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The Impossible Body

Storyboard P, the Basquiat of street dancing.
by Jonah Weiner January 6, 2014

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January 6, 2014 Issue

Storyboard P, a Brooklyn dancer, comes from the 1300 block of Eastern Parkway, on the border between
Crown Heights and Brownsville. When he was five or so, his grandmother tugged him onto the dance floor
at a family gathering and, as reggae played, got him moving for the first time. I hated it,
Storyboard said recently. A shy child, he felt intensely exposed: When youre dancing, youre
revealing yourselfall these temptations, vulnerabilities, things you cant see otherwise. But he
came to find the sensation addicting. Today, at twenty-three, he is a star of flex, a form of street
dance characterized by jarring feats of contortion, pantomime, and footwork that simulates levitation.
Much in the way that Savion Glover infused tap dancing with visceral aggression, Storyboard has pushed
street dancing in a darker, more mature direction. His choreography, most of it improvised, has a wide
range of influences: Jerome Robbins, especially his work in West Side Story; the Nicholas Brothers,
whose acrobatic tap-dancing routines amazed Fred Astaire in the nineteen-forties; and, above all,
Michael Jackson, whose otherworldly movements frightened Storyboard when he was little. I would cry
when I saw Michael, Storyboard said. His energy would scramble your frequency. Storyboard has some
formal trainingwhen he was about ten, his parents enrolled him in ballet classes at the Harlem School
of the Artsbut he says that his technique comes mainly from motherfuckers Id see on the block.

A decade ago, Storyboard began competing in Brooklyn dance battles: face-offs in parks, at all-ages
clubs, and at house parties. In 2007, at the inaugural installment of BattleFest, a flex tournament
that has attracted corporate sponsorship, the judges named him King of the Streets. The last time he
danced at BattleFest, in 2012, he again took top honors. Deidre Schoo, the co-director of Flex Is
Kings, a new documentary about flex, told me that Storyboards art is polarizing. Unlike many
flexers, he appropriates other forms of street dancethe furious gestures of Los Angeles krumpers, the
en pointe wizardry of Memphis jookersand mixes in classical moves, going from a sashaying vogue strut
to a balletic flourish. Some people, hollering epithets from the sidelines at battles, consider
Storyboards style florid and effeminate. But, Schoo said, no one will contest that hes one of the
best street dancers, if not the best, in Brooklyn. Maybe in the country.

Storyboard has danced mostly at unheralded venues around Brooklyn: the Levels Barbershop, on Fulton
Street; the Walt Whitman housing projects, in Fort Greene. But he has also performed at the Pace
gallery and in the Beaux-Arts Court of the Brooklyn Museum. Judy Hussie-Taylor, the executive director
of Danspace, an avant-garde venue downtown, says that Storyboards moves are extraordinary and bear
the mark of a master improviserhe takes you somewhere you dont expect to go. James Bartlett, the
executive director of the Museum of Contemporary African Diasporan Art, in Brooklyn, which has helped
organize outdoor performances by Storyboard and exhibited videos of his work in its galleries, likens
him to Jean-Michel Basquiat: He embodies that same sort of connection between the street and the
soul, on one side, and quote-unquote high art, on the other.

Read more: http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2014/01/06/140106fa_fact_weiner?

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