Potent pull of hip-hop

The young men in Rennie Harris's Puremovement troupe are so handsome it makes you laugh.

Being hip-hop dancers, you expect them to be strong and agile, and move with the elegance and energy of a gymnast as he whirls around his pommel horse.

You also know their dancing will have oceanic cool, a sort of get-usedtoit charisma, with insouciant head spins, and up-ended pretzel poses, and freeze-flow body popping that's surely inspired by video's pause, rewind and fast forward.

But what you don't expect is to see so many good-looking men in one place at the same time. The eight Puremovement performers are ace hip-hoppers and they're real eye candy. The combination is charming and beguiling, and a potent sensual pull, even though the show itself is actually rather uneven.

Students Of The Asphalt Jungle is a 70-minute mixed bill to celebrate Puremovement's tenth anniversary.

The company was formed by Lorenzo "Rennie" Harris a decade ago in Philadelphia to capture the authentic hip-hop culture of the streets and put it into the theatre.

This is always a tricky business because, even with the best will, authenticity and the commercial stage don't usually go together, although Harris seems to have fared better than many.

Puremovement's celebratory programme comprises five short danced sequences, mostly from the early 1990s, and two monologues by Rodney Mason. The latter are essentially anti-war raps, with salacious marching tunes thrown in ("I have heard that it's been said, Essex girls are good in bed"). There are also references to smacking the monkey, which may prompt tricky questions from curious children on the way home.

The most successful sections were those with large chunks of freestyle dancing. Continuum, P-funk and the titular Students Of The Asphalt Jungle allowed the dancers to cut loose, spinning, and popping and outperforming each other with flair and exuberance and oldfashioned showmanship.

Especially good were the sudden falls and slides, the spinning and tumbling, and the hand and head stands where the dancers also giggled their hips. Less good were the dramatised numbers (Endangered Species and March Of The Antmen), which featured dry ice, portentous music and moody stares into the middle distance, a combination that seemed to inhibit the dancers and bore the audience.

It may be that hip-hop is a pure-dance dance form, and turning it into drama is much less good.

Rennie Harris Puremovement: Students Of The Asphalt Jungle