Photo by Erin Baiano, Courtesy NYCC/Vail. Right: Yo-Yo Ma is to the left of Lil Buck. What is more, he weaves these elements together into a coherent whole.Īt Le Poisson Rouge. He can bend his arms and legs in surprising ways, and fold his whole body into a tight ball, one leg hooked over his neck and the other over his shoulder. He spins on his knees, on his ankles, does figure eights on one foot, and he can lean way back with one leg extended forward, as if in a reverse penchée. He can balance on his toes forever he can spin multiple times, in slow motion, with his free leg curved behind him in an attitude, and stop on a dime. As it evolved, the gliding footwork was added, as well as the popping and waving, and, finally, the icing on the cake: Dancers started using the tips of their sneakers to balance on pointe.īuck has absorbed all of these elements and refined them. The dance originated as a kind of walking step with a strong rhythmic bounce punctuated by staccato lifting of the knees, like walking on hot coals. “A little southern-ness and a basement-like quality, a homemade feel,” is how Buck describes it. Memphis hip-hop has a particular sound, with rat-a-tat-rhythms, and a bit of a soul-funk lilt. Developed in Memphis in the 1980s, jookin’-and other related forms like the gangsta walk, buckin’, and choppin’-is a localized derivation of hip-hop dance. Jookin’ is an integral part of the African-American culture of the city. He started noticing people at school doing it, too, so he decided to try. One day when he was 12, his older sister-Buck is one of seven-came home from school and showed him some steps in a style he hadn’t seen before. He has toured with Madonna, performed in Beijing with Yo-Yo Ma, and appeared at Fall for Dance. It takes me to a certain place, and I tend to stay there until the music is over.”Īt only 25, he has already traveled far from the place where he discovered jookin’, in South Memphis, an economically disadvantaged neighborhood of Memphis, Tennessee. Whatever feeling the music gives me, I find the world within that feeling. (Going vegan, he says, has changed his outlook on life.) “It’s like telling a story. “We call it goin’ in or zonin’ out,” he told me recently, at a vegan café in Manhattan. He’s not just showing off his “blissful moves,” as he calls them, but going to another place. They’re immediately struck by the power and precision of the moves-those glides! that fluidity!-but then, they are drawn in by the awareness of something deeper. Charles Riley, has a unique effect on people. It was technically impressive, but, more than that, it was moving. The illusion was that of watching the physical manifestation of a sob. Slowly, a ripple began to move across his arms, gradually accelerating, then pausing momentarily in his shoulder, producing a slight shudder that ran diagonally across his torso and down to the opposite leg. At a recent gala in New York, the young jookin’ sensation Lil Buck glided out of the wings, propelling himself sideways with subtle, liquid movements of his ankles to the opening bars of DJ Shadow’s meditative “Building Steam with a Grain of Salt.” He seemed to travel on a cushion of air.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |