I.AM.ME DELIVERING ENERGY
Dancers come to children’s festival
When I.aM.mE Crew won the sixth season of MTV’s America’s Best Dance Crew in 2011, Brandon “747” Harrell realized a longstanding dream of national and international recognition for his distinctive brand of hip-hop dancing.
“You could say that we are all in this as our main crew and that’s where the ideas come to life,” Harrell said. “Now we’ve got secondgeneration I.aM.mE members coming along now, too, which is pretty great.”
Given that the name stands for Inspire, Motivate and Energize, it makes sense there would be subsequent generations coming up. For almost a decade, this crew has been spreading joy and excitement on the dance circuit. Whether in the competitive realm or in performance, I.aM.mE is all about entertaining and the crew is pumped to be bringing their latest moves and choreography to Canada.
In 2004, Harrell, Di “Moon” Zhang and Phillip “Pacman” Chbeeb came together to form the award-winning Marvelous Motion Crew. The group was well-known for its popping and tutting (finger dancing) chops. When MMC ran its course it disbanded/rebanded. The original trio joined up in 2010 with equally acclaimed dancers Chachi Gonzales, Emilio Dosai and Dzajna “jaja” Vankova and formed I.aM.mE to take on ABDC: Season of the Superstars. The group won the TV series competition, achieving
previously unimagined online presence for its stellar, athletic performances.
Those can take their toll on any dancer, so some members have focused more on the choreography aspects as others were brought in to the crew. It’s a different reality than the original’s street-level backgrounds. Many of the newer talents have acrobatic training and more.
“When we’re doing our kids’ shows, we really want to focus on the style that we coined, or originated, which is our visually connected popping,” he said. “The original crew all looked different, came from different backgrounds and all had jobs to do, but came together to make something great. It’s that message we want to get across to kids, too, and it’s really positive.”
He notes that hip-hop movement is pretty impossible not to get excited about. With its mix of “helicopter flying” acrobatics and intricate, bendy bodywork, the form was tailor-made for flexible young audiences to get excited about. The absence of a ballet-style rule book means you can really express yourself and Harrell says that’s what drew him into the form decades back.
“Hip-hop dancing has grown even more huge on an international level since we last toured Canada in 2016, with audiences getting exposed to all this amazing talent from Japan and Korea.
“We didn’t really have our ‘brain bang’ style going to the same degree on our last tour, but you can be sure that this time we’re taking it to the crowds.”
To stay fresh during the difficult America’s Best Dance Crew schedule meant the crew had to be fully rehearsed before filming. Harrell was living and teaching dance in Shanghai when the call came in and the other members were gathered from around the globe. Once the audition was done, they went into serious production mode.
“We prepared 100 of our brain bang moves that had to each last at least 10 seconds and make a picture within a picture within a picture, and recorded them all,” he said.
“In four months, we did it aiming for five new ideas developed per rehearsal and it was really hard. This was before we even knew if we made the show or not. We were just putting in the work and hoping we got the call.”
They knew they had a good chance. And when the call came in, I.aM.mE was able to run with its trove of ideas on each episode.
“They would give us the song and we could just run through our ideas and build a routine around them,” he said. “With six members who are all choreographers, we could sprinkle in what was needed pretty confidently. It worked great until later in the show when we were burning out and it took up to 10 hours to develop one element.”
These days, all the members are known on the global scene and, rightfully, get called to choreograph around the world.
Harrell’s move to China was to choreograph for a few up-andcoming crews that were working their way into the public eye on the club circuit. He was instantly impressed by how many students took his classes.
“I would get 50 or 60 students, which was impressive in Shanghai at the time,” he said. “It wasn’t a very developed scene and I guess I was catching them up on what was current in the U.S. at the time.
“The last time I went back, it was a total change with all these incredible crews and dancers.”
When he started dancing as a high school student in Houston, he didn’t know it would take him to so many interesting places.
Now he’s able to inspire the next generation to bust a move at the Granville Island Stage in this 50 minute-long performance.