One night when Joseph Toonga was a dance student, the police knocked on his door. A neighbour had called them. “They heard some noises and thought, ‘Hey, I’m going to call the police.’ They said that I had kidnapped two females in my house! It was a baffling thing.”
The friends Toonga had with him were taken into another room, while the police asked him to explain who he was. “They didn’t believe I was a dancer,” he says. “I had to go into my closet and pull out my leotard and ballet shoes,” he says with incredulity. “This is what I do!”
It may seem like a funny story now, but the underlying question was always there: would the neighbours have called the police if he weren’t black? To be dogged by suspicion and stereotypes is a fact of life for young black men growing up in the UK. “Ideas like that – you’ve kidnapped someone – sound ridiculous, but they’re things that happen to us all the time,” says fellow dancer Theo Oloyade.
Both dancers are performing together in Born to Manifest, a new work by hip-hop choreographer Toonga that explores growing up as a black man in London. To create it Toonga interviewed 10 men, aged 17 to 45, whose answers informed the show. Their stories are both familiar and shocking. The recurring theme is of being on constant alert. “I walk into a supermarket, I already know that the security guard is looking at me,” says Toonga. “There’s certain places where I know I’m always on edge, there are people who don’t want me there. Parts of west London where I’ve always been asked: what are you doing here? Why are you walking down this road?” Asked by whom? “By community police officers,” he says.
“You have to condition yourself to fit in,” says Oloyade, “You have to learn how to articulate yourself in a particular way so you don’t seem threatening.” And if you are stopped, or questioned, they say, you have to be careful how you respond because expressing your feelings is easily translated as aggression.
It even occurs in print when people write about their dancing. Oloyade, AKA “Godson”, is a former finalist on Sky One’s Got to Dance and a specialist at krump, a dance form characterised by powerful, staccato explosions of energy and chest-beating exultation. “Aggressive” is a frequent shorthand, and not always inappropriate, but for someone who feels they’re constantly trying to defuse people’s prejudices about their inherent aggression, it feels like another attack.
Krump is an acronym, standing for Kingdom Radically Uplifted Mighty Praise, and Oloyade comes at his dancing from a spiritual place, but not everyone gets it. “One person, a well-known choreographer, said: ‘Well, they’re just fighting on stage.’ I was, like, how ignorant can you be, bro?”
In Born to Manifest, the choreography is less about frenetic stomps and jabs, and more a morphing of statuesque bodies, emanating concentrated energy. Beyond addressing the stereotypes, Toonga wanted to portray a “support and vulnerability between young black guys”, something men often feel they can’t show, and emotions they can’t always express. “We’re big guys, but I have a heart inside,” says Toonga. “I do feel.”
Toonga was born in Cameroon and moved to London in the mid-90s, growing up in Manor Park in the east of the city. Oloyade was born in Leytonstone, east London, to Jamaican and Nigerian parents. Toonga says as soon as he arrived at secondary school aged 11, “you had to learn to protect yourself”. They both describe testosterone-fuelled aggro, the pressure to “be someone”, simmering tensions and racial divides (mostly between black and Asian boys). They both knew people in gangs – although they say, most fights are just friends defending friends rather than anything more organised than that. And for both of them, dance was a means to step away from that.
Toonga and Oloyade still live in east London, where youth violence and knife crime seem to be constantly in the news. But there’s a new narrative for the area: gentrification and cultural organisations moving east, including English National Ballet’s new headquarters near Canning Town and a new Sadler’s Wells theatre currently being built in the Olympic park, not far from Studio Wayne McGregor. But with the ingrained scepticism of those who’ve always felt excluded from the establishment, Toonga and Oloyade are doubtful about how much of an impact the newcomers will have. “They’re going to have to do some serious outreach,” says Oloyade. Toonga, who teaches in schools in Newham, east London, has a better idea. If English National Ballet really wants to reach out to its new neighbours, “Can you work with us to access those communities?” he says, laying down a challenge. Perhaps together, they could make it not so unbelievable for a kid from Manor Park to have ballet shoes and a leotard.
• Born to Manifest is at DanceEast, Ipswich, on 4 October. Then touring.
