A street dance style from 1960s Philly, informed by the MOVE bombing, has found its way into Rennie Harris’ ‘American Street Dancer’

Street dance has had a big impact on performance dance and popular culture, but many of the artists’ names have been lost in time. Choreographer Rennie Harris wants to highlight those influences.

“When we think of tap, when we think of jazz, for me that’s street dance of that era,” said Harris, 62.

In the second of his three years as an artist-in-residence at Penn Live Arts, which presents performances at the Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts, Harris wanted to map out street dance roots across the United States and how they tie together. The result, American Street Dancer, will premiere this weekend at the Zellerbach Theatre.

Even in Harris’ generation, starting in the 1970s, “those street dancers who continue to contribute to mainstream culture — and mainstream being modern, ballet, those things, and pop culture — we don’t know who they are.

“We know maybe John Bubbles, or the Berry Brothers, Nicholas [Brothers], and all these cats. But these tappers from back in the day — Bojangles, we know — but we really don’t have a sense of the dancers that contribute to today’s society in that way.”

American Street Dancer will include a section that he is choreographing for his company, Rennie Harris Puremovement.

“Philadelphia has its own street dance style that became popular in the early- to mid-60s, which got started from a Latin social dance, the cha-cha. By the time it gets to me, we were calling the dance GQ.”

It was likely named after the magazine, “mainly because you had to dress. You wore a suit. There were lots of groups in Philadelphia at the time. We used to battle at school dances all the time.”

To Harris’ knowledge, there are no more GQ dancers in Philly. “I mean, they’re out there,” he said, “but they’re sort of like old school.” So he set a GQ piece on his company.

For American Street Dancer, Harris invited two companies from cities that perform similar but distinct styles. Creation Global, led by King Charles (Charles L Parks IV), will be performing footwork, which is a style from Chicago that includes very fast movements. “Like 100 to 120 beats per minute,” Harris said.

The House of Jit, led by Michael Manson, does jitting, a style danced in Detroit, where Manson and his company are from. Harris thinks the original was called jitterbugging. “The style is all footwork based, and which is completely hilariously fast,” he said.

In between, tap dancer Ayodele Casel, whose work is informed by salsa, will perform, acting as a through line among styles.

“She’s holding this traditional information,” Harris said of Casel. The program also includes beat boxers and a “hip-hop orchestra.”

Harris started thinking this through before the COVID-19 pandemic, and the idea continued to bubble up. The residency made it possible.

“I started to think about rhythms, and how this idea around rhythms sort of translated to in the ‘70s and today. And I did that by way of the tappers, because the tappers have been there from day one, from Master Juba [in the 1840s, considered to be the father of tap dancing] all the way through.”

Harris has danced informally his whole life.

“African American, Latino, the music is always a part of the experience. Yeah? Music is always on. People are always moving. So you kind of grow up with it. Everybody can dance,” he said. As a small child, he loved Tom Jones and often picked up a broom and tried to imitate him.

By the time he was in eighth grade, Harris and his brother, and two close friends — with no training — entered a dance contest at the Church of the Gesu. And won.

“With our little moves — I don’t know what that was — but it put the full book in me. And when I got to high school, I was dancing all the time.”

At Roman Catholic High School, Harris met Frank Stewart, a GQ dancer who led the Step Masters. Harris quickly became co-captain. His sophomore year, Harris was transferred to West Catholic High School (“apparently I was part of the bad boys”) and in his last year of high school, he changed his style of dance and started popping.

Harris describes American Street Dancer as “family friendly, entertaining, with a slight undertone of politics. If you want to know why a person moves the way they move, you have to study what was going on, politically, economically, and socially at that time.”

The GQ style, Harris said, was heavily informed by the 1985 police bombing of the MOVE house in West Philly.

“For me, the dance always has a political narrative,” Harris said. “Everyone else may look at it as entertainment, which is fine, because it is for that too.”

“American Street Dancer.” 8 p.m. Friday, 2 and 8 p.m. Saturday. Zellerbach Theatre at the Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts. $47-$79. 215-898-3900 or pennlivearts.org