Choreographer Kenrick “H2O” Sandy and composer-producer Michael “Mikey J” Asante met at school in East London when they were 12, bonding over hip hop. After performing in local street-dance battles, they founded the hip-hop dance theater company Boy Blue in 2001, wowing audiences with precision choreography and explosive energy. Their show Pied Piper won an Olivier Award in 2007, and was followed by acclaimed works including Blak Whyte Gray and Free Your Mind, and choreography for the 2012 London Olympics opening ceremony. Boy Blue’s latest show, Cycles, comes to New York City’s Lincoln Center March 27–29.
You’ve been collaborating for more than 25 years. What makes this partnership work?
Sandy: I feel like the major thing is the level of respect we have for each other. That level of fellowship. We’re both Libras, we’re both from the same area, we’re both older brothers. We both have the tenacity and the passion. And we promote each other, we push each other. There’s a lot of real, brotherly love.
Asante: To find this is rare: two friends who managed to turn something into a business, and then into a movement, but still have the same core values of friendship. There is a true want to see the other succeed. With Cycles, I brought the concept and put that in the ring for the other person to bounce off.
Sandy: We feed each other inspiration. When we come together we’re jamming. This is not a job, this is a joy for us.
Tell us about Cycles.
Asante: I wanted to make something that was in perpetual motion, where it constantly moved forward. At the same time, I was inspired by hip-hop mixtapes, a J Dilla or a Madlib mixtape, how the music would be on this constant loop. Then there’s the different cycles that exist in life: life, death, seasons, the moon and tides. We also wanted to focus on hip hop, go back to the roots of the movement.
Sandy: It was going back into the grooves, the hip-hop social grooves, then flipping it and looking at all the different choreographic frameworks. It was about the never-ending process.
Asante: Creating a show that never looked the same way each time you watched it. The notion of freestyle was a big part of selecting the dancers. It’s forever growing and changing.
What has changed in the hip-hop dance scene since you started?
Sandy: My beard is gray now!
Asante: It was a style that no one considered to be of value when we started. We were just noisy, rambunctious children who people wanted out of their space. Now I look at other dance forms and I can see the influence of hip hop on all of them. When we started, just seeing boys dancing, let alone Black boys where we’re from, they called us “funny.” And now every child I know is dancing.
Sandy: There are students we used to teach when we were in our early 20s, they’re now sending their kids to our classes.
What’s it like performing in New York, the home of hip hop?
Sandy: It’s really nice just to show what we’re about. We appreciate hip hop so much, but our hip hop definitely has a UK slang to it. There’s an influence from UK grime, UK garage, and also just the energy is very London.
What’s London energy like?
Sandy It’s fearless, it’s unrestricted.
Asante: There’s a bop, there’s a bounce, y’know? It’s confident about itself. But we’re forever wanting to commune and connect. We travel. There’s always going to be people in another land that share part of your language. Maybe they’ve got a different accent, but to us the gift that hip hop has given us is that it’s made us so many different friends all across the planet that are all connected through the groove.
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