[This is another show I saw during the Festwochen.]

H3 is a programme by Bruno Beltrão and his Grupo de Rua de Niterói. It’s a dance performance – a mixture between HipHop and contemporary dance, with a little bit of Capoeira added for good measure.

This review is going to be short (as was the programme, at around 50 minutes) because honestly, I don’t know enough about dance to seriously do it. Just writing down my impression.

If you go in expecting a traditional HipHop performance (as I did because nowhere in the description I read before did it say contemporary dance), you’re going to be pretty surprised – but not necessarily badly. Depends on how much you like contemporary dance.

The dancing and body control shown was very impressive, as was the fact that the whole group (9 people) were on stage all the time and most of the time they were moving. What I didn’t get was that there was a lot of backwards running – which was also impressive because they were really, really fast – but it got a little tired after a while.

The stage and lightning was very minimalistic, but not as minimalistic as the music. In the first part, there was no music at all – only sounds from the streets, then there was a beat, then there was a guitar and a beat, then there was only the beat again etc. It slowly built up to something I’d call a song in the end (though my parents didn’t).

I have to admit, that this lack of music irked me. Music is a big part of dancing, in my opinion and to take that away also takes away from the experience.

So, I guess my conclusion is that I might not be connoisseur enough to appreciate this show, but that I missed the music and didn’t like it a whole lot.