Imagine the well-heeled, tuxedoed crowd of ballet sharing a sip of champagne with a group of hoodied hip-hop heads ready to crunk. This could very well be the scene in Atlanta, GA tonight at the Fox Theater as Big Boi of the Outkast launches his first attempt at a ballet show.
That’s right, you read me…Big Boi of OutKast has teamed with a ballet troupe in Atlanta headed by Lauri Stallings to bring together a fantastic mixmatch idea in the form of bringing Big Boi’s hip-hop music into ballet with a show called “big.” Fresh off his musical turn in Idlewild, Big Boi was approached by the ballet, and the show that will combine hip-hop and ballet, dancers and audience, is set to kick off tonight with the encore being Boi’s new single “Sir Lucious Leftfoot Saves the Day.”
The idea is not just to bring a new media look to classical ballet, but to help cross-pollinate the fans of the two, introducing hip-hop to classical ballet lovers and introducing those dance watchers to the vibrant world of hip-hop. The dancers are calling it different from anything they’ve done before, which I can only imagine is incredibly true. How many ballet dancers have you seen leaping off the stage to crank it in the audience? Whatever the outcome, the fact that Big Boi is willing to branch out into ballet, and Ms. Stallings is brave enough to attempt to choreograph it makes this an endeavor worthy of some attention in a MixMatch world.
