Sharon Eyal's Rambert2 Slays The Stage With Killer Pig @ Sadlers Wells In London

Rambert2 Dancers in Sharon Eyal's Killer Pig © Deborah Jaffe

text by Lara Monro
photographs by Deborah Jaffe

In February 2020, 650 early career dancers auditioned to join Rambert2: a new and exciting programme founded to develop the artistic practices of a diverse cast of daring performers. Eleven practitioners were selected for their unique talent. Starting in May this year, the ensemble toured the UK to perform Sharon Eyal’s Killer Pig. Designed to extend the Rambert company’s traditional reach, the Rambert2 collective takes distinctive, world-class dance to more people in more places.

Born in Jerusalem, Eyal established the contemporary dance company L-E-V (meaning heart) with her long-standing collaborator Gai Behar in 2013. Prior to this, Eyal danced with the Batsheva Dance Company from 1990 - 2008. From 2009, she began to form her own choreographies including Killer Pig (2009) and Corps de Walk (2011). Since 2013, L-E-V has had more than 200 performances in some of the most exclusive venues and festivals around the world: The Joyce Theatre – NYC; Jacob's Pillow – Berkshires; The Montpellier Danse Festival – France; Julidans – Amsterdam.

Last weekend, Sadlers Wells welcomed Rambert2 to its stage. Eight of the eleven performers executed Killer Pig with unwavering raw passion. The minimalist expression, intense honesty, and uncompromising physicality of the piece is provocative, carnal, and adrenaline-inducing. L-E-V uniquely combines ballet with hip hop: a head-bop seamlessly morphs into a pirouette. At forty minutes in length, the performance is the epitome of artistic endurance. The audience witnesses fearless determination and dedication as the performers bodies are pushed to extremes. The dance explores a spectrum of emotion: dark, obsessive, and beautiful. 

Instantly submerged within what feels like a club room dedicated to pounding industrial techno, the bodies move mainly in unison — part of a whole organism that ebbs and flows across the stage — until one, or a few break off and offer up an independent performance before dissolving back into the collective. It's tribal, at times trance-like, with a sassy aggression. 

Tight, beige leotards leave little to the imagination, allowing every part of the anatomy to be celebrated for its athletic achievement: muscles bursting, ribs protruding. The harsh, white lights designed by Kevin A. Jones draw attention to their facial expressions: passioned, pained, sometimes crazed. 

Home was also performed by Rambert2: a new commission created by the American choreographer Micaela Taylor. The first dance of the evening is recognized for its numerous influences that encompass classical ballet, hip hop and Gaga. 

Long-term L-E-V collaborator, Ori Lichtik, is the genius behind the multifaceted industrial soundscape, which arguably seals the deal for making the performance an all-around superlative piece of contemporary dance. The standing ovation, and emotional reaction this provoked in the audience, was a poignant nod to the long-overdue return of live performance post COVID. 

Cross Colours: Black Fashion in the 20th Century @ CAAM In Los Angeles

In 1990, on the first season of the hit primetime television show The Fresh Prince of Bel Air, lead actor Will Smith wore a series of boldly hued and geometric looks designed by a young Los Angeles–based urban apparel line named Cross Colours. African American-owned, founded by Carl Jones and T.J. Walker, the brand quickly skyrocketed, securing a plethora of orders across the country and breaking color barriers in the field of men’s apparel. The commercial success of Cross Colours, which Jones and Walker created for black youth with the premise of producing “Clothing Without Prejudice,” had a significant influence on the mainstream fashion industry, inspiring it to take notice of the emerging importance of urban streetwear.

Working in the golden age of Hip Hop in the late 1980s and 1990s, Jones and Walker incorporated bright colors and graphic designs that reflected not just trends in fashion, but also a cultural embrace of Afrocentrism in response to unjust Reagan-era policies, rising poverty, police brutality, and substandard educational opportunities. They appealed unapologetically to a black aesthetic, while strategically using product placement, social justice messaging, and community outreach to address these pressing issues. Thirty years later, Cross Colours continues to engage in the socio-political moment and counter negative portrayals of black youth. The first exhibition to examine this groundbreaking brand, Cross Colours: Black Fashion in the 20th Century showcases vintage textiles, media footage, and rare ephemera that illuminate how Cross Colours has permeated popular culture and how fashion can be used to tell history anew. Cross Colours: Black Fashion in the 20th Century is on view through March 1, 2020 at The California African American Museum 600 State Drive, Exposition Park, Los Angeles. photographs courtesy of CAAM

CONTACT HIGH: A Visual History Of Hip-Hop @ Annenberg Space For Photography In Los Angeles

Celebrating the photographers who have played a critical role in bringing hip-hop’s visual culture to the global stage, CONTACT HIGH: A Visual History of Hip-Hop is an inside look at the work of hip-hop photographers, as told through their most intimate diaries: their unedited contact sheets. Curated by Vikki Tobak—produced in partnership with United Photo Industries—and based on her book of the same name, the photographic exhibition includes over 120 works from more than 60 photographers. Taking the audience into the original and unedited contact sheets—from Barron Claiborne’s iconic Notorious B.I.G. portraits, to early images of Jay-Z, Kendrick Lamar and Kanye West as they first took to the scene, to Janette Beckman’s defining photos of Salt-N-Pepa, to Jamel Shabazz and Gordon Parks documenting hip-hop culture—CONTACT HIGH allows visitors to look directly through the photographer’s lens and observe all of the pictures taken during these legendary photo shoots. The exhibit also includes rare videos, memorabilia, and music to demonstrate how the documentation of a cultural phenomenon impacts not just music, but politics and social movements around the world. CONTACT HIGH: A Visual History of Hip-Hop is on view through August 18 at Annenberg Space For Photography 2000 Avenue of the Stars, Los Angeles. photographs courtesy of the gallery

Ivar Wigan "The Gods" Opening @ Little Big Man Gallery In Los Angeles

Scottish Photographer, Ivar Wigan, presents a series of images taken around the street culture associated with the urban music scene of the American South. Captured on the urban fringes of multiple cities—predominately from Miami, Atlanta and New Orleans—the images are a defiant celebration of a marginalized and often demonized culture, here raised to iconographic status and suffused with a sense of admiration and empathy. The Gods will be on view until June 19, 2016 at Little Big Man Gallery, 1427 E. 4th Street

Leading The Hip-Hop Renaissance: Read Our Conversation With Viper Magazine Publisher Lily Mercer Who Is Keeping Her Finger On The Pulse of The New Hip-Hop Golden Age →

AL: Do you remember the moment you fell in love with hip-hop?

Lily Mercer : Yeah. There were two songs. One was “Wishing on a Star” by Jay-Z. Weirdly, that’s the Jay-Z [track] that no one thinks of. My mum had grown up playing Motown, so there was a soul connection. It was hearing a song that was accessible but also quite deep. To me, those songs were quite profound at eight years old. After, when [rap] became an obsession, was when Eminem came out. That was a gateway drug. He’s a white rapper with middle class parents. I was a middle class kid, so it was the kind of hip-hop that was acceptable.

Click here to read the interview.