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Welcome members of the press! Thank you for your interest in the 10th Annual
PAST PRESS COVERAGE [top of page]
SF WEEKLY - BEST OF THE BAY, 2003 A talent for outsassing fellow performers is just part of a dancer's chops at the San Francisco Hip-Hop Dance Festival, which begins in November with a freestyle jam where dancers jump into the circle, show their stuff, and jump back out again; cockiness, as much as execution, is the name of the game. Performances were technically sharp at last year's festival, but out in the lobby, the talk was all about the smoldering David Collier of Khaotik, and the all-girl troupe B-Syde, whose feisty joy was infectious. Crowds have gotten so much bigger every year since the festival's inception that last year, organizer Micaya switched it from a two-week, typically sold-out run at Theater Artaud to a weekend-long run at the cavernous Palace of Fine Arts, where it sold out again, thank you very much. Another new feature of last year's festival was the all-youth bill, where kids as young as 7 were already slinging some attitude. http://sfweekly.com/issues/2003-05-14/bestarts22.html/1/index.html
SF WEEKLY - NIGHT & DAY, 2002 The San Francisco Hip Hop DanceFest, now in its fourth year, has always been a rowdy talent showcase: It's one of the few dance events where audience members give the performers shout-outs. That energy won't change this year, although two other things have -- the festival moved from a two-week, historically sold-out run at the now-hobbled Theater Artaud to a weekend at the significantly larger Palace of Fine Arts, and organizer Micaya has split the show in two. Friday is "Youth Performance Night," followed by the weekend's "Masters of Hip Hop" bill. http://sfweekly.com/issues/2002-11-20/nightday.html/1/index.html
VIA MAGAZINE - EVENTS LISTING, 2003 Hip-hop's colorful threads have worked their way into the very fiber of American contemporary dance. Nowhere is this more apparent than at this fest, where some of the art form's most accomplished performers will appear. http://www.viamagazine.com/events_content.asp?eventId=2952
SF EXAMINER - ARTS & CULTURE, 2002 Eleven p.m., South of Market: A familiar refrain is blasting through the Jon Sims Center. It's getting hot in here ... So take off all your clothes ... But this is an art center, not a night club, and the twentysomethings peeling off their tops in studio one consider themselves serious dancers, members of a professional company called SoulForce. Their leader, who goes by the single name Micaya, is the founder of the San Francisco Hip Hop DanceFest, the fourth annual installment of which runs Friday through Sunday at the Palace of Fine Arts Theater. She sits with her thin frame curled up between the arms of a chair, wearing a baggy sweat suit, twiddling her reddish-blond ponytail. "Four years ago, hip-hop was not onstage yet," she says. "A lot of people thought, 'Why would I pay to see hip-hop dance?' as if they were going to watch freestyle the whole time. It blew their mind when we did the DanceFest, because they were seeing significant, sophisticated works of choreography. It's as recognizable and valid as any other dance form." But if Micaya still struggles to win validation -- only one dance critic has reviewed the festival since its inception -- she's got popularity on her side. This year's festival showcases more than two dozen dance companies from throughout the western United States, 12 on a special Friday "Youth Performance Night" and 13 on Saturday and Sunday's "Masters of Hip Hop" slate. Last year's festival at Theater Artaud sold out all of its nine performances. The demand was so high that Micaya has moved the DanceFest to the massive Palace of Fine Arts Theater in order to pack in larger audiences of friends and family and people who heard by word of mouth that the DanceFest is one of the most ass-shaking good times in San Francisco. It was hip-hop's popular culture ascension that sucked Micaya into the scene in the first place. She moved to Oakland from her hometown Atlanta in 1987 with a background in ballet, jazz, modern and ethnic African forms. She needed to attract lots of dance students to make ends meet. "So in order to keep the young people locked in I started incorporating hip-hop," she says. Pretty soon she was choreographing for her students, and for clients like the NBA, Nike and Girbaud Jeans. She started producing underground community shows for her students, and within a few years realized she had a festival on her hands. The San Francisco hip-hop dance scene -- rooted in local recitals and a multitude of recreational classes -- is huge but not especially lucrative, Micaya realized. "In L.A. they do it more for the work, the next job -- it's more about business," she says. "There's a lot going on here, but it's not like the Cher tour, or the next Missy Elliot video." What you'll see on the DanceFest stage is more polished than hip-hop on the street -- though the festival does pay homage to the form's roots with a freestyle session before each show -- but neither is it slick and heartless. One company in the festival combines hip-hop with Lindy Hop. Another calls itself a Buddhist hip-hop group. The festival's fans appreciate the diversity. "They love that they saw so many different sizes of people -- and colors and ages -- but mostly sizes," Micaya says. "They love that they saw big dancers, tall dancers, not a carbon freakin' copy of every little ballerina that you see. In hip-hop we just don't have that restriction. We've got big ol' people who get up there and do what they do, and sometimes they do it better."
VOICE OF DANCE - INSIGHTS SECTION, 2002 Although it has slipped under the radar, as far as the local dailies are concerned, the annual San Francisco Hip Hop DanceFest, which returned last weekend for its fourth season, is a very special event in the dance calendar. We know that this is a city which is prone to sticking a festival label on anything if it's extended beyond a single event and runs longer than two hours. But the hiphoppers really can stake a claim to the festival title. They used to perform at modestly sized Theater Artaud before it closed down as a dance performance venue. Last weekend, they moved into the 1,200-seat Palace of Fine Arts Theater, for two events - a Youth Performance Night in Friday and a mixed evening, Masters of Hip Hop Saturday (Nov. 23, the one I attended, and a sell-out) and Sunday. Clearly, these folks have an image of a festival that varies sharply from the so-called fests staged at black box spaces. For one thing, people really turn out. Who knows how many neophyte hip-hoppers were in that audience? Outside, during intermission, I noticed a teenager, no more than 14, trying to impress a couple of girls with his adepteness at rapping (actually he wasn't bad). Twelve companies, both of local origin and from out of town, participated on Saturday. The audience was vociferous but good-tempered and supportive, and, when at the end, the evening's performers - much over 100, by a rough count - all took a final bow, you found confirmation of what you suspected - hip hop just gotta be taken seriously by critics. The S.F. Hip Hop DanceFest was produced by Micaya, a veteran dancer and choreographer with Oakland's SoulForce, and on the evidence here, she is doing an eminently professional job. The companies came on, performed their sequences and made way for their successors, without a glitch. Amplification, for which I had girded myself, was reasonable. The program began with a bit of verse by a man billing himself as AudioPoet(into); he was followed by BODYslanguage, Chain Reaction, Khaotik, B-Syde, SoulForce, Culture Shock, Flo-ology, Mind Over Matter, Loose Change, Mind Tricks, Motion Underground and Medea(CQ) Sirkas. Some companies favored body popping maneuvers and unisons. Others demonstrated their expertise in break dancing and still others threw a bit of the lindy hop into the stew. Everything looked terrifically well rehearsed. Some were single gender companies; other blithely mixed ages and genders. All served notice, however, of the evolution of a genuine urban dance form, born of the streets, yet adapted by a generation with energy and team spirit to spare. That hip-hop has permeated dance culture here and abroad (especially in France) is evident to anyone who keeps abreast of the scene; hip-hop conquered the television commercial long ago. Yet, its moves and gestures are now becoming part of the movement language, ready (in the musical sense) to be sampled at will by choreographers. On a recent visit, no less a figure than Bill T. Jones borrowed the pointing, wagging fingers of hip-hop in the context of a Beethoven string quartet and no one thought it the least strange. One thing about hip-hop; it has developed its own language and its own dress tradition. Those shapeless sweat suits and jeans and the almost universal adaptation of headgear do what we were told costumes weren't supposed to - conceal the line of the body. Consider this costuming born of necessity and an invitation to Everyperson to join in. It occurred to me Saturday that, around the country, there are probably a dozen cities that could produce a hip-hop festival comparable to San Francisco's, drawing its substance from local talent. If they're smart, they'll ask Micaya for advice. http://www.voiceofdance.org/Insights/viewperf.cfm?Perf_ID=7500000000003575
SAN JOSE MERCURY NEWS, 2001 If you go to the San Francisco 2001 Hip-Hop DanceFest, don't expect the audience members to sit quietly in their seats. Micaya, the festival organizer, expects the crowd to make a joyful noise.''It's not like the ballet,'' she says. ''Hip-hop concertgoers will scream and tell the performers how much they love them and say, 'Work it out' and 'You go ahead.' We're really supportive of each other and feed off each other's energy.
SAN FRANCISCO MAGAZINE, 2000 Thank God for the intimate stage of Theater Artaud; the Hip Hop DanceFest sure as hell couldn't happen at the opera house. Hip-hop dance companies from all over the West strut to relentless beats, demonstrating moves that your daddy's never seen and your momma probably wouldn't want you to see–but all ages are welcome. don't close your eyes; you will miss something.
THE OAKLAND TRIBUNE, 2000 ... The San Francisco Hip Hop DanceFest at Theater Artaud [is a] showcase for urban dance groups around the country, the four-day festival will also feature San Francisco's Bruthas and Sistas, San Jose's Nubianguru and Santa Cruz's Boom Squad, among other troupes. "I'm trying to bring hip-hop groups together," event producer Micaya says, "to give them a place to be recognized and show their talents. A lot of other kinds of dance always get recognition, but not a lot of hip hop dance.... It's definitely time for this." There's nothing quite like a hip hop dance show, the San Francisco choreographer and instructor adds. "It's not like other performances where you sit in your seat with a program in your lap and wait to applaud at the end," she says. "Here you're loud. You scream. You move around. You're like wooohooo! The audience has just as much fun as the dancers do. It's a whole new experience."...
DANCE MAGAZINE, 2000 ... Crawford and fellow teacher/choreographer Micaya are part fo a new hip-hop vanguard working outside the commercial circuit of videos and concert tours. Crawford had already staged showcases like "Body of Jazz," which became an intersection for modern, jazz, hip-hop, and Latin styles. And last fall, after selling out the showcase"Mission in the Mix" at a modeest venue, Micaya organized the First Annual San Francisco Hip Hop DanceFest, which sold out four nights at Theater Artaud, a 300-seat theater that previously had hosted a successful weekend run from Philadelphia hip-hop company Rennie Harris PureMovement. In Harris, both women saw the bright potential of hip-hop as an evening-length show. Crawford's troupe performed at Artaud, and as part of a trade deal, Micaya's troupe performed at Body one month later. Both drew enthusiastic crowds and showcased a wealth of fresh talent, with performers as young as twelve. The Hip Hop DanceFest boasted nearly a dozen acts a night, and as many styles. The local chapter of Future Shock, a multi-city youth outreach and performance group whose seventy local kids regularly perform at schools and industrial events, was represented. Micaya's dancers performed Girls Girls Girls, a slinky ensemble piece highlighted–literally–by flashlights which dancers in midriff-baring T-shirts and pink and purple bobbed wigs manipulated in time with the music. They reprised that piece, along with the futuristic Cybertron, at Body. Both events had a social, community vibe, with audience members whooping and calling out dancers' names. Clearly, performers and fans alike were jazzed, and judging from the crowd, there is a healthy demand for events like Body and the Hip Hop DanceFest, which Micaya hopes to remount this year. Like Micaya, Theater Artaud Project Manager Alex Perloff envisions a theatrical future for hip-hop. "We're realizing that hip-hop is emerging as a performance," Perloff said, pointing to Micaya's assurance that the festival would sell out, which it did even before the press coverage began. But despite hip-hop's growing popularity as more than just set dressing, Crawford and Micaya are still grappling with a problem familiar to all dancers: money. ...
SAN FRANCISCO MAGAZINE, 1999 After seven years as a grassroots impresario - using word-of-mouth to give notice that at such and such a place on such and such a day a raucous dance jam would ensue– hip-hop instructor and choreographer extraordinaire Micaya is finally rising up from the underground. Featuring more than a dozen West Coast troupes, her First Annual San Francisco Hip Hop DanceFest includes everything from Boom Squad's stret-style break dancing ot New Style Motherlode's cotton-candy hair and funky attitude to the fierce, sudden, stiff popping and jerking of Micaya's own troupe. The future of concert dance starts here.
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