Flying Steps is on a worldwide tour spanning 26
countries. Nobody at their show needs to have
listened to Bach’s music. They can sit back and
enjoy as they, through their dance, express what his
music was, Mike Rosemann tells Anand Holla
When Johann Sebastian Bach composed his magnum opus The Well-Tempered Clavier in the 18th Century, he must have visualised a lot many beautiful images. But a bunch of dancers tossing their bodies around in mid-air to the rhythm of his music may not have been one of them.
As the Berlin-based dance crew Flying Steps leapt, swung and spun to Bach’s time-honoured Baroque melodies, a large audience at the Qatar National Convention Centre broke into a flurry of applause Friday night. After wowing Doha in 2012, the four-time break dance world champs had returned with their Red Bull Flying Bach performance.
Combining b-boying — also called breakdancing or breaking — with Bach, the group seamlessly mashed contemporary breakdance with live classical music and ballet, taking the art of fusion several steps forward.
As the seven male break dancers joined by Swedish ballerina Anna Holmström powered through a series of vignettes for 70 racy minutes, the audience heaved and sighed at the sights of their jumps, head spins, smooth footwork, acrobatics, popping and locking (involuntary, rapid-fire body contortions), 1990s (spinning continuously on one hand), tricking (a blend of martial arts, gymnastics and breaking), and flares (alternately balancing the torso between either arm while swinging the legs in circles).
A couple of hours before they hit the stage, Michael Rosemann and Khaled Chaabi, two veteran dancers of the 21-year-old group Flying Steps, hang out by the theatre and break down what goes into breaking.
Of the Flying Bach show, which they began performing four years ago, Rosemann says that they had to internalise the music before swaying to it. “The biggest challenge for us was Bach’s music, which belonged to a completely different culture than what we were used to. As b-boys, we were used to dancing to hip hop and break beats,” Rosemann says.
“When we started listening to Bach, we could feel the beats within it. At some parts, we would feel its power and feel such a high to find our ways around it,” he continues, “But the rhythm, melody and theme of classical music were alien to us. So we had to understand the music before we choreographed to it.”
Enter top pianist and Flying Steps’ Music Director Christoph Hagel. The man who delights in creating such unlikely fusions demystified the structure and flow of Bach’s music to the dancers so they could pick out and follow the melodies and themes.
Bach’s music is replete with fugues — a complex style of composition in which one or two themes are repeated or imitated by successively entering voices and developed in a continuous interweaving of the voice parts. “But we didn’t know that fugues have varied voices, and in any case, picking out voices was really hard,” Rosemann says.
That’s when Hagel came up with a clever plan, which is a driving force of the Flying Bach performances. “He suggested that each dancer must follow and respond to one voice. So the choreography was split among us based on the voices within Bach’s compositions,” explains Rosemann.
The catch was to not just choreograph to Bach, but also encase his music in hip hop and break beats. So apart from a pianist and a harpsichordist playing Bach’s preludes and fugues at two ends of the stage, there’s also recorded music bits featuring pounding electronic beats as ambient visuals play out in the background throughout.
“Nobody at our show needs to have listened to Bach’s music. They can sit back and enjoy as we, through our dance, express what his music was,” says Rosemann.
The much-popular group has been in the thick of a worldwide tour spanning 26 countries, which started January 6 in the Swiss city of Lucerne and will end in Baku, Azerbaijan’s capital, on December 14. Since 2011, they have performed this show in front of around 300,000 people.
“Since we started a new production, Red Bull Flying Illusion, last year, we had to split our group so that both projects could have original members. So we put three dancers out, and pulled three new ones in,” Rosemann says, “Touring together has made us all come together nicely, like a family.”
Chaabi, a Palestinian-Syrian born and raised in Germany, credits their success to their embracing of multiple genres. “Some of us are b-boying specialists, and some are experts in contemporary urban dance forms. Each of us has special moves and we always cheer for each other. We try to be all-rounders,” says Chaabi.
Although Chaabi is a pro in Power Moves — a kind of b-boying movement — he has allowed his dance to assimilate a range of dance genres. “After dancing for 14 years, I have melded a lot of genres into my style – hip hop, house, contemporary, tricking, and even martial arts,” he says.
While most have been accepting of this action-packed rediscovery of Bach’s music, some purists may frown at the blending of a street dance form with music meant to be played in stately theatres.
“A small number of people may feel that we should leave the classical alone,” Rosemann says, smiling, “But the only way to grow, as an artiste, is to stay open to all cultures and art forms. Breakdancing asks you to bring your personality to the dance, show your character on stage. The more you absorb from various arts, the stronger your personality and character gets. By bringing cultures together, everybody can draw more from the pool.”
As the group is much sought-after, finding replacements in case of injuries isn’t an issue. “Thankfully, we don’t get injured too often,” Rosemann says. During their earlier years, Chaabi suffered a nasty knee injury that required an operation and put him out of action for many weeks. “That’s when our group’s standby dancers come into play. It’s like Bayern Munich getting replacements in case a player gets injured,” he says, smiling.
Back home in Germany, Flying Steps is massive and are known for setting new benchmarks in break dance shows. “We have to keep surprising the audience,” Rosemann points out, “When we decided to put together Red Bull Flying Bach, we knew that bringing hip hop dancers and classical music together has been done before. But we believed that when we would start to create something with this, we would find something new.”
And they did. German engineering may be the bee’s knees when it comes to cool cars, but the precision with which the Flying Steps dancers throw their nimble bodies in air and land perfectly on their hand or head seems no less in efficacy.
“We practiced for three months before putting out the first Flying Bach show, four years ago. We would rehearse from 10 in the morning until midnight. It was our dream to take it to the next level,” Chaabi says.
“Each show we do, we give 100 per cent of us,” Rosemann says, “We give everything within us. Once the show is over, we are dog-tired. But that only shows how much we love what we do. We want people to love and appreciate both classical music and break dance.”
As they perform across the world, random dancers drop by after the show to meet them and ask if they could join. “These are dancers nurturing dreams to be on stage, you know to dream to have a job where all you must do is dance,” Chaabi says, laughing, “We are glad we inspire them.”
After performing more than 300 Flying Bach shows, Chaabi feels as free on stage as he does off it. “I try to give love to the audience, to make them feel free,” he says, “And after every show, when we get a standing ovation, we can feel them giving back all that energy.”
Rosemann nods along. “It’s amazing to see people’s reactions; some even cry,” he says. Of all the compliments that have come their way, Rosemann finds the one they got after a show in Vienna to be most special.
“A very old woman walked up to us,” Rosemann recalls, “She enjoyed our show a lot and told us that it feels like our dance really comes from our hearts.” And then she bettered it. “She said that seeing us dance on stage made her feel like Bach wrote the music for us. We were blown away.”
