Street dance stories feature at Fringe with Betwixt

Liz Hobday |

Each performer spent time with a writer who a spoken-word soundtrack from their stories.
Each performer spent time with a writer who a spoken-word soundtrack from their stories.

Street dance is a rigorous art, according to dancer Wanida Serce, though it’s often not treated as such.

“The thing is with street dance, a lot of the time it’s not platformed in a way that can really show that it’s in art form,” Serce told AAP.

The dancer and choreographer’s new show Betwixt, part of the slate at the Adelaide Fringe, combines spoken-word poetry with street dance.

Betwixt takes street dance and makes it personal: each of the five performers spent time with a writer who listened to their stories and created a spoken-word soundtrack from them.

Serce especially wanted to tell the stories of people of colour through her dance collective Pink Matter.

“People just see us from the outside, they don’t really know anything about us, so I really want to show what Betwixt represented to me – the in-between,” she said.

The 30-year-old grew up in Logan, south of Brisbane, dancing to hip-hop in her bedroom, loving artists such as Jamaican rapper Sean Paul and Destiny’s Child, and dreaming of being a dancer.

“I always knew, at that time I thought dancing was the only thing I’m good at,” she said.

Street is an umbrella term for non-technical dance styles including hip-hop, breakdancing, popping, dancehall, ballroom and waacking, but even Serce finds it challenging to define what street dance is.

“A lot of black, Latinx and African American people created those styles and it was during a time of a lot of fighting and oppression,” she said.

“Street is a humble journey, it’s full of wisdom, it’s honest, there’s no apologies,” dancer Joshua Taliani told AAP.

Street has evolved to become commercial, featuring in music videos, shows and dance classes. From dancing in her bedroom, Serce has performed at the Commonwealth Games, and in campaigns for Absolut Vodka and Universal Store.

Betwixt premiered to sold-out audiences at Brisbane’s Mad Dance Festival 2022 and is on at the Fringe before a season at Metro Arts in Brisbane.

The show has audiences laughing one moment and crying the next, Serce said.

“They were on such a roller-coaster, I was really happy they came along for the ride.”

Betwixt was developed with Brisbane’s Metro Arts, an organisation that supports individual artists to develop contemporary work.

The Adelaide Fringe runs until March 19.

AAP