Insane In The Brain updates a classic with dance
ON a mission to prove that street dance really does know no limits, a dance collective are staging a hip-hop interpretation of the literary classic One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest.
Swedish dance troupe Bounce aim to bring Ken Kesey’s 1962 novel bang up to date in their own unique moon-walking, body-popping, head-spinning style.
In the oppressive confines of a psychiatric hospital, austere Nurse Rachet forces the hapless patients to perform a strict ballet bar routine every morning.
But they find expression and rebellion through a heady mix of street dance, break-dance and acrobatics.
With a musical score that boasts Dizzy Rascal, Missy Elliot and Cypress Hill alongside jazz, classical music and bhangra, the performance is likely to draw in new dance audiences as well as old.
Dancer Bianca Fernstron, 24, stars as Miss Martini, a neurotic patient tormented by hallucinations.
Like her character, Bianca has found in contemporary dance a unique opportunity for self expression.
“I did classical training as a ballerina but I have always been most inspired by pop music,” she says.
Not all glamour
“As a child my bedroom walls were covered in pictures of Madonna and Michael Jackson and I would watch their videos over and over again wanting to dance like them.”
Swedish-born Bianca joined the dance troupe Bounce two years ago after graduating from the Stockholm Ballet Academy.
The group became a recent YouTube hit when they launched an impromptu mass performance of Beat It in Stockholm city centre as a tribute to Michael Jackson.
Street dancing has seen an explosion in popularity over recent years with TV talent shows like So You Think You Can Dance and Britain’s Got Talent, which was won by contemporary dance group Diversity, leading the trend.
“Shows like that are good advertisements for dancing,” Bianca says. “In the Eighties you had Fame and Flash dance and that really opened peoples’ eyes to dance in a new way. I think that shows like So You Think You Can Dance are the modern equivalent of that.”
But she warns budding contemporary dancers that being a performer isn’t all greasepaint and glamour.
“If you’re just doing it to be famous or to be on TV, you won’t last very long,” she says. “Dancing is such hard work, you have to just know that you don’t want to do anything else.
“You just have to be driven by your love of it to the point where you will do anything it takes.”
Insane In The Brain, The Lowry, November 21, 2009, £10/£20, www.thelowry.com.
Published: Fri, 20 November, 2009
Comment on this article
You need to be logged in to comment. Login | Register