Rennie Harris is the founder, choreographer, and artistic director of Rennie Harris Puremovement - American Street Dance Theater. This year the company celebrates their 30 year anniversary and the amazing achievement of being the longest running street dance theater company in American history!
Lorenzo “Rennie” Harris is a leading ambassador for Hip-hop. Harris grew up entrenched in Hip-hop culture and was immersed in all its forms — music, dance, language. Throughout his career, he has embraced the culture and sought to honor its legacy. He believes Hip-hop and Street Dance is the purest form of movement in that it honors both its heritage from African and African American-Latino culture. His life has been devoted to bringing Hip-hop and Street dance to all people. Harris’s artistic philosophy reflects a deeper understanding of people that extends beyond racial, religious, and economic boundaries. He believes that Hip-hop, because of its cross-racial and transnational popularity, can help bridge these divisions. Harris’s work encompasses the diverse and rich traditions of the past, while simultaneously presenting the voice of a new generation through its ever-evolving interpretations of dance.
Harris is well versed in the vernacular of what he calls Hip-hop “proper” as well as the various techniques of B-boy (often mistakenly called “breakdancing”), house, GQ and other styles that have emerged spontaneously from the urban, inner cities of America like the North Philadelphia community in which he was raised. Noted for coining the term “Street Dance Theater,” Harris has brought “social” dances to the “concert” stage, creating a cohesive dance style that finds a cogent voice in the theater. He is a powerful spokesperson for the significance of “street” origins in any dance style. Intrigued by the universality of Hip-hop, he seeks inspiration from other forms and performance art. Harris has developed works that challenge his audiences’ expectations about Hip-hop and street dance. Much of Harris’s work has explored his personal experiences as an African- American male growing up in North Philadelphia. However, Harris returns here to the ideas of “Puremovement” and seeks to challenge those who see Hip-hop/Street Dance as a purely male form of expression.
Harris is also the founder of the annual street festival Illadelph Legends which he started in 1997/98. Every year since, guest artists and students have been coming from around the world to Philadelphia for a weekend of classes, lecture demonstrations, panel discussions, jam sessions, and performances. The guest artists and teachers are seminal performers in the field of Hip-hop and Street dance. The original teachers included the creator of Campbell Locking, Don “Campbell Lock” Campbell, the creator of Fresno Boogaloo & Popping, Boogaloo Sam, and his group the Electric Boogaloos, and B-boy pioneers Crazy Legs of the infamous Rock Steady Crew and Lil Lep of New York City Breakers, just to name a few.
To date Harris has been awarded 3 Bessie Awards, 4 Alvin Ailey Black Choreographers Award for Rome & Jewels, an Ethnic Dance Award, the Herb Alpert Award in the Arts for choreography. He has also been nominated for a Laurence Olivier Award (UK) for Rome & Jewels and nominated again for best choreography in 2006 for Love Stories (Alvin Ailey Dance Theater). He’s received a Guggenheim Fellowship, PEW Fellowship, USA Artist of the Year Fellowship as well as the coveted “Philadelphia Rocky” Award, and Governor’s Artist of the year to name just a few. He was also voted a Creative Ambassador of Philadelphia. At the turn of the century, Harris – alongside Princess Grace Kelly and Dr. Julius Erving – was voted one of the most influential people in the last one hundred years of Philadelphia history and has been compared to twentieth-century legends such as Basquiat, Alvin Ailey, and Bob Fosse. Noted for coining the terms Street Dance Theater and Hip-hop Concert dance Harris has also received an honorary doctorate from Bates College (Lewiston, Maine) in 2010 and another from Columbia College (Chicago, IL) in 2012. The first choreographer (street dancer) to set a sixty-minute work on Alvin American Dance Theater Harris received a Dance Magazines Legend Award, Palm Desert Festivals LifeTime Achievement Award and is the recent recipient of the Doris Duke Artist Award. Harris is currently an artist-in-residence and Co-Director of Hip Hop Studies at The University of Colorado Boulder.
Visit his website for more information: https://www.rhpm.org/founder/
