Urban dance breaks into the mainstream

Hip hop dance is as good as ballet, so why doesn’t it get the same funding? With dance troupe Zoonation about to take the Peacock Theatre by storm, Tom Foot talks to choreographer Kate Prince

I NEVER really had the build for the break dancing. I learnt from an early age that the tall should not attempt even the simplest moves.
My first and last experience of the street dance phenomenon was at the Africa Centre in Soho.
One of the godfathers of hip hop, Afrika Bambaataa, was on stage and my cool gang of four middle-class, white boys was keeping it real, bobbing heads and necking Hooch with our backs to the wall.
The crowd parted and people fell about swivelling on their heads and flipping about the place. Some frowned with their hands on their chins. No problem, I thought, as alcohol clouded my brain.
Thankfully, I was spared what would have been perpetual humiliation by some other chump who merrily jumped in front of me, disgraced himself with a display of clumsiness that would have given Peter Crouch hope of infiltrating the Bolshoi.
Break dancing goes hand in hand with rap culture, underground clubs and notorious music videos – hardly the flavour of the West End theatre.
But The Peacock venue – part of the Sadler’s Wells group that is usually reserved for nights of high culture – will this weekend swap passé and pirouettes for windmills and jackhammers from one of the UK’s hottest up-and-coming dance companies.
Sadler’s Wells artistic associate Jonzi D has talked about an oncoming revolution in dance theatre and ZooNation’s director and choreographer Kate Prince, who lives in Kilburn and recently choreographed the BBC’s Strictly Dance Fever, believes breakdance deserves its place on the West End stage.
She says: “Hip hop dance is not about girls in bikinis shaking their booty talking about guns and drugs. It is about young people showing what they can do. It is a beautiful vibrant culture showing skills of dancers. You cannot get this type of dance in the theatre. I believe hip hop will develop into a serious dance genre like ballet.”
Prince’s dance troupe ZooNation – whose professional dancers have toured with music’s global superstars such as Jamelia, Black Eyed Peas, 50Cent and Beyonce – will strut their stuff as Spinderella, Rap-un-Zel and Lil’Red in an urban adaptation of the Broadway composer Stephen Sondheim’s dark fairytale Into the Woods.
Sondheim’s musical comprises well-known fairy tales with its child characters learning moral lessons about the pitfalls of greed and gluttony, the need for community and family.
Thirteen year-old Reice Weathers, who lives in City Road, Islington and goes to William Ellis School in Highgate, will be part of one of the first “narrative street dance” performances to make it to the West End stage when he walks out in the 1,000-seater Peacock Theatre this weekend.
Weathers, who has busted his way into one of the UK’s most exciting young dance groups, said he was only interested in the creative side of hip hop.
He says: “I think hip hop has a bad name because of all the gangster stuff but it’s not all about that. I like Busta Rhymes and Snoop Dogg but it doesn’t make me want to go and buy a gun. You just ignore the lyrics sometimes. What I like is you can tell a story by dancing – that is really cool.
Weathers started dancing when he was four but, like many talented kids who do not want to get involved with stuffy classical dance lessons, he has fine-tuned his skills at home in front of the mirror or out in the playground with his mates.
Weathers, and many of the other non-professional dancers, will have a night to remember for the rest of his life in a production that has been snubbed by the Arts Council and didn’t get any government subsidy.
Prince has trained the group of seven-30-year-olds for the trailblazing production “out of her own pocket”.
She relies upon free rehearsal time at Sadler’s Wells studios and her professional performers’ patience. But although there is a deep-rooted social conscience driving the performance, Prince wants her group to be judged on their ability, not their background.
She says: “All our performers are putting up with less than the minimum wage. Many of the group have been with us since we started four years ago and there’s no way they are going to jump ship.
“What angers me is that a kid of six who learns classical dance like ballet has so much opportunity in the future. They can go to the Royal Ballet or English National Ballet. But street dancers have next to no opportunity.
“We were due to appear on This Morning last week. But they wanted a rags to riches story – they told us they didn’t want to broadcast after they found out one of our kids had 10 GCSEs. How crazy is that?
ZooNation is holding a daytime workshop at Sadler’s Wells theatre after the final matinee performance on Sunday July 23.
Into the Hoods
Peacock Theatre
July 20-23

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