NEW YORK: No stage is too small -- or moving too fast -- for Donte Steele and his dance crew.
Broadway might be the most prestigious showbiz address in New York, but Steele surely works the most challenging: the subway trains hurtling under Manhattan.
There are no curtains on this stage, but when Steele's crew burst through the automatic doors of the carriage, armed with a boom box, the drama is instantaneous.
“What time is it?” one calls out. “Showtime!” call back the others.
Passengers mostly look away from the sudden intrusion. But not for long.
The boom box is pumping Black Eyed Peas and the youngest performer, 15-year-old Marcus Walden, otherwise known as “Mr Wiggles,” is break dancing.
He back flips.
People start to watch.
Next up, “LJ” Tamiek Steele, 21, stands on his hands and calmly, as if it were the easiest thing in the world, reclines to a horizontal position, supported only by his fingers. You'd think invisible strings held him.
“If your man can't do this, leave him,” Walden quips, drawing giggles.
By the time Donte Steele takes over, passengers are looking on in amazement.
A squat man with shiny red ear studs, Donte Steele, 27, defies gravity and pretty much every other law of physics. He calls himself “thebestuknow.” On his back flip, there is no visible effort. From a standing start, he floats, turns backwards, lands on the same spot, and does it again: seven or eight times without pause, legs and arms blurring.
Miraculously, he avoids so much as brushing the knees of passengers crowded to each side, or the train ceiling an inch or two (centimeters) overhead.
Clapping breaks out. But the train isn't in.
Clasping each other, Tamiek and Donte Steele form a human wheel.
The wheel rolls right down the carriage, between the seats, straight at the vertical metal pole blocking the center aisle. Somehow, the wheel swerves past.
There's time for the briefest bow. Then the baseball caps get passed.
“The more money you give us...,” Donte Steele prompts, “the more money we'll have,” chorus the others. Show's over.
As soon as the train pulls up to a platform, the dancers hustle into the next carriage. They put the boom box on the floor.
“Showtime!” “They're definitely the best I've seen,” says watching commuter Christi Hulls, 27. “It's impressive. It's daring. That rolling is something you don't see.”-- Dancing is in their blood --
Each dance has a name: the roll, the two man, the midget, the wiggle, the undercut. But all the moves derive from break dancing, a virtuoso form of gymnastics set to hip hop that was born in the Bronx in the 1970s.
Break dancing is not just what Donte Steele and his performers do -- it's almost what they are.
“I learned when I was young, watching others and practicing a lot in the garages and jumping on beds,” Donte Steele says. “I was doing it when I was seven, back when the trains were covered in graffiti.” He and “LJ” Tamiek are cousins. “Mr Wiggles,” an unofficial step brother to “LJ,” has another sibling who also dances on trains. Then there's an uncle with his own show.
“This is like a family tree to me,” “LJ” Tamiek said. “Everybody in my family did it and I'm surprised, to like this day, (that) you can still make money doing it.” They say they love the work and go out almost every day, earning between 100 and 200 dollars a head while making three return trips on the express line between Harlem and lower Manhattan. But there's nothing easy about it.
They barely eat before hitting the subway -- “so as not to get an upset stomach,” “Mr Wiggles” Walden says -- and they rarely rest. The moment the train reaches a station, they run down the platform looking for the next carriage that seems to have enough space.
How much space?
“All we need is three feet,” the polite and soft-spoken Donte Steele tells passengers on more crowded cars, urging them to clear his tiny stage.
Of course, the fact that the stage is moving, accelerating, braking and shaking adds extra layers of complexity. What would ordinarily be just an impressive dance routine becomes a kind of experiment on the limits of space and time.
“I've hit myself sometimes when the train is going too fast, but I never hit a passenger,” “LJ” Tamiek said. “It can be difficult. That's why sometimes you hear us say, 'Get the science right!' That means, 'just get it right.'” Not everyone is enthralled.
During one set, a man in a pinstriped suit raised his newspaper higher to block the dancers from his view. This didn't do much good: when “thebestuknow” goes airborne, he's impossible to ignore.
Others, jaded by exposure to subway buskers, just refused to be impressed.
“Them, the drummers, yeah, I see people like that all the time,” a bored young woman said.
But in every car, without fail, there were people left smiling and reaching for coins and dollar notes.
“They're great. I was born and bred in New York, so nothing really fazes me,” said an elegantly dressed Manhattan resident.
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