Hiplet Ballet, March 3 and 5

PASS Performance: Thursday, March 3, 6:30 p.m.

St. Ambrose University's Rogalski Center, 518 West Locust Street, Davenport IA

Public Performance: Saturday, March 5, 7:30 p.m.

St. Ambrose University's Galvin Fine Arts Center, 2101 North Gaines Street, Davenport IA

Having completed more than 30 full-length performances in North America between 2019 and 2020, and selling out venues in states including Illinois, Florida, Texas, and Washington, the exhilarating dance talents of Chicago's Hiplet Ballet appear as the latest guests in Quad City Arts' Visiting Artist Series, their March 3 and 5 performances potentially incorporating the rhythms of African drums with Tchaikovsky, or arabesques and beat-boxing en pointe, all while showcasing the group's trademark sass.

A newly recognized dance style that fuses ballet with hip hop, hiplet is notable for its combination of ballet-style movement, which is ethnographically Eurocentric and primarily white, and hip-hop, which is rooted in and grown out of African dance and rich urban culture from communities of color. Given its strong roots in traditional movement, dancers train to advance to pointe through years of practice, and with ballet at the core of hiplet, strong technical skills are imperative to being able to safely rehearse the style. The dancers usually wear traditional ballet attire, including buns, leotards, and tights, and the dance resembles traditional ballet mixed with sharper angles and less restricted movements.

Although the term was first coined in 2009, it was in May of 2016 that dancers from the Chicago Multi-Cultural Dance Center (CMDC) performing hiplet gained widespread popularity after a video of the dancers attained thousands of views on Instagram. ABC News subsequently invited the dancers to perform on Good Morning America, and the creation of this genre is attributed to Homer Hans Bryant of the CMDC, currently the only studio in the world that trains dancers in hiplet. Traditionally, Bryant works with accomplished black ballerinas such as Misty Copeland – artists who are proving to the world that they can be successful at traditional ballet. Moreover, Bryant has dedicated himself, through hiplet, to helping black dancers express a more contemporary and culturally reflective art form that expresses who they are and where they come from.

Hiplet Ballet will perform a special PASS performance at St. Ambrose University's Rogalski Center at 6:30 p.m. on March 3, and the dance ensemble's public performance will be held at the university's Galvin Fine Arts Center at 7:30 p.m. on March 5. Admission is $50 for the Thursday performance and $10-20 for the Saturday concert, and more information on Hiplet Ballet and the Visiting Artist Series is available by calling (309)793-1213 and visiting QuadCityArts.com.