http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/05/arts/dance/a-french-dancers-hip-hop-moves-are-tested-in-new-york-anne-nguyen-crossing-the-line-festival.html 2016-10-05 00:01:48 A French Dancer’s Hip-Hop Moves Are Tested in New York Anne Nguyen, who is known for rethinking conventions, brought “Graphic Cyphers” and “Autarcie (.…)” to the city in the Crossing the Line Festival. === Anne Nguyen is a French b-girl and choreographer. In her home country, she’s gained a reputation for rethinking the conventions of hip-hop dance and how the form might best be transferred from street to stage. She’s hardly the first choreographer to address these issues, but over the past two weeks, the First came the street test — in the Bronx, no less. Next to the construction site for the future Roberto Clemente Plaza, on a Friday afternoon, some 20 hip-hop dancers assembled on the asphalt. They arranged themselves into the circles that they call cyphers and took turns in the middle, showing off specialty moves or playfully responding to another dancer’s challenge. Every once in a while, they all synced up into a short shared routine, but even those moments could have been spontaneous outbreaks at a block party. Except that this wasn’t quite a block party. It was a kind of performance, called “ The collapsing and re-forming of the cyphers gave the street a pulsing, party atmosphere, blurring the lines between performers and audience. But the official event, about 15 minutes long, was less exciting than its immediate aftermath, when Bobby Sanabria’s Latin jazz band started playing, and the dancers responded to meringue with a whole jumbled history of hip-hop styles, a living language. At the Gibney Dance Center downtown, last weekend, audience members stayed in their seats. The title of Ms. Nguyen’s “ Those moves were impressive: Valentine Nagata-Ramos spiraling upside down on the floor, the rapid arms of Sonia Bel Hadj Brahmin slicing the air around her into a thousand pieces. It was easy to imagine these women winning hip-hop battles. And Ms. Nguyen’s machine dances could dazzle, as eight arms interlocked in a high-speed blur of cut-and-thrust. With a percussion score by Sébastien Lété that stimulatingly blended mechanical and organic rhythms, “Autarcie” succeeded in creating its own world, using the language of hip-hop to say something. Yet the something it said was a bit of a cliché, and the idea failed to develop across the work’s 50-minute duration. In transferring the energy of the cypher to the stage, Ms. Nguyen’s choreography sufficed, but merely so.