In 2016, Homer Bryant posted a clip of his dance students wearing ballet shoes and performing to Jason Derulo’s “If It Ain’t Love.” They were practicing a new style he invented called Hiplet (pronounced hip-lay), combining ballet and hip-hop. The clip went viral, said Bryant, founder and artistic director of Chicago’s Multi-Cultural Dance Center.
“We got flak from some people,” he recalled. “Ballet purists thought we were ruining and damaging the art form.”
But the next morning, folks from major television news stations were calling Bryant to invite his Hiplet Ballerinas to perform live on morning programs.
Since then, the Hiplet Ballerinas have performed in South Korea, Portugal, France, Germany and throughout the United States. The professional dance troupe will perform April 24 at the James Lumber Center, showing off their unique style.
“We’re trained in tradition, but we’re dipped in versatility,” said Bryant, a native of Trinidad and Tobago who came to America to study dance and then later became a principal dancer with the Dance Theatre of Harlem. He also performed with Michael Jackson and Diana Ross in the motion picture “The Wiz” and toured with the Chicago City Ballet.
Bryant later began teaching ballet in Chicago, offering scholarships for underserved youth. “Classical ballet is predominantly white and Eurocentric,” he said. His school’s students are mostly Black and Asian but some also are white, he said.
“I am a product of Dance Theater of Harlem. That opened my eyes to what classical ballet could do for my body and my mind. When I moved to Chicago and started teaching, the students found ballet boring. I learned you have to stay relevant with the kids,” he said. “So I put rap and ballet together as a way of keeping kids engaged. I would rap the whole ballet terminology so they could better understand it.”
He then incorporated hip-hop into his ballet classes, which led to his forming the Hiplet Ballerinas and coining the term hiplet in 2009. The group dances “African-American style, hip-hop, jazz and Caribbean with the strength of classically trained ballet,” he said.
“The underserved are so left out of the ballet world,” Bryant said. “I figure kids here in Chicago need an outlet. Not everyone is going to be a rapper. Not everyone is going to be a basketball star.”
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They learn discipline and hard work through the ballet classes, he said. “These kids come to class every day working on the trampoline, doing strengthening exercises and picking up pencils with their toes.” They range in ages from 3 to adults.
Ballet promotes the integration of both hemispheres of the brain, he said. “Ballet is the science of movement. In classical ballet, you have to hold on with one hand and do the exercises with one foot. Then you do it with the other foot and hand.”
He said the performances show youngsters what they might be able to do. “They see people who are dancing on stage look like them,” Bryant said. “They hear music they can relate to. They see guys doing hip hop dancing and lifting the girls in the air. They see girls in stiletto heels and sneakers doing hip-hop. They see girls on pointe and doing bourrée,” a classical ballet step.
His school and performing group help soften the grief of losing his wife in 2008 and his daughter, who had cerebral palsy, in 2010.
“I love what I do,” he said. “That’s what keeps me going.”
At the James Lumber Center, the audience will see eight Hiplet Next Generation dancers between the ages of 12 and 17, followed by 16 professional dancers. The youngsters will open the show. “You will hear me whisper, ‘flexibility, motivation, coordination, discipline.’ It’s a positive opening of the show,” Bryant said.
“The audience can sit back, relax and observe. The professional dancers will be on pointe, the highest caliber of becoming a ballerina. You will truly be empowered,” he said.
The two-hour show will include Gospel, Latin and African-American music. “We take you on a journey. We take you on a fabulous journey. It’s entertaining. It’s exciting and it’s empowering,” Bryant said.
The dance troupe recently returned from Baltimore after performing to a sold-out crowd, he said. After performing in Grayslake, they will go to Queens in New York. Later this year, a book he wrote about his Hiplet Ballerinas will be released, and then after that, he said, “Somebody needs to do a TV show. I’m dreaming about a Hiplet ‘Nutcracker.’ I’d love to see ‘Hiplet,’ the movie and ‘Hiplet,’ the Broadway show. This is a feel-good Chicago story. It’s about dance, discipline and determination.”
Hiplet Ballerinas
When: 4 p.m. April 24
Where: James Lumber Center, 19351 Washington St., Grayslake
Tickets: $12-$35
Information: 847-543-2300, jlcenter.clcillinois.edu
Sheryl DeVore is a freelance reporter for the News-Sun.