STEP BY STEP
A street-dance theater performance.
STEP BY STEP is a tense mixture of street-dance and a modern approach to composition and dramaturgy of form. By exploring everyday and urban movement material, the artists talk about the need to belong to a group and their personal identities. The successive stages of community development are shown through multiple variations on the united bodies of dancers. By using the group-created energy that manifests itself in movement, performers experience who they can become together.
Idea
STEP BY STEP is a performance that breaks the barrier in Polish dance-theater, the project aspires to a fusion between theatrical (contemporary) dance and hip-hop dance, showing the depth and multidimensionality of movement regardless of the style. It is a game with the borders of street-dance and contemporary choreography. The virtuosity of the performers and composition of all elements creates a combination that has not been seen on the Polish market so far, a unique and experimental proposition.
Co Jest Crew is a collective of dancers specializing in street-dance. The group was founded in 2009 in Poland. Its domain is a participation in freestyle competitions, dance battles and the creation of short dance forms inspired by theater-dance. In the years 2009-2018, Co Jest Crew was the most frequently awarded street-dance group in Poland. It represented Polish hip-hop dance scene at finals in Germany, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Sweden and France. In 2015 the group made it to the top of the prestigious choreographic competition Dance Delight in Japan. From the beginning of its activity, Co Jest Crew focused on creating an original style of combining dance theater with the street-dance movement. Cooperation with Hamdi Dridi is a result of this process.
Hamdi Dridi
choreographer
Tunisian choreographer based in Montpellier/Occitanie, France. Since 2018, he has been creating the Cie Chantiers Publics company dedicated to producing theatrical performances. His choreographic style is acollection of multi-environmental movement experiences. He has combined the academic knowledge gained at the National Choreographic Centre in Lyon and the Choreographic Centre in Montpellier with the study of Tunisian traditional dance, and the exploration of everyday and urban movement material. Combining this diversity of influences with his personal experiences and dance practice derived from hip-hop culture, Dridi describes himself as an architect of intersecting spaces. Inspired by the potential of his dancers, he focuses on capturing the fragility of movement. His choreographies are a combination of an abstract language with a clear symbolism of a gesture.
