Community Supported Arts production highlights new works by Teena Marie Custer and Roberta Guido

Teena Marie Custer. Photo by Joey Kennedy.
Teena Marie Custer. Photo by Joey Kennedy.

By Steve Sucato

While Pittsburgh’s underground hip-hop street-dance scene is thriving, hip-hop concert dance here is nearly nonexistent. B-girl and hip-hop dance-theater artist Teena Marie Custer is one of the few bridging those worlds. A member of street-dance crews Get Down Gang and the all-female Venus Fly Trap Crew, Custer presents her new 35-minute concert-dance solo My Good Side at the New Hazlett Theater, on Thu., June 11. The multimedia work set to electronica music, part of the theater’s Community Supported Arts series, is a nonlinear commentary on how people portray themselves online. “I find that people tend to curate their lives on social media,” says Custer. “They want to project a certain image and they make sure all their posts and photos match that image.” Custer describes her solo — featuring breaking, waacking, house and locking — as a journey from fantasy to reality that comes from a personal place. Sharing the program is dancer/choreographer Roberta Guido, performing her new workRETREAD/together/apart, which investigates the notion of “leaving one’s mark.” A student at The College at Brockport: State University of New York, Guido says the work draws from emotional and intimate personal narratives exploring what it means to be “together” and “alone.”  8 p.m. 6 Allegheny Square East, North Side. $20. 412-320-4610 or www.newhazletttheater.org

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