Crumping, popping and locking sights on new reality TV show

More than 100 young dancers turned up yesterday to audition for a new reality TV show about hip hop dancers. Róisín Inglewatched some of the hopefuls strut their stuff

CRUMPOGRAPHY, POPPING, B boys and B girls. You had to speak a whole other language to find out what was going down at the Burlington Hotel in Dublin yesterday.

The ad was straightforward enough. “Wanted: Dancers. Hip Hop/Street.”

The latest reality TV programme beckoned and around 100 hopefuls came, bulky of trainer, baggy of shorts, braving a queue under drizzle for the chance to become a hip hop star of the future.

“In many ways, hip hop dancing is still something of a sub-culture, so we are hoping this programme might bring it into the mainstream a bit more,” said one of the show’s producers, Dave Heffernan, as scores of teenagers filed into a holding room.

The programme makers have already trawled the talent in Sligo, Limerick and Belfast.

Waiting for the Dublin heats to start, Junior Yussuf (17), who has lived in Co Meath for eight years, was feeling confident that he might take up a place on Super Crew, about the posse of dancers being assembled to perform alongside Jedward in the Olympia's panto Cinderella.

“We came from Nigeria and when I moved to Ireland, I was always doing the splits, so my mother said ‘join a dance class’, and here I am,” he said.

Sipping coffee in the hotel lounge, the three Super Crewjudges explained that in this RTÉ reality show there would be no "Mr Nasty Pants".

Choreographer Jane Shorthall – or the "Queen of Irish hip hop" – is credited with bringing "street dance" to Ireland, Stuart O'Connor is the producer of Cinderellaand UK-based Kymberlee Jay is an accidental hip hop legend.

Jay studied to be a forensic scientist and dabbled in classical music before her true calling – the popping and locking of hip hop lore – became apparent.

“I only started dancing because my friends were doing it and I thought it would make me cool. I was the wrong size, I didn’t fit in. For three years, I was clomping around with three left feet, but then when I was around 14 it all came together and I realized I had something,” she said.

Jay entered a dance competition “for the laugh” and was prancing around “like a baby elephant” but she was plucked from obscurity and later secured a global Nike advertising campaign as one of their dance athletes. She has since appeared in two Madonna videos and is a fully fledged choreographer.

The Super Crewcompetition, though, is only open to dancers at "varsity level", or those aged between 13 and 17.

Backstage at the Burlo, the dancers, all shapes and sizes but with similar levels of boundless enthusiasm, are getting nervous.

Even seasoned hip-hoppers like Adam Fogarty (13), who has taken lessons in New York and London, look on edge. That all changes when he is given 20 seconds to strut his stuff. He is put through by judges with no quibbling.

It’s refreshing watching the auditions. There is no reality TV humiliation here. Word had gone around already existing dance crews and so the cream of the crop were put forward. Very few people with three left feet have turned up, thankfully.

THERE ARE ONLY good and sometimes excellent dancers, such as Ian Harris (16), from Blanchardstown in Dublin, who catches the judges’ attention with his winning smile and transfixing moves.

Watching him is to know that the Super CrewTV show, which starts in October and runs until the panto begins in December, is going to be a more engaging reality contest than others attempted in the recent past by our national broadcaster.

“I just love everything about it,” says Harris moments after he learns that he has a chance to come back for the final.

“The different styles – crumping, whacking, popping – they let you express different emotions and you can let yourself go”.

“It’s a chance to get away from your troubles and express everything that is going on in your life, you can escape and show how you are feeling at the same time,” said Jade Murray (16).

“When you dance,” says Merrin McEvoy (16), “you are just in your element, being yourself, not worrying about anything else”.

Jedward were supposed to be here providing moral support but one of them broke their leg while busting his own moves over the weekend so the brothers are a no-show. It doesn’t seem to bother the dancers.

Dublin-born Wani Dauramanzi (13) gets through to the next round on a unanimous vote from the judges.

This hip hop novice could have watched his mesmerising moves for hours. “There’s just a great adrenalin rush,” he says.

Kymberlee Jay will be teaching a drop-in hip hop class in the YMCA, Aungier Street in Dublin on Monday and Tuesday from 8.30pm. Classes are €15 per session.