Choreographer Kenrick “H2O” Sandy and composer-producer Michael “Mikey J” Asante met at college in East London after they had been 12, bonding over hip hop. After performing in native street-dance battles, they based the hip-hop dance theater firm Boy Blue in 2001, wowing audiences with precision choreography and explosive vitality. Their present Pied Piper received an Olivier Award in 2007, and was adopted by acclaimed works together with Blak Whyte Grey and Free Your Thoughts, and choreography for the 2012 London Olympics opening ceremony. Boy Blue’s newest present, Cycles, involves New York Metropolis’s Lincoln Heart March 27–29.
You’ve been collaborating for greater than 25 years. What makes this partnership work?
Sandy: I really feel like the main factor is the extent of respect we’ve for one another. That degree of fellowship. We’re each Libras, we’re each from the identical space, we’re each older brothers. We each have the tenacity and the eagerness. And we promote one another, we push one another. There’s quite a lot of actual, cohesion.
Asante: To search out that is uncommon: two buddies who managed to show one thing right into a enterprise, after which right into a motion, however nonetheless have the identical core values of friendship. There’s a true need to see the opposite succeed. With Cycles, I introduced the idea and put that within the ring for the opposite individual to bounce off.
Sandy: We feed one another inspiration. After we come collectively we’re jamming. This isn’t a job, this can be a pleasure for us.
Inform us about Cycles.
Asante: I wished to make one thing that was in perpetual movement, the place it always moved ahead. On the similar time, I used to be impressed by hip-hop mixtapes, a J Dilla or a Madlib mixtape, how the music can be on this fixed loop. Then there’s the completely different cycles that exist in life: life, loss of life, seasons, the moon and tides. We additionally wished to concentrate on hip hop, return to the roots of the motion.
Sandy: It was going again into the grooves, the hip-hop social grooves, then flipping it and all of the completely different choreographic frameworks. It was in regards to the unending course of.
Asante: Making a present that by no means seemed the identical means every time you watched it. The notion of freestyle was an enormous a part of deciding on the dancers. It’s perpetually rising and altering.
What has modified within the hip-hop dance scene because you began?
Sandy: My beard is grey now!
Asante: It was a method that nobody thought-about to be of worth after we began. We had been simply noisy, rambunctious youngsters who folks wished out of their area. Now I take a look at different dance types and I can see the affect of hip hop on all of them. After we began, simply seeing boys dancing, not to mention Black boys the place we’re from, they known as us “humorous.” And now each baby I do know is dancing.
Sandy: There are college students we used to show after we had been in our early 20s, they’re now sending their youngsters to our courses.
What’s it like performing in New York, the house of hip hop?
Sandy: It’s very nice simply to point out what we’re about. We respect hip hop a lot, however our hip hop positively has a UK slang to it. There’s an affect from UK grime, UK storage, and in addition simply the vitality may be very London.
What’s London vitality like?
Sandy It’s fearless, it’s unrestricted.
Asante: There’s a bop, there’s a bounce, y’know? It’s assured about itself. However we’re perpetually desirous to commune and join. We journey. There’s all the time going to be folks in one other land that share a part of your language. Possibly they’ve obtained a unique accent, however to us the reward that hip hop has given us is that it’s made us so many various buddies all throughout the planet which can be all linked via the groove.
