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Prince Scarekrow & the Emerald City: Rennie Harris' hip hop life.

Article Excerpt
How does it feel to be 15? Ask Rennie Harris, whose hip hop dance company, Rennie Harris

Puremovement (RHPM), celebrates its "quinceanos" this month at Philadelphia's Kimmel Center. "Prince" was Harris' street name as an adolescent growing up in North Philadelphia; "ScareKrow" stuck with him later on. Despite the tags attached to its practitioners, hip hop culture is more than a teenage pastime--it's a way of life.

Harris has crafted and transformed this street-smart, urban dance form into a complex, concert-stage product that offers a mix of messages to diverse audiences--young-old, black-brown-white, working-and-middle class. This is no mean achievement. When RHPM began, hip hop culture--including graffiti, deejay artistry, rap music and poetry, and the range of contemporary African-based dance forms known as hip hop and its cousin, break dancing--was contained in African American (and Latino) communities. Nineteen eighties films like Beat Street brought the culture to mainstream America. But it took Harris to bring the hip hop dancing body to the same stages that hosted modern and ballet companies. Hip hop influences abound in today's dances in works by Doug Elkins, Trey McIntyre, and Matthew Neenan, to name a few. But Harris takes the credit for bringing the genuine article to concert dance audiences and luring hip hop spectators to concert dance venues. Through his choreographic overhauls he...

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