How the Midwest was One

BLIND AMBITION Hip Hop ConnXion fires away.

Chicagoan Lindsey Jones thought her group Hip Hop ConnXion had hit the big time. The 26-year-old captain and her dancers auditioned for the new MTV reality competition, Randy Jackson Presents: America’s Best Dance Crew, and made the final cut. They were going to L.A. to compete on the show. Since they’d be away for up to two months, Jones scrambled to cover her duties for the Storm Chasers (the dance squad for the Chicago Storm soccer team), and found subs to teach her dance classes. Then—two days before their departure—MTV called and took back its invitation.

According to Suavé, HHC’s founder and executive director, dancers had already elected not to register for college classes, and some had canceled their student loans. “We were upset, not because we weren’t chosen, but because it was two days before we were supposed to go to L.A. that they changed their minds,” he says.Teddy Chavez, a cofounder and dancer with the hip-hop company C.O.D.A. (Chicago Onyx Dance Alliance), also tried out for MTV’s Crew. “It just seems like the Midwest got the short end of the stick,” Chavez says. C.O.D.A. made the L.A. cut but also didn’t end up on the show. “The judges told us we made it to the next round. But we never got a call.” However, a spokesperson from MTV denies this version of events: “No one was told they had a spot on the top 12 and had that rescinded. That never happened.”

Crew chose 12 hip-hop dance groups to represent each U.S. region. Among the troupes were some well-respected crews (Jabbawockeez and Kaba Modern, from the West Coast). But the Midwest representatives, Chicago’s Femme 5 and Indiana’s Breaksk8, came under fire from local dance groups: “They are not Chicago-based,” says Jones about Femme 5, whose members no longer reside here. “Chicago has its own style and flavor, but they don’t represent that because they live in L.A.” Some glitches were evident even in the earliest stages of the competition: “Breaksk8 didn’t make the second cut of the initial Chicago audition. They should never have been in the competition,” Suavé says. “We thought this was the worst possible representation of the Midwest you could even think about.”

But MTV defends the auditions, saying that in addition to open calls, casting directors searched and recruited, a common practice among reality shows, which is how Femme 5 was found. As for BreakSk8, casting directors ultimately decided to let the group perform how it always performs—on skates, the spokesperson says.

Instead of brooding over the disappointment, Suavé’s crew wants to spotlight Chicago’s authentic brand of hip-hop. The nine-year-old HHC will host THE ONE, a showcase of Midwest hip-hop talent. “L.A. has big showcases. I wanted to put on a show in Chicago that can rival that,” Suavé says.

The Saturday 15 event at the Athenaeum Theatre features local hip-hop stalwarts (Culture Shock Chicago, Dance 2XS) as well as Chi-town urban tappers (M.A.D.D. Rhythms) and footworkers (Chicago FootworKINGz). One must-see piece is HHC’s searing collaboration with C.O.D.A., DARE (…To Be Different), which won the Most Outstanding Choreography Award at Dance Chicago in November. This partnership is another part of Suavé’s plan to put Chicago on the hip-hop map. “Let’s stop competing against one another and let’s work to make amazing pieces,” he says.

They may be just beginning to rally together, but Chicago hip-hop groups are already united in their view of Crew. “We were thinking the show would be good for dance, a good show about dance crews,” Jones says. “We thought it would be about the talent instead of the drama.”

THE ONE pops into the Athenaeum Theatre March 15.