As cultural phenomena go, hip-hop is a giant. Music, fashion, art and language have all been sucked into its vortex, from Los Angeles to London, from the Bronx to Japan. MTV, Hollywood, the high street: hip-hop long ago broke out of the marginalised black communities where it was born. So it’s not surprising that the theatre, that bastion of white middle-class culture, should be feeling its beat.

I remember thinking that Alistair Spalding was mad when he programmed the first Breakin’ Convention at Sadler’s Wells in 2004, a weekend of performances, workshops and lecture demonstrations devoted to hip-hop dance theatre. Poppers, lockers, b-boys and b-girls: to be honest, I didn’t know what he was on about.

Now, two years later, and with a third Breakin’ Convention due in April, I have to admit that hip-hop theatre is here to stay. With its thrilling physicality, head-spinning virtuosity, rhythmic panache, dazzling mimetic skill and sheer sense of fun, it’s the most original dance form in years, and it’s determined to set the stage on fire.

During the next few months, hip-hop theatre will be showcased as never before in Britain. On February 2, at the Queen Elizabeth Hall, the German company Renegade opens an extensive UK tour of Rumble, its hip-hop Romeo and Juliet. On February 4, at the Peacock Theatre in London, Impact Dance and ZooNation join forces for a double bill of narrative hip-hop dance theatre.

Just ten days after Breakin’ Convention (April 29-30), Robert Hylton brings street dance to the South Bank when his London-based company, Urban Classicism, performs Verse & Verses, “a psychedelic take on the hip-hop genre”. But before all of that comes the world premiere of Tag . . . Me vs The City, an ambitious touring production choreographed by Jonzi D, the curator and host of Breakin’ Convention. It opens at the Nottingham Playhouse on January 31.

There are many reasons why hip-hop dance is breaking into the theatre, but for Jonzi D, a 36-year-old hip-hop artist from East London, the motivation was simple. “I started doing hip-hop theatre because I wanted to invite my friends.”

Jonzi may have been rapping and b-boying for years, but he also trained at the London Contemporary Dance School, an experience that engendered mixed emotions and led directly to his commitment to hip-hop theatre. “As a dancer I was embarrassed by what these middle-class white people were telling me theatre is,” he explains. “I wanted to represent my community in the theatre.”

That community has had more than its fair share of bad press over the years. It doesn’t help that rap music celebrates violence and misogyny, or that rap artists have been known to shoot each other. But Jonzi tells a different story. “It’s up to us as artists to present our truth. My experience of hip-hop isn’t this violent thing. Whenever I go to a hip-hop club there are no gunshots going off, there are people dancing.

“I think it’s about time we re-examined the culture of hip-hop. There is a perception of it being a rough thing because it comes from a rough environment. But if you look at early hip-hop, it was about struggle, it was about being something where you have nothing. It’s about finding heaven within hell.

“Hip-hop was the answer to the gang violence. Because of the environment it came from the battle was still there: ‘Instead of shooting you, I’m going to dance against you.’ Hip-hop was an artistic way of getting out the same frustration.”

Jonzi’s frustration was growing up in East London as the son of Grenadian parents. “I’m a true Cockney, born and bred, but I grew up around racial tension. We had to make sense of that. There were poor white people who blamed us for their situation. They said: ‘You lot have come over here and taken our houses and taken our jobs.’ I always felt like an outsider. For me hip-hop was a lifeline. It didn’t talk about roots and history, it talked about now. Hip-hop made sense of the complexities of our histories and our futures.”

Jonzi’s commitment to hip-hop theatre began in 1995, when he created Lyrikal Fearta, and continued four years later with Aeroplane Man, both of which toured worldwide. His troupe’s new status as an associate company of Sadler’s Wells has allowed Jonzi, who has choreographed hip-hop-inspired fashion shows, performed extensively as an MC/poet and appeared as a television presenter, to take his ambition up a notch.

“My personal struggle is how to make narrative out of hip-hop,” he explains. With Tag, a full-length production made in association with DJ Pogo (a master of turntablism) and the graffiti artist Prime, he hopes to do just that. Tag tells the story of a brilliant but obsessive graffiti artist who challenges authority with his spray can. It uses five men and one woman, all of whom are collaborating on the choreography.