Planet B-Boy Movie Finally Coming to Detroit

I have not and persistently do not find ballet and modern dance all that interesting. It just doesn't "speak to me" in the way that other art forms do. I think there is a bit of a high art / low art thing going on in this equation because I really love the dancing in, for example, Singin' in the Rain, or Bamboozled, or even Bring it On. I love the tango sequences in Happy Together, and Tangos, the Exile of Gardel too, but ballet and/or modern dance performed on the stage just feels so archaic (is I guess what it is) to me. Just doesn't connect.

Here, on the other hand, is something that connects with me like the nicest possible punch in the face:



It's a sequence that is cleverly nicknamed "Run DMZ": simultaneously referencing rap/hip-hop godfathers RUN-DMC and the DeMilitarized Zone that divides North from South Korea - the ostensible setting for the amazing dance that unfolds in the clip.

This sequence seems pretty indicative of the stuff your going to get when you go see the movie Planet B-Boy , which you will if you know what's good for you.

From a number of clips that I've watched, this movie seems like the latest in a gathering stream of grassroots-ey media products that celebrate people who take globalization into their own hands, as it were, and use the increasing speed with which cultural ideas and products flow across international borders to create bonds of friendship-in-creativity with people that they could never have hoped to even meet mere decades ago.

If you live near me, it opens at the Main Art in Royal Oak on April 25.

Here's the trailer: