By Logan Langlois
NASHVILLE, TN — Oz Arts Nashville welcomed electro dance performance Rave Lucid from the international dance company Mazelfreten’s last weekend or one of the only two stops made by the young company in the United States. The dance number paid tribute to the French electro craze that arose in the nightclub scene of the early to mid-2000s. The dance composed by world champion Electro dancer Brandon “Honey” Maseleand and French hip-hop-trained dancer Laura “Nala” Defreten is meant to lull the audience into a lucid dream from which they will never wake up.
OZ Executive Director Mark Murphy said the performance invents a new form of dance that melds different genres such as electro and breakdancing to create a new form of dance and theater. Murphy said when he is looking for performers to come to OZ, he often looks for shows he believes will inspire Nashville audiences and artists alike.
“One of the first questions is, ‘What should artists in Nashville get to see in order to be part of the larger national or international conversation in the next step of the evolution of the arts?’”
Murphy said he believes Rave Lucid is one of these next steps, with both its irresistible electro music and refreshingly unique blend of different forms of dance. He said the show depicts a loosely structured narrative of a group of young adults and what can happen over the course of a party.
“It does have a suggested narrative of sorts without being an overt story,” Murphy said. “Rather than being a clear narrative, it’s almost more like a poem expressed in music and incredible lighting and staging, and absolutely heart-lifting movement.”
Murphy said he first learned about Rave Lucid and Mazelfreten’s through his friend (and Sarasota Ringling Museum of Art Currie-Kohlmann Curator of Performance) Elizabeth Doud. He said after she showed him a video snippet of the performance, the two immediately got to work on getting Mazelfreten’s the paperwork they needed to come to America.
Murphy said Brandon Maseleand was born in the Congo and is said to have gotten his first taste of electro music at the age of 13, though dance had always been a part of his family’s life and community as a form of self-expression. Murphy said Mazelfreten’s co-owner Laura Defreten grew up in the suburbs of France and is far more from the music side of things, not only with her dance career paralleling with French Hip-Hop but also herself having once been in a band.
“The merging of these two when they came together and started working on full-stage productions is really a match made in heaven I think,” Murphy said.
Murphy described Rave Lucid as the meeting place between fashion and dance, saying that the audience will not be able to help but be on the edge of their seat almost the whole time. He said the show begins with all the dancers exploding on stage with such wild and raw high-energy movements, that he was unsure how the performers would find the stamina to keep up the pace the entirety of the approximately hour-long show.
Murphy said the show also depicts our young and diverse cast navigating a world that isn’t always accepting of who they are. He said this is another way in which raw music such as Hip-Hop, which has traditionally been used by marginalized groups to express themselves, plays an important role in expressing the emotions of our characters. It’s this unfiltered emotion, and storytelling around the uniquely struggling characters, that Murphy said makes Rave Lucid.
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