★★★✰✰ Putting together a new company and getting new work made for it is commendably ambitious at the best of times. Joseph Toonga and his collaborators can feel proud, as can the dancers: they were articulate, enthusiastic, committed and hard working.
Tag - Boy Blue
The inaugural performance of the Just Us Hip Hop Apprentice Co. is livestreamed from the main stage at DanceEast on Friday 16 April. A good time to have a word with Joseph Toonga about an important initiative...
★★✰✰✰ Episode Two of Dancing Nation contains works by Humanhood (Júlia Robert and Rudi Cole), Botis Seva for Far From the Norm, Will Tuckett for Birmingham Royal Ballet, Oona Doherty, Boy Blue and Akram Khan with Natalia Osipova (for which ★★★★★).
★★★★✰ This is a thoughtful and nuanced depiction of how complex and fraught identity can be in Britain today, put across with meaty, muscular force by two charismatic performers.
★★★✰✰ Redd is another bold exploration of the storytelling potential of hip-hop dance, which succeeds in showing that beyond the crowd-pleasing tricks, this form can mine powerful, complex, gutsy emotions.
★★★★✰ Directed by Kenrick ‘H20’ Sandy and Michael ‘Mikey J’ Asante, the return to the Barbican of Blak Whyte Gray, is again a triumph.
★★★✰✰ The annual celebration of all things Boy Blue fielded 138 dancers this year – Kenrick Sandy and Michael Asante’s company is one that can wow you through sheer force of numbers alone.
Gallery by Foteini Christofilopoulou...
...the crowds – from the six-year-old toprocking on stage for a prize t-shirt to the octogenarian gentleman seated next to me in polite raptures – were most definitely entertained.