Free Tap! $19 Call to Action! Amazing (Cheap) Hip Hop!
[ Free & Cheap ]

posted by Hanna Rubin on Friday, May 23, 2008

National Tap Dance Day is May 25th, and there are two great (and inexpensive) ways for New York City hoofers to celebrate. On May 23rd, The Kitchen and The Studio Museum in Harlem present a collaborative performance by tap dancer Jason Samuels Smith, DJ Reborn, and film artist Rashaad Newsome as part of their quarterly Hoofers' House tap series. And the next day, you can join Smith and Chloe Arnold for a Master Tap Workshop at the Ailey Studios, presented by The Ailey Extension and Divine Rhythm Productions. The Kitchen performance is free; the workshop classes start at $5. See www.thekitchen.org and www.alvinailey.org for more information.

Choreographer Ananya Chatterjee's dances incorporate elements as disparate as classical Odissi dance, street theater, yoga, and Indian martial arts. In Ananya Dance Theatre's Daak: Call to Action, which runs June 12-15 at Minneapolis' Southern Dance Theater, Chatterjee uses that mixed vocabulary to respond to the flagrant land rights violations occurring around the world. The work is sure to leave you thinking—but you won't have to think twice about the ticket price, which is just $19. Visit www.southerntheater.org for tickets.

Hip-hop performance artist Marc Bamuthi Joseph calls his new show, which runs June 19-21 at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco, a "mixtape for the stage." But there aren't many track breaks on this tape: genre-bending the break/s is a seamless blend of movement, spoken word, video and music. Turntablists DJ Excess, beatboxer Soulati, and filmmaker Eli Jacobs-Fantauzzi are among the artists Joseph has recruited to help him tell both the story of his own life and the history of hip-hop. Ticket prices are as low as $23. See www.ybca.org for details.