No shade to Miss Carey, however can we decelerate on the “All I Need for Christmas is You”? Although custom can actually drag on, it’s solely a matter of time earlier than the trendy contributions begin catching up. Each are nice, however we want a balanced combine to really feel real through the holidays. The enduring “Christmas Rappin’” Kurtis Blow is right here to provide us, but once more, an thrilling up to date twist on a seasonal basic, The Nutcracker.
On Tuesday, November 23, Blow will carry the ballet to Austin’s Bass Live performance Corridor in a really totally different model. The Hip Hop Nutcracker tells the identical well-known story of Maria-Clara and the Nutcracker Prince, with the identical well-known 1892 rating by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky. However this time, it’s set within the New York Metropolis up to date audiences acknowledge, and the choreography would slot in on any road nook or pop dance reel.
There are some twists within the music, together with emceeing and a gap set by Blow, beats by DJ Boo, and the genre-bending skills of violinist Jarvis L. Benson. The rating itself, nonetheless, stays unchanged in all its Nineteenth-century glory.
The breakdancing — not like ballet in some ways, not least of all in its openness to improvisation — appears incongruous for moments earlier than it melts into the chic, turning into an apparent reflection of the music. Dancing is dancing, in spite of everything. The dancers hit the necessary beats and fluidly embody each the technicality and the which means within the music, even when in an sudden manner. The pliability serves to remind audiences that hip-hop is a tradition, not a sound.
“It has all the time been my perception that hip-hop is so malleable,” Blow says. “Hip-hop is ready to fuse with different types of music. And that is what The Hip Hop Nutcracker is all about: that fusion of classical music and people funky beats of hip-hop. It jogs my memory of that track that Nas made with Puff Daddy, ‘Hate Me Now.’ I turned a giant, large fan of that track.”
All of it circles again to Blow’s first single, “Christmas Rappin’.” The hip-hop pioneer was the primary performer within the style to signal with a serious file label, and he hit the bottom working in 1979 with a seemingly odd subject material. The file begins with a stuffy, campy narration of “A Go to from St. Nicholas,” swiftly interrupted by the rapper: “Maintain it, that’s performed out!”
Earlier than writing it off, take into account that file labels are companies, and burgeoning producer Robert Ford wanted to make cash. He knew {that a} Christmas theme would declaw the very doubtful expertise of releasing one thing fully non-standard. Fortunately, Kurtis Blow sincerely loves Christmas.
“Each time the vacations come round, I’m into it,” Blow tells CultureMap. “Excessive. And it’s not simply due to the track itself. It’s my favourite time of the yr due to all the love and the spirit of affection and the enjoyment that’s throughout us. You simply wish to be near your folks and your family members and your neighborhood and your mother and father and your youngsters, and simply give them a giant hug and say thanks for placing up with you all yr lengthy.”
Blow says his position as host and emcee of The Hip Hop Nutcracker is to “take [viewers] again to the old fashioned.” This model of The Nutcracker takes place in 1980, ushered in by Blow and the viewers in a track referred to as “New Yr’s Eve.” After a countdown, folks dance within the aisles and wave their palms within the air. On the finish of the present, Blow returns to carry out his hit track from the identical yr and the first-ever rap file to succeed in licensed gold, legendary ditty “The Breaks.” 1979 was Blow’s final New Yr’s Eve as a rapper who was nonetheless breaking out. For the vacation in 1980, Blow “was celebrating like no different.”
And this season, Austin audiences can, too.
The Hip Hop Nutcracker breaks out on the Bass Live performance Corridor on Tuesday, November 23. Tickets can be found online by means of the venue.
