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Raw Dance Company is about to open Bang! Crash! Tap! at the Arts Centre Melbourne. Nina Levy caught up with Raw Dance Company’s creative producer and founder, Andrew Fee.
Raw Dance Company is known for its energetic blend of funk, hip-hop, tap and acrobatics and talking to Andrew Fee, it’s easy to see the source of that drive. Even as a child, Fee was raring to go. “I was always extremely energetic… jumping around copying the dancers in the videos my mum watched,” he recalls. “Turned out they were Gene Kelly and Fred Astaire. As I grew up and started learning dance I admired their amazing agility, talent and love of entertaining. They would effortlessly leap through the air and their feet would move faster than I have seen before. They were my constant motivation to want to be just as good when I grew up.”
In 1998, at just 18 years of age, Fee established a dance group called Raw Metal, which eventually was renamed Raw Dance Company. Today the company employs over 50 people and tours internationally, presenting live performances and delivering dance education programs to hundreds of thousands of people around the world. Musing about the reasons for the company’s success overseas, Fee remarks, “Australians seem to be, in general, fairly popular internationally – from travelling to performing. I think that most countries and cultures are intrigued about our accents and the way we live. Raw’s performance style showcasing our general relaxed nature and easy-going attitude, which we receive a lot of positive feedback from audience members. I also believe that Australians performers and actors are fairly well known to be athletic and masculine, which is certainly what we focus on with our performances hear in Australia and abroad.”
It was not Fee’s goal, originally, to create a company that would tour internationally. “Initially, Raw toured wherever the work was in hope of keeping busy and maintaining employment for our dancers and staff,” he explains. “Once we realised that Raw had significant international appeal we strategically decided to continue to focus on developing these areas - setting up management in Europe, Asia and North America to assist with growing our international clientele.”
And what can Melbourne audiences expect from Bang! Crash! Tap!?“
"Bang! Crash! Tap! features a crew of two tap-dancers, an amazing beat boxing champion and one of Australia’s most talented drummers,” says Fee. “Bang! Crash! Tap! is a mind-blowing dance and percussion stage spectacular. Each member of the crew offers their talents to create a fun and energetic show that promises laughs, gasps, amazing moves and plenty of raw energy. Bang! Crash! Tap! experiments with cresting and exploring rhythms with thongs, flippers, basketballs, loop pedals, while incorporating new drum and tap moves with new age beatboxing techniques.”
Bang! Crash! Tap!
11-14 September
Arts Centre Melbourne