“With Inoah, [Beltrão] proves that he can start the world and the language of hip-hop again with each creation.” —Libération
With his Rio-based, 10-person crew Grupo de Rua, choreographer Bruno Beltrão deconstructs hip-hop to fully realize the potential of the street form’s translation to the stage. With utter virtuosity, Beltrão combines sophisticated stage craft with contemporary dance and raw hip-hop, rapid-fire cadences, athletic suppleness, and gravity defying artistry. In this rare US performance, Grupo de Rua unleashes popping and breaking in a masterwork of urgent choreographic invention. It’s a heart-stopping dance of stylistic brilliance.
Program length: 60 minutes.
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The performance takes place on Friday, November 8 and Saturday, November 9 at 8 pm in the McGuire Theater. Tickets are $28 ($22.40 Walker members).
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ABOUT BRUNO BELTRÃO
Bruno Beltrão (born in 1979 in Niterói) is a Brazilian choreographer who has worked with his Grupo de Rua since 1996. He uses urban dance styles in the context of conceptual theatre and has combined various influences, including hip hop, to form abstract choreographic landscapes. Beltrão has wanted to direct films since he was a child and he was fascinated by cinematographic and computer-generated, three-dimensional universes. At the age of 13 he began dancing in matinees in his hometown, starting his unexpected relationship with hip hop. In 1994 he received his first dance lesson from the Israeli teacher Yoram Szabo. A year later, he began to teach street dance in the city’s schools. At the age of 16, he created Grupo de Rua de Niterói with his friend Rodrigo Bernardi in 1996. In its first two years, Grupo de Rua was dedicated to competitive dance and made appearances at festivals and on television. During this period—while they lived intensely in the hip hop world— the way the techniques of street dance were usually translated to the stage no longer attracted the group’s interest as much as it had. They wanted to bring hip hop dance out of the confines of its own definition. In 2000, Beltrão enrolled in the dance faculty of the Centro Universitário da Cidade in Rio de Janeiro. In 2001, the duet From Popping to Pop premiered at the Duos de Dança no Sesc in Copacabana. This piece was Beltrão’s official debut on the contemporary dance scene in Rio de Janeiro and also marked a turning point in the career of a choreographer who was starting to develop a personal vision for the dance he had been performing. Also in 2001, he created Me and my choreographer in 63 with the dancer Eduardo Hermanson. At the end of that year, Rodrigo Bernardi left the company and Beltrão took over running Grupo de Rua. Since then he has choreographed Too Legit to Quit (2002), Telesquat (2003), H2 (2005), H3 (2008) and CRACKZ (2013). Beltrão was named Revelation of the Year 2006 by the German magazine Ballettanz, and was given a Bessie Award in New York in 2010.