Street moves and hip hop
Check out video of RubberBanDance Group on YouTube and you’ll see right away why this Montreal-based company took the dance world by storm from its inception in 2002.
Founder and artistic director Victor Quijada developed his moves on the streets of east L.A. and at the Los Angeles County High School for the Arts while still a young teen. By the time he was 26, he’d migrated through contemporary dance with Twyla Tharp and Eliot Feld’s Ballet Tech and done a twoyear stint with Les Grands Ballets Canadiens de Montreal.
Hip hop married to modern dance, ballet and classical music is hard to imagine, but take a look at Départ, a kind of street performance in an airport, set to Beethoven’s Ninth.
RBDG lives on several platforms, including stage, street installation and dance film. Quijada’s an exciting performer and his partnership with co-artistic director Anne Plamondon, an outstanding Montreal dancer also late of Les Grands Ballets, is hard to beat. The company comes to the Fleck Dance Theatre in DanceWorks DW 197 with Gravity of Center, Quijada’s latest exploration of the tension between individual striving and the interdependence of humans in an urban setting. The music is an original composition from Jaspar “DJ Lil Jaz” Gahunia.
The show promises to be fresh, arresting and classically grounded . Nov. 16 and 17 at the Fleck Dance Theatre, Harbourfront Centre.
Susan Walker