INTERVIEW | JADE HACKETT DISCUSSES THE LONDON BATTLE AT SOMERSET HOUSE

Return­ing for its second year, Lon­don Battle is set to take over Somer­set House’s icon­ic court­yard with a dynam­ic day of dance show­cases, work­shops, live DJs, and an epic out­door party. Cur­ated by renowned cho­reo­graph­er Jade Hack­ett, this year’s event cel­eb­rates breaking’s debut at the 2024 Par­is Olympics and cul­min­ates in a thrill­ing head-to-head dance battle between London’s four corners. With Hackett’s rich exper­i­ence with hip hop giants like Boy Blue and ZooN­a­tion, attendees will judge which neighborhood—north, south, east, or west—brings the best dance fla­vor. In this inter­view, Jade Hack­ett shares her vis­ion, chal­lenges, and excite­ment for Lon­don Battle 2024.

Lon­don Battle is set to take over Somer­set House­’s icon­ic court­yard. Can you tell us what inspired this year’s event and the head-to-head battle format?

Hiphop, by defin­i­tion, is the genre of rebel­lion. Made by the very people that a his­tor­ic­al land­mark such as Somer­set House would have many years ago shunned out of this space. Lon­don Battle aims to change that nar­rat­ive and pro­duce an event that cel­eb­rates Lon­don as one of the most diverse cit­ies in the world. Bring­ing people togeth­er in a space that we are break­ing down the his­tor­ic bar­ri­ers for and using the most uni­ver­sal cul­tur­al genre in the world to do it. A day of love and inclu­sion for all.

Break­ing is mak­ing its debut at the Par­is Olympic Games this year. How sig­ni­fic­ant is this moment for the dance com­munity, and how do you see it influ­en­cing the future of dance events like Dance Umbrella?

It’s such a won­der­ful thing to see Break­ing in the Olympics. The hybrid style where calis­then­ic ath­leti­cism meets dance has long been a move­ment qual­ity that deserved this level of recog­ni­tion, com­par­able to gym­nastics or the 100 metre sprinters.

It brings more vis­ib­il­ity to our craft. Mak­ing oth­ers that might not have access to hiphop dance under­stand the true magic of our dance and thus com­pan­ies, like Dance Umbrella, are able to advoc­ate for the cul­ture by provid­ing more plat­forms for us as the demand to con­sume this art­form becomes much higher.

You have a rich his­tory with some of the UK’s lead­ing hip hop dance theatre com­pan­ies. How have your exper­i­ences with Boy Blue and ZooN­a­tion shaped your vis­ion for Lon­don Battle 2024?

What both of those com­pan­ies have taught me is to think about shows on a big­ger scale. Find­ing ways to make smal­ler events feel like big pro­duc­tions. I encour­age hav­ing a great core cre­at­ive and pro­duc­tion team that both these titan com­pan­ies use to build mas­ter­ful pieces of work. Also the idea of build­ing a leg­acy for the dance com­munity. Like both these dance com­pan­ies and their pro­duc­tions, I’d love for Lon­don Battle’s found­a­tions to be laid enough that it can exist passed me and it’s some­thing that pos­sibly the young­er gen­er­a­tion could take over and keep it push­ing for the dance scene through­out the UK.

Cur­at­ing such a large event must come with its chal­lenges. Can you share some of the biggest obstacles you’ve faced in bring­ing this event to life and how you’ve over­come them?

Dancers/Performers are lit­er­ally magi­cians with their bod­ies. They are able to do some of the most fant­ast­ic things that defy grav­ity. But the body is equally fra­gile and with more high impact move­ment, comes more oppor­tun­ity for injur­ies and acci­dents. Com­bat­ing that has been a chal­lenge at times as the well­being of the per­former must take pri­or­ity in such situations.
With this being an out­door event, weath­er will always be taken into account. Being and the whim of Brit­ish weath­er is some­thing that is also dif­fi­cult and is some­thing that could also poten­tially be a chal­lenge that we’ll have to nav­ig­ate when we are closer to the event.

Lon­don Battle 2024 prom­ises to bring togeth­er excit­ing tal­ent from all corners of Lon­don. What cri­ter­ia did you use to select the par­ti­cipants for the head-to-head battles?

The concept of the battle encour­ages work­ing with Lon­don based dan­cers that cov­er a wide range of hiphop dance styles, and give us diversity with­in rep­res­ent­a­tion, bear­ing in mind that hiphop can usu­ally be quite a male dom­in­ated genre. It’s a massive jig­saw puzzle in put­ting the battle togeth­er mak­ing sure that the per­formers meet the cri­ter­ia that makes that event feel both authen­t­ic and entertaining.

As someone who has worked extens­ively in theatre and com­mer­cial pro­jects, how do you bal­ance the artist­ic and enter­tain­ment aspects of an event like Lon­don Battle?

I wouldn’t say I bal­ance them as that might sug­gest that I try to com­part­ment­al­ise them. I’d rather say how I’m mer­ging my artist­ic approach with my enter­tain­ment out­look. For example, I have a vis­ion for Lon­don Battle that emu­lates or is inspired by Ernie Barnes fam­ous paint­ing ‘Sug­ar Shack’. When look­ing at that pic­ture, the thing that strikes me the most is that when you take the people out of the image, the space is just a wooden struc­ture that has no life. The energy of the pic­ture comes com­pletely from the people dan­cing. The col­ours of the fab­rics, the motion in the clothes and musi­cians and com­plete joy on all their faces. I want to recre­ate that energy. Allow­ing audi­ences to both be highly enter­tained by awe­some move­ment but also have the access to be able to take part in all the work­shops too.

When I stand back, I want to see that pic­ture come to life.
To see the art in the events canvas.

Your career includes per­form­ances in theatre pro­duc­tions like The Mad Hatter’s Tea Party and Some Like it Hip Hop. How do these the­at­ric­al exper­i­ences influ­ence your approach to cur­at­ing a dance event?

It’s the jour­ney of these pro­duc­tions. Hav­ing a sol­id begin­ning, middle and end to these stor­ies means that I’m try­ing to struc­ture the event with the same nar­rat­ive arch. Start­ing the event with work­shops, pep­per­ing per­form­ance with­in it too and peak­ing with the main battle event and end­ing it with the final Lon­don Battle sum­mer party jam feels like a great day that keeps grow­ing. I want audi­ences to be taken on a jour­ney of dance through­out the whole day and that they will enjoy spend­ing the entire day with us.

 You’ve been part of major events like the Lon­don Olympics and Baku European Games cere­mon­ies. How do these high-pro­file exper­i­ences pre­pare you for organ­iz­ing an event at Somer­set House?

The main thing that I took from these exper­i­ences was the excite­ment that builds as the event gets closer. Olympics in Lon­don was some­thing that had the whole city buzz­ing and espe­cially all the changes in East Lon­don which housed the Olympics in gen­er­al. We’re aim­ing our mar­ket­ing to gen­er­ate the same excite­ment in the lead up to this event. To feel excited about attend­ing a grow­ing dance fest­iv­al and want­ing to rep­res­ent for the area of Lon­don that they are from.

Photo Cred­it — Richard Thompson

This is your second year cur­at­ing Lon­don Battle with Dance Umbrella. What les­sons did you learn from last year’s event, and how have they impacted your plan­ning and exe­cu­tion for this year?

One thing that really became appar­ent is that Lon­don Battle is an event that people are crav­ing. It lands with­in the sum­mer sea­son which was a hole in the mar­ket as there aren’t many big sum­mer fest­ivals for dance. But with the rising costs of liv­ing, more and more people are hav­ing to have more ‘stayc­a­tions’ with­in the city rather than expens­ive hol­i­days abroad and want things to do here in the city, espe­cially things that are fam­ily friendly.

With Lon­don Battle being free, it opens the event for all to enjoy and doesn’t exclude those that fin­an­cially wouldn’t be able to afford it if we put on a big price tag for tickets.

I think the busi­ness mod­el that we there­fore cre­ated last year went very well and are try­ing to take that mod­el again to per­fect the product rather than mak­ing massive changes as of yet. As they say, ‘if it ain’t broke, don’t try to fix it’. I think it’s import­ant that more people get to exper­i­ence the ori­gin­al format and who knows, in years to come, should Lon­don Battle still be going by then, we’ll be able to evolve it because the events found­a­tion is strong.

Finally, what mes­sage do you hope to con­vey through Lon­don Battle 2024, and what do you hope attendees take away from the experience?

Pride in our com­munit­ies again. With all the polit­ic­al unrest and elec­tions hap­pen­ing all over the world at the moment, the idea of com­munity is ever more divided and strained. I want people to come to a place and dance next to a stranger and encour­age them. For people of all ages and abil­it­ies to feel equally ‘dope’ tak­ing dance les­sons without judge­ment. To meet old friends that you might not have seen in a long time and stand in a corner whilst eat­ing togeth­er to catch up with the back­drop of dan­cing energy all around them. To mar­vel at the immense tal­ent that our city holds and be inspired to want to try and go to classes and maybe train in hiphop dance that they’ve nev­er tried before. To watch enter­tain­ment live, in the flesh, and not through a phone.

To just be human.
A court­yard full of humans just, enjoy­ing life. That’s what I want.