Bboyizm's large-scale In My Body explores the struggles behind superhuman hip-hop moves
Faced with his own knee surgeries, Canadian B-boy trailblazer Yvon Soglo crafts an energized look at aging
Yvon “Crazy Smooth” Soglo gets some air time over Tiffany Leung in In My Body. Photo by-Jerick Collantes
DanceHouse presents Bboyizm March 17 and 18 at the Vancouver Playhouse
THE INESCAPABLE march of time can be unkind to dancers—and that is especially true for B-boys and -girls immersed in a genre that’s all about youth culture and superhuman moves.
It’s an idea that Gatineau’s Yvon “Crazy Smooth” Soglo explores in his widely acclaimed new In My Body.
At 42, the pioneering, Benin-born hip-hop talent behind the company Bboyizm has faced his own series of knee injuries and a reckoning with how closely his identity is tied to his physical feats.
“Somewhere through the journey of being a street dancer, the B-girl or B-boy, you often get defined by what you can do,” he reflects on the phone from home before heading to Vancouver for a show on the DanceHouse series. “So for instance, if I'm known to be someone that has crazy speed, and does backflips and this and that, once I reach an age where I can’t do that, does that mean I'm no longer Crazy Smooth?
“You know, it's like you're signing a contract that says you'll be given superpowers and you're going to amaze people,” he adds. “So for the show In My Body, in many ways, you're seeing everything: you're seeing Superman, then you're also seeing Clark Kent—you know, the vulnerabilities. And in hip-hop it is in some ways very taboo to show your weaknesses.”
For the piece, which premiered in Edmonton in 2022, he’s assembled a multigenerational cast, ranging from their 20s to late 50s, to explore how street dancers negotiate the battle against time, moving as a supportive community onstage. The oldest dancer is a respected elder on Canada’s hip-hop scene: David “DKC Freeze” Dundas, born in 1965. Soglo is just as jazzed about younger members of the crew, who he calls “our future Olympians”. (Break-dancing is set to become an Olympic sport when the games hit Paris in 2024.)
“It’s this unique moment in history, where I was able to gather all these generations to share the stage and show how we move as community together,” Soglo enthuses, “because if you go to a B-boy jam or a street dance event, that's exactly what you'll see. You'll see all generations together. And if the youth weren’t there, then there'd be no energy in the events; there’d be no sky's-the-limit physical capabilities and all of that. And then if the elders weren't there, then it'd be a circus, because we wouldn't have any direction. So we kind of form this bridge between them.”
In My Body is by far Bboyizm’s most ambitious and largest scale show yet. Writer Alejandro Rodriguez’s spoken word integrates the dancers’ personal stories of survival and defeat, against the ambient pulse of DJ Shash’U. Multimedia projections and body mapping by Montreal’s minari studio add to the visual impact of a work that took home four of Toronto’s coveted Dora Mavor Moore Awards—including one for Outstanding Production. That’s a major coup for anything based in street dance—a form the trailblazing Soglo, by the way, has brought successfully into the contemporary dance arena, with zero concessions or watering down.
With the dance itself based on a lot of discussions with hip-hop performers of all ages, Soglo said he was aiming for something real and authentic. At the same time, he was wrestling with the tough question about whether he has his own expiry date on the dance stage—a reckoning that forms a striking opening segment in the production.
“You know, when I had one of my one of my four knee surgeries, I remember the doctor telling me, ‘Yeah, you know, you're young but you’ve got a lot of mileage on your on your knees,’” Soglo recalls. “He said, ‘Listen, I'm not going to tell you not to dance. Because I know you're not going to stop. But imagine your knee has 100 kilometres left. And where are you going to spend 100 kilometres? It isn't going to be playing soccer. You have to pick, but you have to choose wisely.’
“So, you know, I have to make a decision,” he continues. “I have to spend it on what I love. And sometimes what you love and what makes you happy is also the same thing that's killing you. It’s a balance.”
Don’t get us wrong: the crew busts big moves in In the Body, with turbocharged top rocks, handstand freezes, and helicopter spins. But those bursts of energy are offset by calmer, more reflective moments. And Soglo and friends do come to some resolution onstage—mainly, to the realization that dance, and hip-hop in particular, can transcend the physical moves with soul. That spirit behind the dance is something the artist has long called “IZM”. And in his fourth decade, after several knee surgeries, it’s still burning strong in a dance artist who seems to be more creatively charged than ever in his career. “B-boy forever” becomes a mantra in the show.
“You can be old with a young spirit,” Soglo concludes. “The spirit kind of travels on that timeline in a very different way than the body does.”
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