Dancing for a Cause

Always a fan of hip-hop music, I joined a crowd of upbeat teenagers at the Ritz Theatre in Elizabeth, to watch local dance crews showcase their talent.

An organization called SCAT productions staged the event to benefit Children’s Chance Foundation, a non-profit organization providing medical care to homeless children worldwide.

The fundraiser came at a perfect time, with dance crew movies coming out at a fast clip in the last few years, (Step Up, You Got Served, and the upcoming spoof, Dance Flick, in theatres on May 22). Crews, which usually consist of 5 or more dancers, started on the West Coast and are still most popular there. Project D, a crew from Bergenfield, took Saturday afternoon as a chance to spread the word about their art form to the East Coast. “We need to unite the East Coast crews, since we are still behind the West Coast,” says founder and director Bernie Armendi.

Armendi started the co-ed crew in 2004 and it has grown to 32 performers. Most of their time together is spent practicing in their Bergenfield studio, but as Armendi says, they do everything together. “We are extremely family-oriented,” he says.

Hip-hop dancing combines acrobatics with human construction. It’s not ballroom dancers swaying to the Waltz; rather the aim is to “pull tricks.” For example, the members of Project D formed themselves into a human car, lacking only a set of wheels, for which they used actual car tires.

Another New Jersey crew, Ven 15, an all-girl group, wore gold bras under unzipped black jackets, and brought their sexuality to the forefront, dancing smooth tunes of reggae and R&B. 

The headliners of the day were two California-based crews that appeared on season three of MTV’s “America's Best Dance Crew” — Quest Crew (which won the MTV competition) and Beat Freaks (the runners-up).

Quest Crew shocked the audience with non-stop flips, pops, and jumps. Beat Freaks also wowed the crowd with break-dancing and a routine using wooden bats.

At the end of the two-hour show, I pushed my way through the fanatic crowd to the front exit where my ears were ringing and my heart was still thumping to the music.

Tags: hip-hop music | Elizabeth | Dance | Ritz Theatre | Children's Chance Foundation