Artistic Director: Jonzi D
Now celebrating its 21st year, London’s annual festival of hip-hop dance theatre always contains much to delight and surprise. Taking place over three days, the event includes events going on throughout Sadler’s Wells, with performances and interactive sessions taking place on all levels of the building.
Breakin’ Convention is in the process of inviting applications for a new performing arts academy that will focus on hip-hop theatre, extending the festival’s philosophy into a full-time educational role. But for this weekend’s main stage, hosted by the convention’s artistic director Jonzi D, the offering focuses on acts who are already producing professional theatrical presentations using a variety of hip-hop and related skills.
Saturday’s schedule opens with London-based ShaolinOrShao, a collective of graduates from the University of East London whose piece MP3+Movement Init mainly revolves around dancing to Lethal Bizzle’s Pow. It’s a high-octane performance with a strong narrative about camaraderie, friendship and grime culture that ensures proceedings start with an adrenaline-fuelled explosion of rhythm and moves.
That’s followed by a couple of more contemplative pieces. The Hereditary by Create4 shows two men, separated onstage in their own coloured pools of light, but who each experience a sense of toxic masculinity handed down from previous generations. Female duo Ekleido’s Splice is dominated by sequences of the two dancers with arms linked together, entangling and then disentangling themselves into inhuman shapes. Theirs is an exploration of the elasticity of the human body that is mesmerising to watch.
South London’s GSB, also known as Gully South Block, are returnees to Breakin’ Convention after appearing on last year’s bill. Their Krump-infused routine looks at what it is like to feel vulnerable in a hyper-masculine world that tends to reject such notions.
But when it comes to vulnerability, it is the work of soloist Jamal Sterrett that really hits the spot. High Spectra is an attempt for Sterrett to rationalise how he feels inside, as a dancer with Asperger’s, compared with how the world expects him to dance. The jerking fluidity of his choreography is an example of Bruk Up, a Jamaican dance hall-inspired movement style pioneered by George Adams, whose childhood bone infection affected his movement and which then played into the jerks and pops that make the style so distinctive. Sterrett is captivating to watch, further mixing in balletic sequences, traversing the stage en pointe in trainers or contorting himself into an alien, crablike creature. It’s the most distinctive, unusual and remarkable piece of the entire evening.
French collective Sons of Wind’s Act I conclusion brings Detroit bounce to the stage, with the atmosphere of a house party where one-upmanship and dance battles abound. There’s some fun back and forth, especially with a sequence where each dancer takes the previous performer’s moves, echoing and remixing them into something completely different as a challenge to the next. But their sequence runs far too long, not helped by a backing track which seems to vary only by the levels of the various samples in the mix.
Ivan Michael Blackstock’s Traplord opens Act II with another adrenaline-fuelled group number that mixes the aggression of gun-led culture with a yearning for something different. Blackstock’s work has a fantastical edge to it, with mask work and pink tutus mixing with the ensemble’s black, quasi-armoured uniforms. There is a sense of a work still evolving, and which may never be complete, but what is shown here is filled with elements of which we need to see more. Musically, the work moves from the creepiest rendition of the Carol of the Bells to Daft Punk, everything in between and beyond.
International trio Femme Fatale continues the musical eclecticism, coming on stage to the strains of Glen Miller and performing works by artists including James Brown, Screamin’ Jay Hawkins, and Jessie J. Unbounded is an exploration of the challenges of being artists and the joy that can result when everything works. With their oversized suits and cases, there’s a clowning edge to their storytelling that just adds to the delight.
By the time the final act rolls around, it feels like it’s been a long but fulfilling evening. When South Korean b-boy collective Jingo Crew starts up, their routine initially feels underpowered compared to some of the preceding acts. But there is a reason why they have won the world’s top 5 tournaments, and that rapidly reveals itself. The deceptively straightforward breakdancing routines escalate to ever more intricate downrock moves, with acrobatic grace notes thrown in. It’s all performed with the crowd-pleasing charisma of a boyband at the height of its powers, a cheeky grin brought to life.
While Jamal Sterrett remains the strongest, most impressive and innovative performer of the whole evening, and other groups bring out the narrative power of hip-hop dance theatre, Jinjo Crew leaves us with a simpler message: the best part of watching breakdance is that it’s just so much fun.
Reviewed on 4 May 2024
The Reviews Hub Score
Impressive and innovative
This post was originally published on this site be sure to check out more of their content.
