REVIEW | BREAKIN’ CONVENTION 2024

Strong as ever in their 21^st year, Breakin’ Con­ven­tion 2024 did not dis­ap­point, bring­ing the best of homegrown and inter­na­tion­al Hip Hop Dance Theatre to yet anoth­er sold out Sadler’s Wells.

Enter­ing the build­ing on Sat­urday 4^th May, the sounds of abso­lutely legendary DJ’s Sarah Love, Cut­mas­ter Swift and DJ Pogo set the tone, with fam­il­ies, fans and pro­fes­sion­als from across all Hip Hop, theatre and dance related scenes com­ing togeth­er to cel­eb­rate the cul­ture and com­pany that bring all these together.

The first half kicked off in style with dynam­ic energy from Shaol­inOr­Shao, going in hard with a ded­ic­a­tion to Grime, mov­ing as a unit and as indi­vidu­als to both ver­sions of For­ward among oth­er 140 tempo tracks. They were fol­lowed by two beau­ti­ful duets by CREATE4, who used orange and white light mas­ter­fully to play with scale, feel­ing and the depth of the stage in a really engross­ing piece, then Ekl­eido, whose inter­lock­ing bod­ies demon­strated their incred­ible dex­ter­ity, along­side some bril­liant inter­ac­tion with space and the light­ing rig.

The qual­ity con­tin­ued to rise through the first half, as Gully South Block hit the stage en masse with a power­ful KRUMP routine that seemed to be com­ment on men­tal health battles and indi­vidu­al­ity. The group fol­lowed the lead of a soloist who seemed to lose them­selves in the crowd, strug­gling to main­tain them­selves as they fought against dif­fer­ent mani­fest­a­tions of their struggles. The cath­artic nature of KRUMP seemed per­fect for this piece, and the crew left everything out on the stage.

Next came one of the high­lights of the whole event, as Nottingham’s Jamal Ster­rett pro­duced a cap­tiv­at­ing Bruk Up solo. Flut­ter­ing and float­ing across the stage with an eth­er­e­al, spell­bind­ing style, Jamal seemed to defy human ana­tomy and phys­ics, con­tort­ing his body in ways that didn’t seem pos­sible but that he made look effort­less. A real tal­ent to look out for and to catch if you get the chance.

The first half ended with a treat. Using sta­ging and light expertly, France’s Son of Wind trans­formed the stage into a 90s ware­house party, boun­cing in a met­ro­nom­ic piece that pulled you in and hyp­not­ised with a heavy, Boom Bap energy that built slowly and stead­ily without ever over­flow­ing. The crew moved like one homo­gen­ous head nod­ding organ­ism, break­ing out into moments of solo demon­stra­tions of skill, but nev­er veer­ing too far from the col­lect­ive. The piece was absorb­ing, and lit­er­ally had me sit­ting for­ward on the edge of my seat by the end.

At the inter­mis­sion, our I Am Hip Hop crew went to the Lili­an Bayl­is theatre to see Cie Kil­aï, an all-woman crew ded­ic­ated to emotive and impact­ful storytelling, that used move­ment and verbal lan­guages to break bar­ri­ers between the crowd and them­selves, as well as each oth­er, work­ing seam­lessly as a team to express stor­ies of over­com­ing hard­ship to find them­selves in the world. It was a really beau­ti­ful production.

The second half on the main stage was owned com­pletely by three heavy­weight crews of the dance world. The finale was South Korea’s Jinjo Crew, return­ing to Breakin’ Con­ven­tion to do what they do best. The vet­er­an, world cham­pi­on break­ers put togeth­er a spec­tacle of hang time and power moves that you expect to see when their name is on the bill. The best part was this unbe­liev­able use of their hood­ies to make a prop to jump through – I don’t really know how they did it! But I could say that for a lot of what they do!

Before them was Femme Fatale, three expert pop­pers from Mex­ico, Korea and France assembled in LA. The inter­na­tion­al nature of the trio seemed to play into their piece, using lug­gage and an air­port theme as a basis. They donned suits, which they removed lay­er by lay­er to chal­lenge and sup­port James Brown’s asser­tion that this is a man’s world, but that it wouldn’t mean noth­ing without a woman or a girl. The suit­cases at points lit up as music burst out, and the dan­cers used pop­ping and waack­ing to move between clas­sic, time­less pieces of music, from Nina Simone to Little Dragon, ooz­ing class, sex­i­ness, sen­su­al­ness, power and strength in an exten­ded piece that had epochs and chapters as their nar­rat­ive unfolded.

The high­light of the night for me though was the open­ing of the second half, Ivan Michael Blackstock’s latest iter­a­tion of TRAPLORD. The Olivi­er Award win­ning incarn­a­tion of the epic piece of work that ran at 180 Strand is one of the greatest works of art I’ve ever encountered in any medi­um. This latest inter­pret­a­tion did not let the levels down. Born out dis­cus­sions of young Black men’s exper­i­ences in Lon­don and bey­ond, the work holds up a mir­ror to those of us who’ve lived the battles and pres­sures of the mas­culin­ity, race, gender, viol­ence, mar­gin­al­isa­tion and more that we’ve been forced through. In this per­form­ance, pink tutus, pig heads, LED rain­bow grills and golden guns were used along­side world class cho­reo­graphy, use of light­ing, smoke and the stage to enthral view­ers while the dan­cers and emcees worked through these issues on stage for us all to see, encour­aging those of us with these exper­i­ences bur­ied in us to con­front them with­in ourselves. The work in phe­nom­en­al, and I can’t wait to see where Ivan and his people take it next.

For the 21^st year, Jonzi D and his team put on anoth­er immense demon­stra­tion of the best in their field, keep­ing the torch burn­ing bright for Hip Hop Dance Theatre loc­ally and glob­ally. I can’t wait until next year!

Pho­to­graph­er cred­it: Paul Hampartsoumian