foot in mouth: December 2013 Archives

Almost everything that the otherworldly Brooklyn street dancer Storyboard P does defies expectations, especially if you're expecting straight-up hip-hop.  

He hails from the same 'hood as staunch rapper Jay Z, whose latest album, Magna Carta Holy Grail, the 23-year-old "covered" this weekend at the Brooklyn Museum as part of the roving young Beat Festival (until September 21). But the dancer, as elongated in limb as a Giacometti, rejects hip-hop's reflex bravado. The intricate language he helped invent - he explained before a small, avid crowd in the museum's airy Beaux-Arts Court - and is constantly, obsessively revising describes dreamers, poets and ghosts, not gangsters. This "mutant" idiom shows what it feels like to be young, black and pinned to the inner city, not whatever stance you take to deal with the situation. 

 And how does it feel? Complicated, from the looks of it.....