So Good He Named It Twice

By Sheba Montserrat

As part of this years Hip festival at The Place, Brenda Edwards, the producer, brought over from Jamaica one of Ragga music’s’ most innovative dancers and choreographers.

He goes by the name of Tippa and hails from Kingston. His solo performance was billed long side Benin republic’s Julie Dossavi piece ‘Go’. Though Tippa presented the same show on the Tuesday and Wednesday, he opted to call Tuesdays show ‘100%’ and Wednesdays show ‘Full 100%’.

“It’s my first time performing in England so I want the audience to know that I intend to give everyt’ing”, says Tippa. Hence the two titles, his intention was to give one hundred per cent on the first night and no less, on the second night, which was to be a ‘Full, one hundred per cent’.

His ragamuffin character enters from stage right, and pensively examines the brightly lit backdrop, one is immediately reminded of the phrase from The Harder They Come, ‘country come to town’, although ‘Yardie reach a foreign’ was more apt. The term Yardie gets a bad deal in Britain. In Jamaica a yardie is simply a local lad, Yard being a term for Jamaica.

With one leg of his baggy white jeans rolled up, Tippa heps downstage and scours the audience. The word Ragga is written, graffiti style, on one side of his jeans and his name, Tippa, on the other. ‘Gimme the Light’ from Sean Paul drops and immediately the stage is animated with Tippas repertoire of undiluted Ragga movement. To this Ragga chooon we were given a demonstration of ‘keep-it-upsey’, kicking his imaginary football in the air and bouncing it off his shoulders and head. When he finally kicked the ball into the audience I wasn’t the only one who felt an urge to reach out and try and catch it.

Alongside mimicry Tippa entertained by switching into clownery, again walking with a hep, but this time due to the one leg being stiff. Next we heard the Diwali rhythm to which Tippa knocked out rhythms over his body with cupped hands. The Diwali rhythm introduced the clap dance to Dance Hall. However, as a means of expression, it is familiar to any church goer, where a drummer behind a full drum kit as well as a bass player dancing out a groove, is as important to the singing of a Sankey, as an organ is traditional. For those who don’t know a Sankey is a rigorous up-tempo hymn from the nineteenth century hymnal published by Ira David Sankey.

A wonderful feature of Tippas performance was his use of silence. On putting on a hat he again surveyed the audience a capella, before taking centre stage and lip-synching, beneath a spotlight to an introduction by Chris Tucker spoken at the top of Michael Jackson’s last hit.

Tippa didn’t just interact with the audience, but rather shamelessly flirted with and teased us. As he showed off some of his Hip-Hop moves interacting with two images of his shadow projected onto the backdrop, a Ragga beat was mixed into Michael Jackson’s groove. “I wanted to show how flexible Ragga is, you can blend it with anything you like”, he told me later.

As the tune fades he re-introduces his alter ego, the clown, who fakes a backache due to the dancey-dancey business!! On removing his hat he again milked the silence and studied the audience. “Why the place so quiet?” he asked. I found the question and the reason for asking it less important than the fact that he spoke at all. Dancers who go beyond body language and dare to communicate with words always refresh me. Too often the verbal is considered to have no place in a piece where movement is the main feature!

More clap dancing this time without the Diwali groove. The he as ‘Yardie inna foreign’ turned to an imaginary friend and complained about coming so far to perform in such a quiet place. He seemed to miss the interactive nature of a Caribbean audience. He might have found our British reserve a little unnerving.

Diwali was played again, this time over Bounty Killers Sufferah. The lyrics were a clear testimony as to how far this young inventive artist has come. He took all the moves, vibes and dances directly from their source in Kingston, and presented them to an eager audience ‘ina foreign’. He’d come far, simply by keepin’ it real!

He drew us into his world effortlessly. Splitting the audience in half he gave us two different rhythms to clap out, against, stroke, with each other. Volunteers didn’t have to be asked twice when he put out an invitation for some to join him on stage. They then participated in a demonstration of the dance ‘drive by’, where the re-enactment of cruising in your wheels becomes a dance. It was performed to our newly learnt two-part rhythm. And after a brief encore to Gimme The Light, the house lights came up onto an audience cheering and clapping where they stood.

Full 100% was entertainment at its best. It was fused only with another style of street dance, namely Hip Hop and this was indeed its USP. It served to validate and put onto another plateau a style of dance and music which all to often is sold as promoting slackness, aggression and thugries rather than creativity and integrity! It also proved that we needn’t dilute social dances with contemporary or classical techniques in order to make them worthy of being on stage alongside other dance styles even out side their immediate social setting. This show was a wonderful promotion of all that pertains to dance hall, in fact it was so good…he was right to name it twice!