The Street Dance Style That's Tackling Today's Toughest Issues

FLEXN
caused quite a stir when it premiered at Park Avenue Armory in 2015. Pairing opera director Peter Sellars with flex pioneer Reggie “Regg Roc” Gray and members of The D.R.E.A.M. Ring, the work took the Brooklyn-born street dance style to the concert dance stage, using it to create a series of vignettes that openly confronted the social justice issues brought to the fore by the Black Lives Matter movement. Since then, the piece has toured internationally, and the D.R.E.A.M. Ring has coalesced into a group focused on using dance to bring communities together and inspire change.

This week, Gray and The D.R.E.A.M. Ring return to the Armory, where they are artists in residence, with FLEXN Evolution. The updated take on their 2015 work will be performed May 18–21, with a special fundraiser event benefiting the D.R.E.A.M. Ring’s community events following the Sunday matinee. (You can also catch a free preview of the work this Tuesday at the Brooklyn Public Library.) We talked to Gray about what’s changed in the last two years.

How would you describe flex as a style?

Flexing has different characteristics: bone-breaking, pausing, gliding, get-low, hat tricks. The base is reggae, mixed with bruk-up [a Jamaican style that was popular in dance halls in the ’90s].

Is the social justice/autobiographical aspect of the work built into the form, or is it something you consciously add to your work?

That’s consciously added to the work. It’s something that we’ve been doing for years, telling stories and describing things that are part of the environment. When we were working on FLEXN, Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown and all of these things were on people’s minds. Those are the things we were talking about as dancers, those are things that we speak about with our bodies. So it was definitely a conscious effort.

FLEXN Evolution. Photo by Clementine Crochet, Courtesy Park Avenue Armory.

How has The D.R.E.A.M. Ring grown and developed since the last time you were at the Armory?

The dancers have learned to control themselves and their physicality. They’ve grown professionally; they’re teaching now, they’re doing work out in the field and the city, volunteering with programs and community organizations—schools, community centers.

How has
FLEXN Evolution been updated for 2017?

Number one, the dance style itself has upgraded. It upgrades almost every day! In two years, wow, we’ve come so far. So not only that, but the world is not the same, politically. We chose to speak about some of the decisions being made—the wall, the Muslim bans, some of the decisions Trump is making. All of these things are part of the world now, so we’re putting those in the show. The music has changed, the dancers have changed, the piece has changed. We’ve done all of that while also keeping some of the main parts that people have loved. We also have fewer dancers, and now we have a more focused situation where you’ll be able to see faces and everyone in the show a lot better than two years ago when there was a big, long runway.

There’s also a conversation series before every show, right?

We’re inviting a lot of special guests within the community who are also involved in social justice. We’ll be having an open discussion and conversation about what we can do. It’s not about right or wrong, just real people coming from real places speaking about real situations.

What can audiences expect from the show? What do you hope they’ll take away?

I really hope that they leave with the message. It’s definitely the most powerful part of what we’re doing. And an understanding of the dance vocabulary; opening their minds to a new style of dance and respecting it for what it is.

FLEXN Evolution. Photo by Clementine Crisp, Courtesy Park Avenue Armory.

And what is that message?

Come to the show and find out! The show resonates with different people in different ways, and we don’t want everyone to see the show the same way. We’ve noticed that on tour: Everyone takes from it what they need to take from it. It’s a real conversation through dance.

What does it mean to be back at Park Avenue Armory?

We’re back at home. It feels great, and it’s great to see the evolution of it take place right back where we started.