Dance pioneer faces himself
PUREMOVEMENT'S `MEKKA' IS HIP-HOP SPIRITUAL JOURNEY

By Anita Amirrezvani
San Jose Mercury News

Even though hip-hop dance is as American as jazz, baseball and pecan pie, Rennie Harris danced for a couple of decades before seeing his work accepted on mainstream concert stages in the United States. <a href=http://www.bayarea.com/mld/mercurynews/living/5624188.htm target=_blank>more</a>

Breaking out true hip-hop
Diane Haithman, LA Times

Forget what you see on TV and videos. Rennie Harris says pop culture's attempts to co-opt urban dance forms should not be confused with the real moves.

It seems appropriate that Rennie Harris, artistic director of Rennie Harris Puremovement hip-hop dance company, would give a moving interview -- that is, from a cell phone while riding in a Philadelphia taxicab on his way to the company studios, located in a former Quaker school building on Lancaster Avenue.

In 'Mekka,' the apotheosis of hip-hop
Lewis Segal, LA Times

In the same way that "Tango Argentino" gave audiences an authentic immersion in an idiom too often trivialized or debased in commercial entertainment, Rennie Harris' "Facing Mekka" offers a redemptive and ultimately inspiring vision of hip-hop music and dance.

A New Way to Make Dance Speak Hip-Hop

Valerie Gladstone, NY Times

RENNIE HARRIS has been extending the boundaries of hip-hop ever since establishing his dance troupe Puremovement in 1992. <a href=http://www.nytimes.com/2003/05/11/arts/dance/11GLAD.html target=_blank>more</a>

New Rennie Harris work weaves in many worlds

By Eva Yaa Asantewaa
Philadelphia Inquirer

NEW YORK - Facing Mekka, the powerful new multimedia extravaganza by Philadelphia's Rennie Harris Puremovement, opened at the Joyce Theater on Tuesday and moved its dazzled audience to cheers and ululations. <a href=http://www.philly.com/mld/philly/5863079.htm target=_blank>more</a>

Letting Hip-Hop Convey Humanity's Struggle

By JACK ANDERSON
NY Times

Rennie Harris upholds the great contemporary-dance tradition of eclecticism in "Facing Mekka," which his company, Rennie Harris Puremovement, presented on Tuesday night at the Joyce Theater. <a href=http://www.nytimes.com/2003/05/16/arts/dance/16HARR.html target=_blank>more</a>

With hip-hop, ‘Mekka’ embraces many cultures

BECKET - Performer/choreographer Rennie Harris calls dance his “spiritual house, his church.” Perhaps not exactly what one expects from an artist whose language is hip-hop, a dance style best known for B-boys spinning on their heads like gyroscopes or pop-and-locking like robots gone haywire.

However, for Harris and his 10-year-old Philadelphia-based company, Rennie Harris Puremovement, hip-hop is an extension of traditional African dance and culture, with their foundations in community and spirituality. The circle dance, the call-and-response format, the spontaneity of improvisation - all suggest communal worship, with solos created on the spot serving as the dance equivalent of being moved by the spirit.

Never has this been more apparent than in Harris’s new “Facing Mekka,” at Jacob’s Pillow through Sunday. ...

Hip-hop hurray!

Wilma Salisbury
Cleveland Plain Dealer

When it comes to tracking down the history of hip-hop dance, leave it to Rennie Harris to set the record straight. <a href=http://www.cleveland.com/artsandevents/plaindealer/index.ssf?/base/entertainment/105878016867250.xml target=_blank>more</a>

A pilgrimage to hip-hop's global roots

With 'Facing Mekka,' Rennie Harris fuses many influences

Hip-hop dance pioneer Rennie Harris didn't discover his talent through dance classes and studio workshops. He honed it on the rough streets of North Philadelphia and in his childhood home with six siblings and a single mom.

"I've been dancing all my life," Harris says. "Funk and soul music were always playing in the house. Music and dance were just part of the culture growing up. We're all conditioned to believe art is separate from living, and it's not."

With his new evening-length work "Facing Mekka" Harris gives his philosophy a global spin. Presented next weekend by World Music and performed by the choreographer's company, Rennie Harris Puremovement, the program is multi-layered. It features 11 dancers, four live musicians -- including beat-box virtuoso Kenny Muhammad -- a DJ, and a video montage.

Pioneer journeys to hip-hop ‘Mekka’

The young African-American and Hispanic men who explored rap and graffiti on the streets of New York nearly four decades ago likely had no idea their aesthetic would someday go mainstream, but that’s exactly what has happened.

Rennie Harris, duly described in press releases as “the brilliant pioneer of hip-hop choreography,” is living proof that international contemporary dance has been forever changed by a movement that once was bound only to American urban street culture.

Ask those well versed in hip-hop and they will tell you that it’s better explained as a lifestyle, not just a dance form. Harris agrees, and you can see for yourself tonight and tomorrow when CRASHarts presents three performances of his critically acclaimed “Facing Mekka” at the Cutler Majestic Theatre.

‘Mekka’ a not-to-be-missed work of redemption

I’d read what I thought was hype and doubted that Rennie Harris had actually forged an extraordinarily new vision of hip-hop dance. Oh boy, was I ever mistaken.

I understand now what everyone who’s seen”Facing Mekka” has been raving about. The 90-minute work presented last night at the Cutler Majestic Theatre by CRASHarts isn’t only entertainment; it’s prophecy as well. Harris takes his rightful place as one of America’s most original choreographers, and it’s safe to say that “Facing Mekka” will prove itself a momentous turning point in the history of early 21st century concert dance.

‘Mekka’ hip-hops the world

“Facing Mekka” is a performance for the MTV age. The program choreographed by Rennie Harris, who formed his company Rennie Harris Puremovement in Philadelphia in 1991, mixes video, live music, chanting, beatboxing, and dance into a multicultural stew. While the 90-minute piece, performed without intermission, hits enough joyous notes to leave the audience stimulated, its ultimate message is depressing.

In song and dance, a message of hope - or doom

If ever an artist had a sense of being in sync with time and place, it's Rennie Harris, former hip-hop performer, who feels right at home in the 21st century.
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To Harris, dance is an outpouring of feelings and movements drawn from the cultural melange that comprises the heritage of the United States, rather than composed of studio exercises devised and handed down by generations of white men and women. Harris got his start as a teenage virtuoso of the hip-hop techniques that emerged from the inner city.