By Laura Molzahn
Special to the Tribune
"Always we are looking to make one step more than the normal break-dance show," says Mikel, a founding member of the Berlin-based Flying Steps: Germany's hip-hop franchise, with a music label and a spanking-new dance school.
"For example, Nike asked us to do a basketball show," Mikel (aka Michael Rosemann) says. "'Yeah,' we said. 'No problem. Send us some basketballs.' And they said, 'No, no! You don't have to play.' And we said, 'OK, so send us some basketballs.' And we created the show with the basketballs, hitting them around.'"
In 2010, pushing the envelope again, the Flying Steps launched "Red Bull Flying Bach," a 70-minute hip-hop show set to the first 12 preludes and fugues of Johann Sebastian Bach's "The Well-Tempered Clavier," played live by the show's music director, Christoph Hagel, on piano and Daniel Trumbull on harpsichord. Since then, "Flying Bach" has toured to Japan, Russia, Sweden, Australia and Chile, among other far-flung locations.
Now "Red Bull Flying Bach" finally lands in the States, whose urban environments gave birth to the many street dances collectively called hip-hop. In the show's first and only U.S. engagement, "Flying Bach" runs through June 29 at the Civic Opera House.
Mikel explains how this hybrid show came to be. "In 2009, we were thinking about a new show. Vartan [Bassil], the founder of Flying Steps, said maybe we should do something with classic music. And we said, 'But how we can start? We are not from the classic side, so we don't know which composer we choose or which style of music.'
"So we were looking around Berlin to find some people doing crazy stuff about the classic music, and we found Christoph." Hagel is well known in Germany for adapting and staging operas in unusual venues — for example, Mozart's "The Magic Flute" in a subway station.
"The first rehearsal was only to listen to the music," Mikel goes on. "Christoph played and told us a bit about the music. Some moments were so powerful we started to dance around the piano. And some parts were so slow, we said, 'OK, now we are in trouble.' It gave us much, much more time to understand the music and find the real dance style of it. But with the slow-mo music, it was not easy to find the story line and the movements."
Early on, Mikel and the other dancers told Hagel: "It's not really new, that hip-hop dancers come together with classical music. We have to put something that's really new, otherwise it doesn't make sense for us.
"Christoph was thinking about, and he said, 'You know, the fugues have different voices — maybe it is possible for each dancer to take one voice.' We said, 'Show us the first voice,' and he played one part on the piano, and we create a little choreography on it." Continuing that way, through the different voices, they started to "really understand the music of Johann Sebastian Bach," Mikel says.
"With hip-hop music, most of the time you dance on the beat, you can count it. But sometimes, with 'Flying Bach,' we don't really count. Instead we have to understand each single note — everybody has to understand, 'OK, now my choreography has to start.' This is a difficult thing to do."
As in their other shows, the Flying Steps also include non-street dance forms in "Flying Bach." Mikel explains: "We're bringing classic music together with hip-hop culture, so it is important to have a female dancer doing ballet and contemporary. It's a nice feeling when hip-hop comes together with that." Here, Swedish performer Anna Holmstrom performs the lone female role, woven into a loose story line.
Electronic beats have been added to some sections of Bach's music, but most of the score is played live, a feature that Mikel loves. "Sometimes the music is really faster!" he says. "And we have to run forward with our choreography to follow Christoph. We have to react to the piano player or harpsichordist — there's a feeling you want to transmit to the audience."
How did Red Bull come into the picture? It turns out the world's best-selling energy drink, whose many youth-culture sponsorships include extreme sports as well as international break-dancing contests (which the Flying Steps have won several times), has supported the troupe since 2000.
Still, "Flying Bach" was at first independent from the Austrian company. "Red Bull is completely different to classical culture," Mikel says, so they shopped their concept around to various event managers. "And nobody — nobody! — was believing on it. They said, 'No, no thank you, we don't want to do it.' We were surprised: It is a really nice concept. We were like, 'You know what? We believe on it, we do it ourselves.'
"But when we got farther in the production, we feel like, 'It's a really big step, we need more support. Why not talk to Red Bull?' And they love it from the first moment. They said, 'This show has to be called "Red Bull Flying Bach,"' and from then on the feeling was like, wow."
The production — complete with projections of the dancers on clouds or a giant keyboard — was the first big break for the Flying Steps, who've gone on to create a second stadium-style show, "Red Bull Flying Illusion." That debuted in Germany and started touring there in March, so with the simultaneous international tour of "Flying Bach," the troupe has split into two performing groups.
Unfortunately, the high cost of tickets here might price some fans out of the market. And though the Flying Steps offered promotional hip-hop workshops last March (at a Joffrey studio, the Dance Center of Columbia College, Mixed Motion Art in Chicago and Boocoo in Evanston), a Red Bull spokesperson says their performance schedule won't allow for that in June.
With a seating capacity of nearly 3,600, the Civic is the largest venue ever for "Red Bull Flying Bach." Speaking for the group, Mikel says of their Chicago debut: "We're excited and nervous — and looking forward to showing our work in other cities too."
ctc-arts@tribune.com
'Red Bull Flying Bach'
When: 7:30 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays, 2 p.m. Sundays, through June 29
Where: Civic Opera House, 20 N. Wacker Drive
Tickets: : $24-$88 at ticketmaster.com
