Festival

Local hip-hop dance troupe takes Fest stage

by Amy Dupuis

A-WA’s Saturday performance has an impromptu guest — Kabuki Kru.

Kabuki Kru

“We got Israelis, a Middle Eastern guy and our locals so it’s going to be crazy,” says Terrance Morgan, member of the local hip-hop dance group Kabuki Kru, about Saturday’s surprise performance with A-WA.

After A-WA’s usual dancers were unable to attend the performance, Lisa Stafford, programming director of Festival International, contacted Kabuki Kru to see if they were up to the challenge of incorporating this unique combination of Yemenite folk singing and electronic dance music into a performance. Morgan accepted, confident the two groups will put on a great show.

A-WA started performing just one year ago and have been making people dance ever since. The three sisters, Tair, Liron and Tagel Haim, grew up in Israel and are deeply influenced by the ancient oral history of Yemenite women’s chanting.

This combination of East and West shows the true spirit of Festival as these different cultures come together to make something great. Morgan says his goal is to create a routine honoring the traditional Yemenite moves usually featured in the performance while bringing in aspects of Kabuki Kru’s street style.

Morgan says the whole group plans to perform with A-WA on Festival’s main stage Saturday night at 10:15 p.m.. This performance is the first for Kabuki Kru on the Festival’s main stage with an international group.