Known for his “artful and mesmerizing” (Dance Magazine) take on hip-hop and breaking, Raphael Xavier takes this movement vocabulary to uncharted territory with a transcendent mix of poetry, precision, and spontaneity. His new work, Sassafrazz: Roots to Mastery, explores the three stages of Break Life: birth, life, and death, with three styles of Breaking: Top, Footwork, and Ground Text. Three Breakers and three musicians highlight the parallels between traditional Breaking and jazz music, and the practitioner’s search for graceful aging in an art form associated with youth.


This presentation of Raphael Xavier was made possible by the New England Foundation for the Arts’ National Dance Project, with lead funding from the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

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