The Missing Element Brings Street Dance And Beatbox Fusion To LTV, With Guild Hall And Works And Process

Incredible flexibility, technique and athleticism. Human-created sonic landscapes. Performance art styles not usually seen on a concert dance stage or in a long-form presentation. But on July 16, from Guild Hall in collaboration with Works & Process and hosted at LTV Studios, “The Missing Element” will fuse street dance with beat-boxing for an epic performance.

The Missing Element is led by creative directors Chris Celiz, a world champion beatboxer, and b-boy Anthony Vito Rodriguez, nicknamed “Invertebrate.” The group combines street dancers of many styles who are paired with beatboxers; dancers move to the sounds of the beatboxers. Joining Celiz and Rodriguez are Krumper Brian “Hallow Dreamz” Henry, flexers Joseph Carella “Klassic” and King Havoc, breakers Graham Reese “B-boy Kilo” and Rodriguez, and members of the Beatbox House, including Amit Bhowmick, Neil Meadows “NaPoM,” Gene Shinozaki and Kenny Urban. Dancer, host, filmmaker and co-founder of YAK Films Kash Gaines will join them as well.

The work that will be presented has been developed and extended at various residencies across the past few years and presented in the Guggenheim’s rotunda, filmed on Lincoln Center’s campus and more. During the first summer of the pandemic, “The Missing Element” took part in a Works & Process bubble residency that was the subject of a PBS docuseries called “Isolation to Creation.” The finished work brings a narrative and longer form to these mediums, and also brings together styles of street dance that tend to be separated.

“Whereas you’ll find krumpers and breakers in the same event or the same battle, it’s very hard for us to intermingle,” Rodriguez explained. “But with this show, it’s our opportunity to see how all these dances and styles can work with each other, or the combination of beat-boxing and dance. That experiment in itself was this show. … I love bridging the gap.”

The elemental name of the group speaks to the broad thematics of the work. Because the performance is a long-form version of art forms that are not typically presented in a concert dance format, Celiz and Rodriguez created a narrative throughline of the elements to give cohesion.

“Narrative is very important to me, through my experience of working through off Broadway theater at The Box,” Rodriguez explained. “They’ve instilled it from … I’ve been performing there since 2011. Before that I was a battle b-boy and I had a real huge b-boy crew that was well known for routines and battle. So infusing this inspiration from theater and also this battle and b-boy inspiration from hip hop and recreating this story with the elements.

“It’s grown every time we’ve done it, whether it was earth, wind, fire, water, and casting dancers to beat-boxers and their sounds. That was like a very early form, just acknowledging how everybody sounded and how everybody moved. Everyone has just taken that loose form, theme and whether they were wind or fire, they evolved that story,” he added. “It’s been an amazing thing to witness and also help along the way with some of these dancers or who are great at dancing may or may not know what it is to have a full narrative to their expression.”

On the side of the beatboxers, the musicians are creating full soundscapes for the dancers to move with and through. With no non-human generated noise involved, everything comes just from them, and the range of sounds they can create is pretty wild.

“As beatboxers, it’s almost like we’re dancing with our mouths, if that makes any sense,” Celiz said. “We have this thing that’s kind of outside of our body that is reacting and responding to the sonic landscape that we’re creating, it’s like a visual representation of our sound, which is really cool. And the fact that it’s another human, too, that they’re making their own choices and that they’re interpreting said sounds with the movement that they deem appropriate for the sound, I think it has been such an awesome experience, because it brings the sounds to life.”

Celiz and Rodriguez facilitate the performance, pairing dancers and beatboxers and giving narrative direction. But each artist interprets their element differently bringing their background to it, whether that’s the highly-energetic and expressive movement of krumping, the athletic spins and acrobatics of breaking, or the contortion and dynamism of flexing.

“Anthony and I are there to make sure the narratives flow within one another,” Celiz said. “They’re like little vignettes of everyone’s interpretation of the sound and the movement.”

The Missing Element brings art styles that come from street culture and hip-hop to the stage. These uniquely American and distinctly New York forms — beat-boxing, for example, came from musicians in the South Bronx who couldn’t afford percussion instruments — rarely are seen on prestigious stages.

“We see this as an art form that needs to be on the concert dance stage within performing arts organizations and be provided with the resources that come with these performing art and cultural institutions,” Duke Dang, executive director at Works & Process at the Guggenheim, said.

“We’re trying to place these performing art cultures on the same presenting platform as traditional performing arts,” he added.

Leading up to their night at LTV, “The Missing Element” will do pop-up performances around the community, at Main Beach in East Hampton and the Stephen Talkhouse in Amagansett, as well as leading a workshop with children at the Bridgehampton Childcare and Recreation Center.

The performance on July 16 will be preceded by a live DJ set by FlyKai, a local artist and musician who has worked with Guild Hall on other occasions. “The Missing Element” will be using LTV’s studio three, a customizable space that the group will have flexibility within.

“It’s a bit more of an immersive experience,” Anthony Madonna, the Patti Kenner Senior Associate for Learning and Public Engagement at Guild Hall, said of the staging. “You’ll get to see every angle of a dancer. When you’re looking at krump and flex dancers, to be able to see the muscles of their bodies and the agency and the control and release they have, I think it’s going to be really interesting in the round as opposed to straight-on.”

“It’s not a form that I have seen much in this area, but also in general, on a concert or performance stage,” he added. “What I think is so interesting about ‘The Missing Element’ is that they are taking these forms of social dance and social music making and finding a way to structure it in the concert dance format that we know really well. We’re being introduced to new disciplines and new mediums, but within a structure that we know. It’s quite accessible, not only because it’s social dance that you can cheer and applaud for in the middle of it, but for audiences who perhaps don’t know these kinds of dances, they know the structure that it’s being presented within so that they can build an appreciation for this medium as they would ballet or tap.”

Celiz and Rodriguez are looking forward to bringing their virtuosity to a new audience.

“We’re super excited to come all the way out east, and we got something to show,” Rodriguez said.

“The Missing Element” will perform on Saturday, July 16, at 7 p.m. at LTV’s Studio 3. Tickets are $75 ($67 for Guild Hall members) at guildhall.org. LTV Studios are located at 75 Industrial Road, Wainscott.