Boy Blue, the hip hop dance theater firm primarily based within the UK, has been creating, performing and educating for practically 25 years since its inception in 2001. In that point, the group has spawned seven common firms below its umbrella for dancers from age 5 by way of grownup. Pushed by the ideas of schooling, enlightenment and schooling (The three Es), Boy Blue (based by co-artists and administrators Michael ‘Mikey J’ Asante and Kenrick ‘H2O’ Sandy), has impacted 1000’s through the years and in 2025 takes its award-winning present, Cycles, on tour within the UK and to New York Metropolis, for a possibility to share their love of music and hip-hip on each side of the Atlantic. Dance Informa had the possibility to speak with each gents about what makes Boy Blue distinctive, the state of hip hop within the UK and U.S., and why Cycles is such a particular present.
You each have devoted virtually 1 / 4 of a century to Boy Blue, to music, and to creating and sharing your love of hip hop dance theater. What makes Boy Blue so particular, and what pillars do you uphold to keep up your imaginative and prescient?
“We stay in our core group and grassroots-led within the dance group. Sure, it’s a enterprise. Sure, it’s an organization…however we don’t see it as a hierarchical area. We don’t see it from the down going up. We see it going throughout. We see that your trajectory goes throughout inside your journey. And this retains us humble. It permits us to make use of a pinch of ego for the efficiency. We’re very assured in ourselves, and we promote confidence within the area of our younger artists, versus this ego-driven factor, which generally the humanities does.”
I’m talking to you from NYC, and right here within the U.S., hip hop may be very business. Hip hop as dance theater isn’t an enormous slice of dance exhibits. Is the kind of efficiency you create extra standard or supported within the UK or Europe, typically?
“I’d say that is hip hop dance theater. The hip hop theater pioneers would use all the weather of hip hop in and put it right into a theatrical area. Then, there may be hip hop dance theater which makes use of dance to inform the story greater than rapping or graffiti. You even have the hip hop dance, which is the overall manner of doing it and also you’re simply rolling and also you’re expressing your self. I’d say we do extra. We’re a smaller group that does hip hop dance theater. I’d say it’s fairly European, as a result of the French do it, as effectively. The German do it, as effectively. The Netherlands, they do it as effectively. After I’ve gone to the U.S., I’ve probably not seen a lot hip hop dance theater, so it’d be fascinating to see how a lot is going on now.”
Are you able to say extra in regards to the variations between U.S. and UK hip hop? In fact, the beginning of hip hop was proper right here in NYC, but it surely looks like there’s a special kind of relationship to the dance world in every nation. I’m curious in regards to the influences that form artwork kinds as they age.
“There’s a duality of the place hip hop reside lives from an American sensibility and a British sensibility. In America, you possibly can see it was a stable artwork kind that changed into a enterprise. It was a self-expression that changed into a enterprise. There are totally different monetary points of what theater does versus what hip hop music does, by way of its worldwide attraction, its impact and the best way it’s traversed. Theater is backed within the UK by the Arts Council, which deciphers and decides who’s going to have a part of these nationwide funds and assist that development. Theater is just not as potent as a enterprise thought, however you possibly can speak about what theater does as a coaching floor. So for us, it was that gateway to get hip hop into the scene, as a result of it wasn’t thought of in the identical manner as a enterprise within the UK.”
I need to pivot a bit and ask you about Cycles, your new present. Are you able to share a number of the inspiration behind the creation and what makes it distinctive?
“Cycles was an try to attract us again into what that vitality, as hip hop practitioners, and what that vitality was, as authentic avenue dancers in how we started. The notion of the music needed to come first, as a result of I needed it to really feel like a supplier tape, or I needed it to really feel like a mad lib tape. I needed it to really feel intense and in-your-face. It wasn’t about its finesse or its grandeur. It was about exhibiting, in a theatrical sense, how stunning that authentic root of hip hop will be. It’s had an incredible vitality that’s linked with it. And greater than the rest, as an artist, you need to create the freshest factor. And on this regard, it was a significant response to hip hop dance theater being gentrified. That’s one of the simplest ways to explain it.”
What sort of course of do you undergo, musically and choreographically?
“Cycles is an try to get to the basis of steadiness to groove, and a giant aspect of the freestyle. All of the performers we picked to work on this explicit manufacturing are hip hop practitioners in a freestyle setting or battle setting. They’re even nearer to the road dance aspect, exterior of the theater area aspect. We’ve tried to construct that into the present the place we don’t 100% know what the present goes to appear to be each time, as a result of it’s a cycle itself. We would like that cycle. There are milestones that the dancers will hit by way of choreographic moments, however we don’t know what the present goes to appear to be every night time. There’s a piece that’s only a battle observe. We don’t know what they’re going to do every night time, and so it continuously adjustments. And that was the opposite factor, is that we needed it to continuously really feel prefer it was a cycle with itself. Greater than the rest, I’m very very excited to carry it to the States.”
Boy Blue will current Cycles at Rose Theater as a part of Lincoln Heart Presents from March 27-29. For tickets and extra data, go to lincolncenter.org/sequence/lincoln-center-presents/boy-blue-presents-cycles-546.
By Emily Sarkissian of Dance Informa.
