Best Place to Show Off Your Fierce Face

A talent for outsassing fellow performers is just part of a dancer's chops at the San Francisco Hip-Hop Dance Festival, which begins in November with a freestyle jam where dancers jump into the circle, show their stuff, and jump back out again; cockiness, as much as execution, is the name of the game. Performances were technically sharp at last year's festival, but out in the lobby, the talk was all about the smoldering David Collier of Khaotik, and the all-girl troupe B-Syde, whose feisty joy was infectious. Crowds have gotten so much bigger every year since the festival's inception that last year, organizer Micaya switched it from a two-week, typically sold-out run at Theater Artaud to a weekend-long run at the cavernous Palace of Fine Arts, where it sold out again, thank you very much. Another new feature of last year's festival was the all-youth bill, where kids as young as 7 were already slinging some attitude.