Breaking Bach: Kim Brandstrup teams up with Hip Hop dancers and the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment
Breaking Bach, with its slyly trendy, indeed hip title, is destined to make waves at the Edinburgh Festival, where it will be seen on 20 August at Usher Hall.
Breaking Bach has absolutely nothing to do with Breaking Bad‘s meth-making business, but the famous TV show’s title – a US expression from the South meaning to ‘raise hell’ – is what Kim Brandstrup and his hip-hop dancers will be trying to do, with the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment (OAE) playing J S Bach on period instruments.
The official explanation of the title is that the show will be “breaking the code of dance rhythms in Bach’s music”.
I talked with Brandstrup about the collaboration and whether he thinks that the rhythmic code has been cracked.
A recent collaboration with hip-hop dancers in New York – where I had a six-month fellowship at the Center for Ballet and the Arts, NYU in 2019, specifically to research rhythm in choreography – made me realise that hip-hop dancers are enormously rhythmically literate, and can work on very fast musical sub-divisions. Afterwards, I thought, wow!… it may be possible for this generation of dancers to respond to the virtuoso speed and complexity in Bach’s music.
The idea of this unusual, if not unique, fusion of 18th-century Bach and Hip-Hop, originating in the Bronx in the 1970s, emerged two years ago. OAE’s chief executive, Crispin Woodhead, and Brandstrup wanted to co-create a new dance piece involving young people who have the moves of street dance in their bones as partners with an equal voice in the creative process.
The original group of young hip-hop dancers were drawn from Acland Burghley School (where the OAE has its rehearsal base) and two professional dancers – Deavion Brown and Tommy Franzén.
During the summer of 2023, Brandstrup worked with them to create a piece set to Bach’s Double Violin Concerto, which was shown to an invited audience in October 2023. The company for Edinburgh is comprised of 13 dancers – eight professionals (including two former Acland Burghley students) and five young students from Acland Burghley School, who will together perform a three-part programme: the Double Violin Concerto, Brandenburg Concerto No. 3 and Concerto for Oboe in G minor, as well as other short pieces for solo instruments, which will all played live by the OAE.
I imagine that for many of the hip-hop dancers, this was their first time hearing Bach’s music.
The students from Acland Burghley school would have heard classical and baroque music before because the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment having its base at the school and many of the rehearsals are open to them. But they would never have danced to it, or even thought of dancing to it. Perhaps the only exposure to classical music for some of them would be through films or commercials… so really only as a kind of background.
What were their reactions on hearing what they were going to be dancing to?
The journey has been to make them aware of how rhythmically exciting and complex Bach’s music is. That said, I often start rehearsals by not playing the music, but instead creating a rhythmical paraphrase by clapping, stamping, and counting out the rhythmical structure of the piece.
The music was new to them, but was the dance style new to you?
No, because I’ve occasionally used it in operas I’ve worked on, notably The Fairy Queen at Glyndebourne [2009, directed by Jonathan Kent] and a staging of Handel’s Messiah [2009, English National Opera directed by Deborah Warner].
In a video clip, you say that when meeting the hip-hop dancers you could “see that it was possible to match the intricacy of the rhythms in Bach”. What became possible that wasn’t before?
The overall bpm [beats per minute] has increased in contemporary/popular music over the years, especially in the clubbing idiom. I think young dancers immersed in this genre hear and respond very differently.
In a way that is not possible with other dance forms?
I don’t think I could choreograph at these speeds with classical dancers; they have different imperatives; they have to think of line… of image.
Hip-hop dancers have a rhythmicality that’s shared with tap, with flamenco, with kathak… it’s all about contact with the floor… ‘stamping’ the floor… and not about lines and bodies in space.
There will be a further performance at the George Enescu International Festival in Bucharest on 11 September. Do you see this collaboration as having a future beyond that?
There is strong interest in further performances in Britain and on the international stage – in 2027 – but it’s too early to make any announcements at this stage. Watch this space!
Marquee TV will film the performance at Edinburgh International Festival as part of its creative partnership with the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment.
Breaking Bach
Wednesday 20 August 7.30pm
Edinburgh International Festival
Usher Hall, Edinburgh EH1 2EA
Thursday 11 September 5pm
George Enescu International Festival, Bucharest
Romanian Athenaeum
Graham Spicer, aka ‘Gramilano’, is a writer, director and photographer based in Milan. He was a regular columnist for Opera Now magazine and wrote for the BBC until transferring to Italy. His articles have appeared in various publications from Woman’s Weekly to Gay Times, and he wrote the Danza in Italia column for Dancing Times magazine. Graham was the historical advisor on Codice Carla, the 2023 documentary on Carla Fracci.
Graham also works as a dance photographer, and his photos have appeared in many books, theatre programmes, and magazines, including Dancing Times, Dance Spirit and Ballet2000, as well as all the major Italian newspapers.
He is a member of the Dance Section of The Critics’ Circle.
