Jonzi D turned down an MBE when he was offered one for services to dance, back in 2011. But on stage at the 20th edition of Breakin’ Convention, the hip-hop theatre festival he founded, he did accept a more meaningful award, from the State Assembly of New York, birthplace of hip-hop, for his work promoting the art form. Two of the original B-boys, Keith and Kevin Smith, AKA the Legendary Twins, turned up to present it.
It’s well-deserved; the festival is a triumph, a weekend of events, on- and off-stage, a noisy, family-friendly party with a real sense of community, taking in breaking, popping, locking, krump, house, beatboxing, graffiti and more. As well as flying in artists from around the world, it’s a platform to nurture local talent that often goes on to big things: this year’s two dance winners at the Olivier awards, Ivan Blackstock and Dickson Mbi, both started out on the Breakin’ Convention Stage.
This is a rare stage where you will see every shape, size, age, race, gender and ability dancing. The disabled B-boys of ILL-Abilities blow most other dancers out the water with technical fireworks and real style, Samuel “Samuka” da Silveira Lima backflipping and pirouetting on his only leg. There are plenty of strong women, whether French quintet The Barefoot Diva posing to Maya Angelou’s Phenomenal Woman, or the fierce young females of Boy Blue in a supremely tight, militarily drilled routine.
As well as new dance styles – like “threading”, where dancers artfully tie themselves in knots – there are throwbacks: the laid-back, old-school vibe of Ghetto Funk Collective, from the Netherlands, steeped in 70s style. Fifty years in, hip-hop has a rich history now, a museum being built in the Bronx, academic texts, and Breakin’ Convention’s own hip-hop theatre academy opening next year.
The headliners are another set of twins, Les Twins, with their crew Criminalz. Best known as Beyoncé’s dancers, they’re expert at switching up the tension in their movements, rubbery to pin-sharp, flow to freeze, with bags of personality and humour, closing with a glitched-up breakdown of Britney Spears’s Baby One More Time. Simply one of the most vibrant nights out in dance.
