REVIEW | BREAKIN’ CONVENTION 2026: A CELEBRATION OF UNITY, MOVEMENT, AND THE FUTURE OF HIP HOP

Breakin’ Con­ven­tion at Sadler­’s Wells Theatre on Sunday, 3^rd May, put on an incred­ible show­case of togeth­er­ness, love, and move­ment. In divis­ive and uncer­tain times, it was a breath of fresh air. It was encour­aging to see young people bring­ing com­munit­ies togeth­er and demon­strat­ing how com­pas­sion, tal­ent, and joy can provide plat­forms for people to be seen, heard, and embraced by audi­ences from all backgrounds.

This was also a stel­lar endorse­ment of the Breakin’ Con­ven­tion Academy, espe­cially con­sid­er­ing it is only around a year old. A huge example of its suc­cess was see­ing sev­er­al excep­tion­ally tal­en­ted stu­dents par­ti­cip­at­ing in the show. It provided tan­gible proof of the value in invest­ing time into the cur­riculum that Breakin’ Con­ven­tion has created.

I arrived later in the after­noon, but the Sadler­’s Wells East build­ing was over­flow­ing with graf­fiti art, DJing, break­dan­cing, a silent disco, and even Double Dutch. DJ Gizmo from the legendary Hip Hop Back in The Day crew provided much of the soundtrack through­out the day, among oth­ers. When it was time for the per­form­ances, people took their seats promptly, the staff were extremely help­ful, and the ven­ue handled the sched­ule excep­tion­ally well.

The even­ing opened with the legendary Jonzi D along­side the won­der­ful Jac­qui Beck­ford, who hos­ted the entire show. They set the tone bril­liantly, provid­ing pas­sion­ate back­ground inform­a­tion about the artists and their journeys.

“The Rise of the Ele­ments” by IMD Legion was a cine­mat­ic spec­tacle explor­ing Earth, Wind, Fire, Light, and Void. Vari­ous dan­cers embod­ied dif­fer­ent ele­ments, while two lead­ing char­ac­ters clashed in what could only be inter­preted as a battle between good and evil, resem­bling a Star Wars-style lightsaber duel. The use of lights in the per­formers’ hands cre­ated entirely new visu­al char­ac­ters and gave me the impres­sion that our des­tinies are shaped by our own hands through­out the jour­ney of unity and self-dis­cov­ery. Open­ing the even­ing with such an explos­ive, high-energy per­form­ance was an inspired decision that imme­di­ately took everyone’s breath away.

Up next was AS Com­pag­nie with “Quarter Tri­os.” This per­form­ance stood in com­plete con­trast to the open­ing piece, strip­ping everything back from cos­tumes, big screens, and props to simply two bod­ies facing one anoth­er against a min­im­al drum pat­tern. It returned to the roots of lock­ing and rhythmic explor­a­tion. A friend described the piece as “a won­der­ful hyp­nosis” that she could have watched for days, one that asked every ques­tion while refus­ing to give away any answers.

The hid­den com­plex­it­ies with­in the cho­reo­graphy were dif­fi­cult to fully break down. At moments, it almost felt as though the per­formers inten­tion­ally drif­ted off-beat from the drums while remain­ing per­fectly syn­chron­ised with one anoth­er. If that was inten­tion­al, it was deeply impressive.

The hosts returned to intro­duce the next per­form­ance with a com­pel­ling endorse­ment from hip hop legend Masta Ace. If you know any­thing about great hip hop, you know Masta Ace is an artist who treats every move­ment on stage with pur­pose and pre­ci­sion. So I already knew “Let It Hap­pen” was going to deliver.

What I didn’t expect was just how mov­ing and power­ful it would be to watch three young women dan­cing in com­plete unity to music span­ning more than four dec­ades. Per­haps it’s pro­jec­tion on my part, but it genu­inely felt like those three women did more that day to unite people than much of what we cur­rently see from the polit­ic­al and media class. Per­form­ances like this mat­ter. Thank you for the astound­ing cho­reo­graphy and for keep­ing the music many of us grew up with alive and evolving.

What fol­lowed was the per­form­ance I alluded to earli­er, fea­tur­ing one of the Academy stu­dents, Mike Trice, along­side his part­ner Elija Smith in “TWOKU.” The mes­sage con­veyed to me was a battle to keep going des­pite hard­ship. Much of the piece was per­formed back-to-back, with both bod­ies inter­twined, as though they were phys­ic­ally keep­ing one anoth­er upright while mov­ing toward some unseen des­tin­a­tion or fin­ish line.

I only paid close atten­tion to the title while writ­ing this review and real­ised that “TWOKU” stands for “The Weight of Keep­ing Upright,” mak­ing the piece’s emo­tion­al core incred­ibly clear, a pro­jec­tion of our own intern­al struggles.

One thing I par­tic­u­larly appre­ci­ated about the hosts was the oppor­tun­ity to hear dir­ectly from some of the artists after their performances.

It’s always encour­aging to see stu­dents being plat­formed and cel­eb­rated for excep­tion­al pro­fes­sion­al work. This is youth empower­ment in action and serves as inspir­a­tion for the young audi­ence mem­bers in attend­ance to con­tin­ue pur­su­ing their artist­ic ambitions.

Before the inter­val, we were treated to a breath­tak­ing dis­play of move­ment and ath­leti­cism unlike any­thing I had seen before. The inter­na­tion­al dance crew ILL-Abil­it­ies, along­side Redo and Sanuka, stole the night for much of the audi­ence. Their per­form­ance was an extraordin­ary example of rewrit­ing phys­ic­al adversity through move­ment. It was not only a part­ner­ship built around strength­en­ing one another’s weak­nesses when cer­tain move­ments were needed, but also a beau­ti­ful dis­play of inde­pend­ence and resilience.

At half­time, Jonzi and Jac­qui high­lighted the vari­ous activ­it­ies avail­able dur­ing the inter­mis­sion, along­side some excel­lent Carib­bean food. My friend had nev­er tried Double Dutch before in their life, and there was abso­lutely no way I was going to deny someone that exper­i­ence, so we made haste. We were both suc­cess­ful. Unfor­tu­nately, there is video evid­ence on my friend’s phone. For­tu­nately, it has not yet surfaced.

Every­one returned punc­tu­ally to their seats, eager for Act Two, which opened with “Fem­ina,” dir­ec­ted and cho­reo­graphed by Ekl­eido. The piece delivered a power­ful expres­sion of res­ist­ance and per­sever­ance with­in a male-dom­in­ated soci­ety riddled with dis­crim­in­a­tion. It presen­ted a united front through move­ment that could genu­inely give Bey­on­cé a run for her money. It was incred­ible work, fol­lowed by a heart­felt advocacy for the LGB­TQ+ com­munity from Jonzi, pro­mot­ing togeth­er­ness and solid­ar­ity in an increas­ingly frac­tured world.

The next per­form­ance affected me more than any­thing else that even­ing. This may sound excess­ive, but it was hon­estly one of the most incred­ible pieces I have ever seen in my life. I’m refer­ring to “Found,” writ­ten, dir­ec­ted, and per­formed by Lanre Malaolu along­side Nnabiko Ejimo­for.

The piece explored the deeply com­plex rela­tion­ship we have with our inner child, along­side the frus­tra­tion and lack of com­pas­sion we often dir­ect toward ourselves. The frac­tures with­in this rela­tion­ship were reen­acted through what ini­tially appeared to be a wed­ding speech. As the prot­ag­on­ist slowly con­grat­u­lated his friend, deep­er feel­ings of heart­break, grief, and emo­tion­al loss began to emerge.

The move­ments star­ted to frac­ture and glitch. Anger was unleashed toward both him­self and his inner child, while Nnabiko moved through waves of emo­tion, plead­ing for atten­tion through move­ment, tears, and des­per­ate words. Once the prot­ag­on­ist finally let go and embraced his inner child, accept­ing both his flaws and the wounds he had spent years avoid­ing, it became pro­foundly mov­ing to watch the two per­formers grace­fully accept and sup­port one another.

For me, it was an intensely cath­artic piece, and I ima­gine many oth­ers in the audi­ence felt the same way. Truly, thank you.

Rock Force Crew then did an almost impossible job, refo­cus­ing the audi­ence after some­thing so emo­tion­ally heavy. Inspired by West Coast break­dan­cing styles, they delivered a bril­liant finale filled with explos­ive B‑boy energy, excep­tion­al light­ing, and a mod­ern evol­u­tion of clas­sic battle dynam­ics with­in break­ing culture.

A huge thank you to every­one involved. Breakin’ Con­ven­tion con­tin­ues to prove why it remains one of the greatest hip hop insti­tu­tions in Lon­don, and pos­sibly the world.

Photo Cred­it:  Belina Lawley

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SIRE

Emcee, Radio Host, Journ­al­ist and Hip Hop junkie unwill­ing to go to rehab! Lon­don is my home and if there is a live per­form­ance cham­pi­on­ing the Hip Hop cul­ture, you’ll hear from me on what I think and you’ll prob­ably catch me there doing back­flips amongst Boom Bap sounds. Fol­low me on @reignofsire.

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