Raphael Xavier with Live Music & Local Northeast Ohio Dancers! FREE Event!

DANCECleveland is excited to come together in person again for an outdoor, site-responsive performance at one of our favorite summer venues, Cain Park. This original collaborative and creative work will bring together world-renowned Hip Hop dance company, Raphael Xavier, live music, and Northeast Ohio’s local hip-hop community.

The idea for “KOLÂDE-XCOPE” originated as an outdoor experience at the Brooklyn Botanical Garden. The work will include a live musician/vocalist and electronic technology with hip-hop aesthetics that include breaking, poetry, spoken word, and rap cadences with an improvisational and intuitive approach. The work will be shaped and inspired by the perspectives and backgrounds of the local artists tapped to collaborate and perform in the piece.

An Award-winning artist originally from Wilmington, Delaware, Raphael Xavier is a Hip-Hop dancer and breaking practitioner that has been honing his craft since 1983. A self-described “Innovative Movement Conceptualist”, Xavier creates new ways to expand the vocabulary of the dance form and how it fits onto an aging body. Don’t miss this outdoor performance experience that is truly one of a kind!

“…Artful and mesmerizing, Xavier transforms a bravado dance style into an introspective meditation.” – Dance Magazine