While it might be hard to believe that ballet and hip-hop can seamlessly fuse together into a distinct dance form, that is exactly what Victor Quijada’s Rubberbandance Group is trying to accomplish, and quite successfully at that. The result is a street-smart type of ballet that is impossible to deconstruct back into its original components.

Quijada says that he chooses not to separate the elements of his Montreal-based dance troupe’s performances. “How are you even identifying what is one and what is the other? Because when you’re trying to identify one, you’re looking for the cliché of what is ballet and what is hip-hop. And I’m trying to do away with that and get to a more truthful essence.”

The two divergent dance styles have interwoven throughout the thirty-one years of Quijada’s life. He started break dancing on the streets of South Central at the age of eight, eventually earning the nickname “Rubberband” for his elastic moves. In his teen years, he discovered formal dance at the Los Angeles County High School for the Arts and was invited to join legendary Twyla Tharp’s “Twyla!” company. He continued to hone his ballet technique, and in 2000 joined Les Grands Ballets Canadiens in Montreal. His hip-hop roots remained with him and he yearned to bring together the seemingly opposite dance styles. In 2002, after recruiting dancers from both disciplines, he formed the Rubberdance Group and launched the Elastic Perspective spectacle.

The best way to gain perspective at what Rubberdance does is to take a sample out of their repertoire. Pieces range from Secret Service, a hip-hop spin on Sergei Prokofiev’s balletic Romeo and Juliet score, to The Traviattle, a B-boy-style battle between the sexes set to the music of Giuseppe Verdi. The constant goal is to keep the audience engaged while it’s being entertained. The pieces are staged in a way that audience participation is encouraged and it’s not unusual to hear cheers and whoops from the gallery.

As the tour heads into Quijada’s L.A. roots, the artist reflects on the changes in the hip-hop scene in the past 20 years of his career. He recognizes that it is a young people’s art form, constantly changing with the times. While he perfected his moves on the street with the guidance and support of his peers, many kids these days might learn hip-hop in a local dance studio, adjacent to a classroom of ballet students. Given this new reality, the Elastic Perspective tries its best to unite the street style with the classics, reminding us that dancing is first and foremost an expression of the soul, rather than just a series of learned steps.