urbanverbs

Enjoy this piece of our show, that won’t hit the stage tonight. Tonight, Urban Verbs is promising something different to anyone who has already seen us, as of late. We do an experimental theatre and Hip-Hop show – that tonight is being pulled apart, and we are bringing some newness to the stage! @Dilesmusic – who usually spends his time behind the scenes, and behind the MPC, is stepping up on the M-I-C tonight and gonna spit a set, @Hakimbe will be performing original works of poetry, and music in collaboration with Diles, and I will be hittin you with some poetry/music/whatever you wanna call it goodness from LostandFound: Journaling an Open Mouth a project with Diles we are really proud of! Nevertheless, figured you would enjoy this piece – that isn’t a piece of the show tonight.

Dance Piece

H: Language has idioms and idiots if you ask
Me

C: You ever hear something like…

H: “Then, he breaks out into song…”

C: “She breaks into dance…”

H: But idioms aren’t literal, they’re figurative

C: And aptly so..

H: So?? If whips, rapes and chains couldn’t
Break the spirit of the songs the slaves
Sang..

C: How can someone break dance?

H: ‘Cause it’s the figures, not the language

C: The physique, not the blabber we speak
That tells unbridled truth..

H: ‘Cause bodies never lie..

C: Never lie still…

H: People dance

B: Into braids of sheets when we sleep

C: People dance

H: Just with their eyes when they lie

C: “I can’t dance..”

B: Like God gave you 650 muscles to sit still

H: Like you’ll deprive yourself life’s greatest
Joy next to sex, ‘cause you think it makes
You a minstrel..

C: But ALL people dance

B: Humanity as a history of feats by feet, the
Only universal language

H: All babies learn to speak ‘fore they speak

C: The orchestra of electricity

B: Our body conducts

C: Whether symphony or Morse-Code

H: Beep Beep

C: Heart

H: The beat

C: Mind

H: The beat

C: Beat

H: Body

C: The beat

B: Speaking to the simplest parts…

C: Of me…

H: As though the heartbeat is all we is

C: Dancing

H: Beat

C: Moving

H: Beat

C: Feeling

B: Alive, like nobody wants to feel otherwise

H: Never broken, People move

B: Like planets that would fall out of orbit
If we didn’t

C: Fluid

H: Wrists

B: And backbones

C: Shins

B: And tip toes, People move like

H: People know

C: Nobody is watching

H: That’s why substituting cardboard for
Hardwood floors was not a problem

B: ‘Cause nobody saw us

C: Until we became transformers

B: Until we became…

H: Windmills from the waist down…

C: Until we caught a glimpse of our city from
The middle of a head spin

H: Upside down…

B: It’s gorgeous

C: Steel icicles hanging from a concrete sky

C: Yup, they freeze

B: Just like us

H: In a b-boy stance or right after the cops
Arrive

H: But when you’re under the gun

C: And you’d rather die on your front flip than
Live on your knee spins

H: They don’t get why we continue to move
Even when the cops threaten us again

B: Why we POP to forget Gun Shots

B: And LOCK to avoid Cell Blocks

B: Why we float

C: They think we’re high

B: We think… we’re superhero fly

H: Like nobody wants to feel otherwise, this
Is life…

C: Art imitating imagination, in flexed bodies

B: And fragmented time

H: Adjacent bodies

C: And distorted lines, breathe from lungs

H: Pushing muscles in 360 degrees, All 650
At a time

B: Stop! ….. On a dime….

C: Just before

H: Once more

C: The body takes flight

B: On a 150 beat

C: Per minute wings

B: This turns us into the angels they said we’d
Never be…

H: This gives us the grace…
H: They said we’d never reach

C: The one high we don’t have to ever come
Down from…

B: If we please…

H: Painting the floor of the heavens beneath

B: Dreaming with our feet

C: Feeling as though we just been asked to the
Ball

B: In the palm of the creator’s hand

H: I too, would only believe…

B: In a God that knows how to dance

B: And only those who don’t understand would
Dare to call this shattered

C: Break dancing is a fix!

H: These movements are complete circles,

B: Big enough for everyone to get in

C: Even the rhythmically challenged

H: Just do the wave and nod your heads

B: Throw your hands in the air like you
Just don’t care…

H: And don’t care…

C: For a few minutes

H: A few movements

B: We repair spirits with jack hammers and
Other break dance illusions!

C: Solved the problems of gravity

B: And Poverty, with our 6 step program

H: Uprock addicts, our rehab, is to practice

B: six steps and hand stands

C: The only thing broken, is the legacy of
Conventional dancing

B: ‘Cause the break stands for the broke,
Brown and black kids who couldn’t
Afford contemporary dance classes

H: But they had to…

C: So they did.

H: Couldn’t move out of the hood

B: So they moved IN it instead, and let the
World know, we were there!

(PAUSE FOR CITY VOICE OVER)

C: Beneath planet rocks that they would have
Never picked up

B: If it wasn’t for us…

H: Finally speaking to the world in body counts
Beyond the narrow lens of nightly news

C: In a ONE and a TWO

H: ONE TWO ONE TWO

(ONE TWO THREE B.I.G.)

C: Counting our bodies as Tony Awards

H: Counting our bodies as Works of Art!

B: The only thing we own… The world’s
Favorite metaphor.

C: Been called

H: The poetry of the foot, The hidden language

C: Of the soul…

B: A poem.

H: In which every movement is a word.

C: Souls of feet outlining, forever in a moment

B: Forever in 650 muscles of movement
B: Until time… Stops!