Helene Dancer

I still didn’t get into the circle at this year’s Breakin’ Convention. Each year I leave the hip hop dance theatre festival with the sound resolution that I’m going to take up breaking classes again and get involved. Thing is, they just get better and better, these Breakin’ Convention hustlers who take over the foyer at the interval, and younger and younger too. The energy being injected into the scene is stronger than ever and with an firebrand like Jonzi D at its helm, Breakin’ Convention will continue to evolve each year at its annual date with London’s Sadler’s Wells.

Back in the auditorium, Jonzi introduces what will be one of my favourite acts at this year’s festival – the Soweto Skeleton Movers from South Africa. I have strong South African blood within me, so I’m already biased, but this crew perform their own hypermobile take on the already fluid pantsula dance you find on the streets of Soweto. Well, that’s where Jonzi found them, he tells us, dancing on Vilakazi Street, famous for once being home to Nelson Mandela. So impressed was Jonzi that he brought them all the way to the UK and this was their first ever performance in the country. It’s this openness and receptiveness to street dance in all its forms that I love so much about Breakin’ Convention.

Juxtapose these mellifluous South Africans with classic crowd-pleasing locking crew The Locksmiths, or the contemporary dance flavour of all-female crew Myself, who performed beautifully to an Ibeyi soundtrack. Fold in Damon Frost, the daddy of poppers, and it’s Breakin’ Convention all over. Still might get in the circle next year. Maybe.