The annual festival of Hip-Hop dance theatre celebrated its 21st year, as it contained to delight and surprise, as it enthralled crowds at London’s Sadler’s Wells.
With performances and interactive sessions, Breakin’ Convention 24 invited applications for a new performing arts academy that focussed on Hip-Hop theatre, for its full-time educational programme. This weekend’s main stage saw already established performers, including Saturday’s schedule opening, London-based ShaolinOrShao - a collective of graduates from the University of East London whose piece ‘MP3+Movement Init’ was based on Lethal Bizzle’s ‘Pow!’
Following that, there was Create4’s ‘The Hereditary’, as well as female duo, Ekleido’s Splice and South London’s GSB - also known as Gully South Block - who returned after appearing on last year’s bill. Then there was High Spectra, with 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.
French collective, Sons of Wind’s Act I, provided its Detroit-influenced House music fusion, with fun-based battles aplenty, as it took to a new level. Ivan Michael Blackstock’s ‘Traplord’ opens Act II with another adrenaline-fuelled group number that mixed the aggression of gun-led culture, with a yearning for something different!
Blackstock’s work brought a fantastical edge, with mask work and pink tutus mixing with the ensemble’s black, quasi-armoured uniforms. There was a sense of a work still evolving, and which may never be complete – although, what was shown, was filled with elements of which m any feel is needed to see more today.
Further, international trio, Femme Fatale, performed works by artists, including James Brown, Screamin’ Jay Hawkins, and Jessie J, whilst Unbounded, an exploration of the challenges of being artists, with their oversized suits and cases, brought a clowning edge to their storytelling that just added to the delight. Beyond that, multi-award-winning South Korean B-Boys, Jingo Crew, brought their own deceptive brand of Breakdancing routines, with acrobatic grace, performed with the crowd-pleasing charisma of a boyband at the height of its powers.
Added to that, it has to be said, Jamal Sterrett remains the strongest, most impressive and innovative performer of the whole evening, whilst other groups brought out their own power of Hip-Hop dance theatre, with the likes of Jinjo Crew delivering with their own simpler message of watching Breakdance being so much fun.
Which was the mantra for the Breakin’ Convention 2024 London Festival
