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Blaze The Show, featuring the world’s greatest street dancers and breakers, set the centre’s stage on fire with fancy footwork and electrifying routines that captivated the capacity crowd.
The international dance spectacular, which was part of the Summer Festival line-up organised by the Ministry of Culture, lived up to hype, keeping the audience members on their toes and in awe of every move, spin, jump and trick.
The show was choreographed by some of the hottest names on the street dance scene such as Mike Song, Kenny Wormald, Lyle Beniga, Ryan Chappell, Chris Baldock and Kendra Horsburgh.
The Blaze boys and girls specialised in a variety of styles including breaking, tapping, popping, locking and hip-hop and had performed with artists like the late Michael Jackson, Madonna, Rihanna and Sean Paul.
Although amassed from different countries including the UK, Holland, Germany, France, Luxembourg, Portugal and Australia, they all spoke the same language … dance.
Brit Shaun Paul Smith, 27, has been tapping, popping and locking with the crew for the past two years. He said: “Dance brings a positive vibe no matter what you are doing. That’s the light-hearted fun thing about it. It makes people smile and that’s pretty much what Blaze does. We love when the audience is as excited as we are.”
Fellow hip-hop contemporary dancer Marion Gallet, 27, from Paris, added: “We were quite intrigued to see what reaction we would get in Bahrain but the crowd was as excited as any other. People danced with us, were screaming and cheering.”
The dancers have toured around the globe since 2010 selling more than 250,000 tickets worldwide and it was clear to see why they remain the hottest ticket in town.
This was their first performance in Bahrain and I truly hope it’s not their last.
Hard hitting sounds of drum and bass along with funky beats echoed outside the exhibition centre, giving people a taste of the excitement that was to come.
The Blaze set was designed to reflect the lifestyle of many street-dancers. It featured untidy drawers and large suitcases piled high and scattered around in a bedroom of a young adult. The organised mess was used as a fun backdrop for the dancers. During the show they climbed on top of drawers and appeared from standing suitcases.
The lighting, colours and effects were sensational and seemed to come alive with the music. It was a sight to behold which added to the show’s high voltage entertainment value.
The audience was drawn to the performance from the minute the lights dimmed to the final hoorah. At the beginning it was a blank stage, with the bedroom-inspired design and a variety of colourful kicks set at the edge of the theatre. Suddenly articles of clothing began to fall from the top of the stage which caused one audience member to scream thinking it was a person. Then bare-footed dancers began to appear, picking up clothing off the ground. They walked towards the edge of the stage and pretended to be looking in a mirror, primping and getting ready for a night out on the town.
When they put on their shoes the music was chilled and as soon as they were ready, it switched up into an upbeat groove. We were then introduced to each dancer’s sassy personality which featured the likes of the geek, the sailor and the breakers.
When they started to dance people shrieked with delight. I couldn’t take my eyes off of them and at one point didn’t know who to follow as they were all absolutely amazing.
As they say in the dance biz, the crew ‘brought it’! Each dance sequence featured a different style of hip-hop. The Blaze boys got down and dirty during R&B singer Omarion’s I Get It In and three strong dancers performed a moving rendition of Michael Jackson’s Billie Jean in tap form. The break-dancing boys would appear in between skits, enthralling the crowd with their floor moves and dizzying spins. I couldn’t believe that the youngest was just 18.
The MC was entertaining, getting laughs from the younger crowd with his robotic technique and funny pop-ups in between skits. When he did the Carlton dance from TV show the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air I nearly died.
The best part of the show, which had everyone on their feet, was when he created a rap about food, adding Arabic dishes such as Machboos, Laham and Balaleet into the mix. He played a Simon Says-style dance game with the audience, performing different dance steps to different food. It wasn’t long before audience members started doing a batata (potato) dance and broccoli dance.
It was an hour-and-a-half of non-stop entertainment. The dancers made every intricate dance move look simple as pie and it’s all because they were having fun doing it. During the encores, there were three to be exact, the dancers leapt off the stage to dance with the audience, running through aisles and break-dancing with the locals.
It was such a magical evening that I didn’t want it to end. They definitely achieved their goal. People may have walked into the exhibition centre … but they left dancing.
– Mai Al Khatib-Camille
