Hip-Hop Dance Pioneer Rennie Harris Presents FUNKEDIFIED At Bass Concert Hall

Texas Performing Arts presents hip-hop dance pioneer Rennie Harris' new work, Rennie Harris Funkedified, October 29 at Bass Concert Hall! Praised by The New Yorker as "the most brilliant hip-hop choreographer in America," Harris' latest work is a multi-media collaboration that celebrates funk music and street dance of the 1970s, set against the landscape of a video montage of African American communities of the era.

Narrated by Rennie Harris, Rennie Harris Funkedfied is a visual motif of the 1970s and features members of Harris' dance company Puremovement along with celebrated Lock Dance group The Hood Lockers, and New York funk band, Invincible, who will paint an eclectic soundscape and texture. The performance navigates the audience through a snippet of the decade per Rennie Harris' journey into funk music and culture, which ultimately evolves into hip-hop culture.

A pop culture icon and recognized by the United States Department of Education as a leading ambassador for the art of Hip-hop dance, Lorenzo "Rennie" Harris was a member of several dance groups who have opened and performed with Salt-n-Pepa, Madonna, Sister Sledge, and more. He has worked on two dance television shoes, Dancin' on Air and Dance Party USA, as well as had his own TV show, One House Street. Harris has received a number of arts and academic honors among them Guggenheim and US Artist International fellowships and honorary doctorate degrees from Columbia College in Chicago, Illinois and Bates College in Lewiston, Maine.

Cited as "the" first to bring Hip-hop dance to concert stages around the world, Rennie Harris continues to find new ways to expose the next generation to the power of the arts. Harris is known for having brought "social" dances to the "concert" stage and creating a cohesive dance style that finds a cogent voice in the theater. He has often been acknowledged as a powerful spokesperson for the significance of "street" origins in any dance style. Harris was voted one of the most influential people in the last one hundred years of Philadelphia history and has been compared to twentieth-century dance legend Alvin Ailey and Bob Fosse. He received 3 Bessie Awards, was nominated for the Laurence Olivier Award, and has been awarded the Herb Alpert Award in the Arts.

Rennie Harris is currently a teacher at The University of Texas at Austin Department of Theatre and Dance.

For more information on this performance, please visit: https://texasperformingarts.org/season/rennie-harris-funkedified-bass-concert-hall-2019

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