Got the call on Sunday afternoon. A free ticket. It sounded crazy, but I could broaden my horizons. What the heck, why not. I went to the San Francisco International Hip Hop Festival!
The venue was surprising. The Palace of Fine Arts is the last survivor of the Panama Pacific Exposition of 1915. It’s at the end of San Francisco’s Marina district. A colonnade of classical architecture is next to a large pond. It always looks like the remains of a lost civilization to me. My daughter named it, “The Duck Castle.”
Groups of dancers wandered the Palace grounds and posed for photographs. They were easy to spot. They didn’t wear uniforms, but they did wear matching tee shirts. I had pictured mobs of gang thugs going through metal detectors and flashing hand signals. Most of the crowd were high school kids. They didn’t look very threatening.
The Palace of Fine Arts theater has a large open lobby. Hip Hop merchandise and tee shirts were being sold. Small kids ran around out of control. They did donuts around groups of parents waiting to enter the theater. Let them blow off some steam before they settle down for a couple of hours in the theater. Get your goonies out!
This would be the last of three nights of the festival. It was more of a theatrical dance performance. This was the Twentieth annual San Francisco Hip Hop Festival. Even Hip Hop is getting older.
Most of the crowd was teenagers and younger kids. There were parents and a few older couples. Maybe they were the grandparents. A couple sat a few seats to my right. They had some heavy duty noise cancelation headphones. At least they were making the scene.
Dancers were onstage loosening up. They took turns taking center stage and doing a solo dance. It looked like a friendly competition. The dancers looked very skilled. I don’t know what they did to qualify for this event.
A DJ played. The music did get loud, especially the last song. Wild Wild West
“He’s a good DJ.” “How can you tell?”
The theater became very dark. It made the onstage lighting more effective.
The first act was Mozaik from New York. A young Asian woman with very short red hair started the performance.
Stuck Sanders is from the Bay Area, so he got a big cheer from the crowd. He performed solo. He stood behind what looked like prison bars. Billie Holliday sang “Strange Fruit” while he writhed and tried to escape. I wondered how many in the crowd knew the story about the song.
I cheered for the troupe from Chicago. Chicago Dance Crash. They did “Leap of Faith.” One tall white guy did some outstanding break dancing. He spun like a top.
Next up was “Underground Dance Providers/Black Jack Clubbing.” These guys looked a bit exotic. They were from Paris! They performed “Triangulum Australe.”
There was a fifteen minute intermission. Then the Hungry Sharks from Vienna, Austria came onstage. They may have been the best dancers of the night and they were certainly the most creative. Their number was titled: “#fomo - fear of missing out.”
The theater was very dark. The only light came from a hand held lamp like they use on construction sites. Only two dancers were onstage. One held the light. The other stood still. The guy holding the light created a large shadow at the back of the stage. He manipulated the large shadow. The other dancer stood perfectly still. All the shadow’s motion was created by the light guy.
A female dancer came out. The shadow hit her! She reeled back. She danced with the shadow. The dancer and the shadow interact. It was very well done by the guy holding the light. At the end the dancer and shadow embrace.
Three more dancers came onstage. They all pulled out their cellphones and turned on the lights. The lights danced all over the stage. It was very dark and the cellphone lights created trails. For the finale they played a game of Pong, with one light being tapped back and forth!
The SoulForce Dance Company was from San Francisco, so they got the loudest cheers from the crowd. It sounded like many of their homies were here tonight. They performed “Arrest the President.” “An exasperated attempt to express the weighted feeling toward the current “occupant” of the white house.” They didn’t have to worry about their politics with this audience.
Bboy Spaghetti was a solo act from Oslo, Norway. Navid Rezvani is Bboy Spaghetti. He was a bit of a contortionist. How does he do that?
Ambiance Facile came all the way from Paris, France. One guy played a ripping electric guitar, the only instrument onstage tonight that wasn’t a drum. The dancers were in African dress and charged about all over the stage. They got the crowd going with some call and response.
Most of the dancers came out for the final final. The night had been a great combination of Hip Hop and theatrics.
