TV Reviews : KCET Twin Bill Celebrates Black Culture

Tonight’s double-header of the adventure-prone PBS series “Alive TV” (on KCET-TV Channel 28 starting at 11 p.m.) is a somehow apt but nonetheless unlikely twin bill celebrating black culture in New York--with one half-hour centering around Harlem homosexuality in the jazz era, and the other around the hip-hop street dancers of modern Brooklyn.

“Reckin’ Shop: Live From Brooklyn,” in black-and-white, doesn’t offer much in the way of context-defining narration, apart from some lingo-laden comments from its dancer “host,” Jamal (Rubberband) Boatwright, and some asides from the kids on view. But the state-of-the-art hip-hop dancing speaks for itself, on streets and stoops, in schoolyards and in clubs.

The most stimulating insights come in a voice-over quip from a dancer positing how these modern styles evolved from the bruising break-dancing of a decade ago into something with more grace and “more pizazz.” Any viewer would be hard-pressed to disagree.

The second of tonight’s episodes (at 11:30) is an abridgment of Isaac Julien’s feature-length “Looking for Langston,” a dreamy visual essay on gay black life in the ‘20s, with African-American poet Langston Hughes as its centerpiece.

In this slightly spooky black-and-white tone poem, director Julien (best known for last year’s “Young Soul Rebels”) mixes up Harlem archival footage and vintage voice-over poetry with new, silent scenes set in an all-male ballroom, and even throws in a quasi-erotic fantasy sequence.

It’s an astonishing subject given a remarkably cinematic treatment, and the unattributed poetic voices of the era that provide commentary on homosexuality being seen as a betrayal to the black race certainly ring with contemporary relevance. But this is less documentary than dream, and the lack of an outside narration presumes a knowledge of the milieu that may prove daunting to viewers who haven’t been properly prepped.