Jonzi D at Sadler’s Wells
(Picture: Daniel Hambury/Stella Pictures Ltd)Is break dancing (whisper it) losing its edge? Not if Jonzi D has anything to do with it. The MC, dancer, spoken word artist and director has long been credited as one of the founders of the British hip hop scene, helping to take locking, popping and krumping from fringe interests to some of the world’s great theatres, bringing a whole new audience – not to mention the dance establishment – along with him. Now of course b-boying is pretty much everywhere, from Britain’s Got Talent to half-time at the Super Bowl; in two years’ time it will even make its Olympic debut as a sport at the Paris Games. And talking to Jonzi, in the cavernous backstage of Sadler’s Wells theatre, where he established the trailblazing Breakin’ Convention festival nearly two decades ago, it’s clear he’s taken aback with how ubiquitous the artform has become.
“Hip hop is all over the place now. It’s the main cultural vehicle and I’m really surprised with what’s happened with it, to be honest. I remember starting out, thinking: ‘Look, all we want is a little moment for us to do our thing within this big picture of theatre. We’re not asking for too much, we just want a little bit of funding to see if this is a thing.’ Now hip hop has become the standard. If you want to be in dance, if you want to be in the commercial side of it, in the art side of it, you have to understand hip hop disciplines.” He smiles, ruefully. “That’s pretty mind-blowing to me.”
Things were very different when he was a dance student in the late 1980s. “One day, I asked a teacher who was doing theory class: ‘Miss, can we learn about hip hop?’ And she said no – because we are preparing students for the marketplace, that was why we were learning ballet and jazz and contemporary. At the time, we were looking at people like the Nicholas Brothers, at the old-school black jazz dancers, and I was thinking there is this brand-new dance scene coming from these black areas in America, and why are we not studying it? I just thought: ‘Okay, challenge accepted.’ My whole thing has been about changing the marketplace by showing that these other dance forms are as valid in a theatrical context.”
Jonzi’s early experiments with what has now come to be known as hip hop theatre – notably in his Lyrikal Fearta (1995) and Aeroplane Man (1999) – immediately captured critics’ attention with their bold mix of performance poetry, music and movement. An invitation from Alistair Spalding, now the artistic director and CEO of Sadler’s Wells, to stage a festival in Islington soon followed, although it took until 2004 for their dream to be realised. Then, as now, Jonzi was determined that Breakin’ Convention would capture the spirit of the original hip hop artists and their “values of peace, love, unity and having fun”, showcasing the artform’s pyrotechnic brilliance, but making sure its vehement political bent wasn’t missed, too. This year’s three-day programme, which opens tomorrow, is a case in point: there are pieces by Peru’s D1 Dance Company, with 12 dancers exploring their lives in Lima’s barrios, along with the French crew Compagnie Niya, whose full-length Gueules Noires is a tribute to the migrant workers of the Nord-Pas de Calais Mining Basin. There will also be a live performance of Our Bodies Back, first directed as a choreo-poetry film by Jonzi during the pandemic about the violence suffered by black women. Unfortunately, the convention’s much trailed Ukrainian artist, contortionist Kate Luzan, will no longer appear. (“She’s still in Ukraine – she says she’s in a safe space, so.... But next year she’ll be back.”)
Jonzi is also clearly thrilled with his latest project: establishing a hip hop theatre academy at the new Sadler’s Wells East in Stratford’s Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park. The school, due to open in 2024, will teach around 20 to 25 students between the ages of 16 and 19, with each earning a level 3 extended diploma after two years of study. All places will be fully funded.
“I’m looking at this in the context of musical theatre, so they’ll study dance – the techniques of breaking, popping, and modules in some of the other styles, for example krump, litefeet – but also rap, singing, drama. There’s also going to be a few classes in graffiti. The point is, all of these forms relate to each other and the first generation of hip hoppers. In the early 1980s we would break, we would pop, we would do a bit of graffiti, but as time has gone on, each of the elements of hip hop culture has spread out and developed on its own: now breakers only break, rappers only rap. I want to bring all of the forms back together.”
Although he’s keen for everyone and anyone to apply, be warned: this is not a course for eager amateurs. “I really want to push these students physically. I do feel that dance education has got a little bit limp. There’s a bit of a nanny-state quality when it comes to hard-core training and at some schools – not mentioning any names – standards have dipped. At this particular stage we want to push the standard so I want hard work. I feel guilty saying that but I shouldn’t do.”
Establishing his own hip hop school has also allowed him to confront one of the biggest bugbears he faced during his own dance training: namely the insistence that classical ballet is the root – and the most important – of all dance forms. “It’s clearly not the truth – loads of dances are the root of their own dance,” he says with a grimace. “It’s only a colonial mind state that will allow that utterance. ‘Oh, classical ballet, you’ve got to learn classical ballet, then you can do everything else.’ I remember being told that, but let’s also look at this: a highly trained classical dancer, have you seen them dancing other dances? It looks terrible!”
It’s hip hop, he says, that holds the key, not only to expressing “big ideas” in dance, but also to addressing diversity issues within the sector – something that many dance companies have, until recently, struggled with. “Hip hop presents you with some really difficult stuff that you’ve got to process; it doesn’t make it easy for you. So I do think that hip hop is important when it comes to the development of new ideas and the development of diverse ideas more importantly. One of the worries I’ve always had with these spaces” – he gestures around him – “and with classical ballet is that so much of what’s important [to it] is coming from a tradition of aristocracy, from Louis XIV and the court dances and stuff. Then it was all about establishing a higher level of everything: how you walk, how you look down on people, épaulement they call it. So much [of the artform] is wrapped up in, to a certain extent, colonial voices and I think it’s really difficult that that then becomes what is the vehicle for diversity… I just think that our way into culture can’t be with this blanket of oppression and when I walk into the Royal Ballet, I feel that. I don’t feel that when I’m in Breakin’ Convention audiences.”
How does he think that Sadler’s Wells – which attracts a mainly white, middle-class audience – will fare in east London, in the middle of one of London’s most ethnically diverse areas? Jonzi, who grew up a stone’s throw away in Bow, feels nothing but excitement. “I feel that I’m taking Sadler’s Wells home. I feel like it’s my fault, in a really positive way. It will be great for the area in which I grew up. And I’m determined to make sure that the local community do not feel that it is something being parachuted in. Alistair [Spalding] has given me a lot of responsibility to create these bridges – and,” he grins, “I’m all here for it.”
