping, and beating bottles together. The rhythms that they can create are outstanding. It made me want to leap up and dance. The amazing part for me was that they were creating this music without the assistance of any instruments.
The main plot of the performance was that one of my freshmen, Annie Scalmanini, was an Oompa Loompa recruit. The other Oompa Loompas were testing her, for her worthiness to join the troupe. They would shout calls and then announce the step routine that was about to start with a beginning sequence of steps. Then the entire group would proceed, winding it until it became more and more elaborate, rhythmically. They used elaborate arm movements and leg movements to perform the sound effects, some that seemed impossible to complete in time, which would leave the audience holding their breath and then sighing in awe when it was completed. In essence, while creating their own music, they also danced to their own music, in a way that was exciting and gripping. They played on technicality, creating intricate rhythms that the audience would never expect the human body to create, and also on humor, by breaking up the performative sequences with funny scripts and dance-offs between groups inside the Steppers. Their performance was outstanding for all of those reasons.