6 minute read
Cycles of Reinvention
The award-winning hip hop theatre company Boy Blue has been making movement for 23 years, with extensive performance and education work reaching global audiences to extensive acclaim, including the recent production of Cycles.
One Editor Cameron Ball talks with Boy Blue Co-founder and Co-Artistic Director Kenrick ‘H20’ Sandy MBE about sustaining motivation, building audiences, and maintaining a sense of purpose.
At the time of going to print, Boy Blue is preparing for the keenly awaited new production, Cycles, for the Barbican this spring. Recently the company presented Free Your Mind, a critically acclaimed, hugely ambitious immersive dance and technology experience at Manchester’s Factory International with Director Danny Boyle, featuring 50 dancers. Boy Blue’s Sunday training programmes are as busy as ever and their youth groups continue to attract hundreds of young people each week. Generating the levels of leadership and creative output expected of Kenrick ‘H20’ Sandy certainly requires a sustainable approach, and so I was interested to find out from this icon of British dance quite how he manages it all.
When I sit down with him, Boy Blue was yet to go into rehearsals for Cycles and so I ask if it’s the “calm before the storm”. The immediate response? “It’s always storming” with a wry chuckle. It made me think how diverse the workload has been for this leader in the UK hip hop scene for the past two decades, keeping multiple projects afloat and planning for new ones.
Form, formula, frequency
It’s clear from the outset just how passionate Kenrick is about education. It is a thread that connects his entire career, from leading workshops in schools in Forest Gate, East London, through to thousands of young dancers coming through their education programmes and thousands more working on their celebrated work Emancipation of Expressionism (known as ‘EOE’) as part of the GCSE spec.
I'm still a student and I'm still forever learning, working on my craft. I learn from my students. I learn from my peers. The best me will then be able to be the best future for me and for what I need to do.
Kenrick ‘H20’ Sandy MBE
Audience development and retention
Growing a company’s organic following in dance is not always straightforward. Kenrick observes that the reach of Boy Blue’s education work helped develop an audience of loyal followers who feel personally connected to the company. “Your fanbase starts with the people who know you” he notes.
I observe that audiences might not first look to the Barbican, Boy Blue’s current home, for their fix of hip hop dance. Kenrick agrees, noting that when they premiered there in 2009, some of their audiences who followed the company from Stratford to this new home had never stepped foot
There are lots of brilliant creative minds out there, but not all can translate their skills into being a leader and an educator for such a sustained period. How does he balance this? “I think first and foremost, you have to have a level of humility. You've got to always have a humble space where you can learn from your students. I learn a lot more about being a leader when I'm actually talking to my students, seeing how they work through certain challenges, not just dance, but in life in general. In order for you to stay in tune as a leader, you've got to understand the world constantly changes and people change with it.”
It’s clear being embedded in hip hop culture, which is known for fostering a sense of community, constantly evolving and challenging norms, is part of the fabric of his leadership style. “Boy Blue stands for going against the grain. It stands for building communities and building, like, social impact, community engagement, artistic development. That to me is, you know, some of the core things that we live by, that we want to push and want to make sure that it's not just us that develops, it's also our community, our arts community, our audience community.”
I think that sometimes we fall into a space of being comfortable. We have to get to a space where we're OK with being uncomfortable, because then that's going to push us.
Kenrick 'H20' Sandy MBE
A new production
Anyone who has experienced Boy Blue’s dynamic work will know Kenrick and co-founder Michael ‘Mikey J’ Asante dive deeply into the music, crafting new directions for hip hop theatre with a respect and passion for the techniques, history and traditions of the forms.
Known for their ferocious energy and collaborative approach with designers and other creatives, what Boy Blue are up to next is always closely watched. So what can audiences expect? Cycles explores hip hop’s evolution and constant change: as Kenrick puts it, “going back to the core, back to the bounce”. Reviews have been very positive.
Cycles has been in the planning for over a year. Kenrick reflects on the wider programming decisions of busy multi-arts spaces such as the Barbican and the need to produce new work around a finite set of dates. “Sometimes your creativity or your outcome is led by when the commission is put out.” He is clear that building strong relationships with partner venues is crucial.
Maintaining a healthy company
Dancers specialising in street styles are getting more support to maintain health and wellbeing in what can be a physically demanding and unstable profession. Those who work with Boy Blue have clear guidelines around sustaining their fitness and energy levels, with expectations that even small injuries are not just glossed over and worked through, but communicated about and treated.
Kenrick expects his dancers to be ready to work and have a mature approach to their instrument. “Make sure you're maintaining your mental and physical fitness, manage your own maintenance, take care of yourself, stretch.”
The Boy Blue company take a long warm up each day and schedule time for complete cooldown as well. Interestingly, given the physical nature of the work, they are also careful to manage break times, allowing dancers longer lunch breaks to digest their food with extra time to warm up again before rehearsals continue.
Kenrick is excited about creating new work for his appreciative audiences once more. Close to his heart, though, is the more informal showcases like the biennial, sold-out (and raucous) Night with Boy Blue, bringing up to 150 dancers from the age of six onto the stage in an evening of variety-style entertainment. “It's not about being intellectual every day. It's not about causality or the final thought every day. Sometimes it can just be just pure joy.” Connecting with people who have followed his journey for two decades, alongside newer audiences, clearly inspires him.
“I stay creative as much as possible. I'm always evaluating, I'm always reflecting, which then helps me to push my trajectory. So the more and more that I condition my mentality and condition myself, the more I can give.”
Further information
www.barbican.org.uk/whats-on/2024/event/boy-blue-cycles
