An interactive performance featuring hip-hop dance and a live marching band, taking place in Philly’s iconic LOVE Park. Philly Kerplop’s display of humor and daring physical dexterity will activate the park spaces in ways that feel both familiar and awe-inspiring.
Philly Kerplop’s philosophy is that the performing arts provide the most value to families when content thoughtfully combines fantasy and reality, entertainment and intellectual stimulation. Philly Kerplop is a dance and music performance ensemble started by Vince Johnson that makes performance for all ages, challenging the notion that amusement and headiness cannot work in tandem. Philly Kerplop draws on theater traditions in which the fourth wall is almost always broken and the line between order and spontaneity, fantasy and reality, is forgotten. Johnson’s concept for Kerplop is informed by early 20th century popular forms like vaudeville and slapstick; these performance styles celebrate an interdependence between feats of the body and live music. Similarly, with origins in hip hop dance, Johnson maintains a nostalgia for older African Diasporic traditions that feature a non-hierarchical relationship between dancer and musician. Philly Kerplop builds their content with dancers and musicians working simultaneously in the studio, each in service of the other. This playfulness between sound and physicality inspires a more curious, understanding, and creative public.
