A teenage girl is walking around on her hands; a ginger-haired b-boy is
enacting acrobatic backslides; and a girl in heavy braids is standing -
rather nonchalantly - on her head. In one corner a gang of kids in hoodies
and low-slung pants are throwing violent, carefully choreographed shapes in
front of a giant mirror; in another corner, a strapping Nigerian lad is
dragging up in a blond wig and a shocking pink frock to practise a waltz.
Welcome to the rehearsals for the hip-hop dance company ZooNation, whose
“urban fairytale” Into the Hoods makes the leap from the dance fringe to the
theatrical mainstream when it opens in London's West End later this month.
ZooNation are just one of hundreds of companies around the world which
specialise in hip-hop dance, ensembles that are as likely to come from South
Korea, Japan, Austria, France or Brazil as they are from the United States.
London alone is home to some of the best: Robert Hylton's Urban Classicism,
Jonzi D Productions, Kenrick Sandy's BoyBlue, Hakeem Onibudo's Impact Dance,
Simeon Qsyea's Birdgang, plus the likes of Dance 2XS, Sophistifunk,
Funkstylerz and Pink Mafia.
However, where most of these companies tend to present their work as a series
of unrelated routines, only a few (such as the Anglo-Swedish troupe Bounce,
currently doing a version of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest at the Peacock
Theatre in London) have tried to weave them into a piece of unified physical
theatre. And none, until now, has taken that into the heart of the West End
for an extended run.
“Hip-hop dance usually works in short bursts,” says Kate Prince, the
33-year-old director and choreographer of ZooNation. “But there are only so
many incredible shapes and tight choreography and flips that you can watch
while going ‘whoo-hoo!' We wanted to take those routines and weave them into
a proper story.”
Which is what makes ZooNation's Into the Hoods so groundbreaking. It's a piece
of hip-hop dance with a full narrative, one that strings all those acrobatic
b-boying staples such as the backslide, the windmill, the moonwalk, the
uprock, the downrock, the freeze and the suicide into a story.
“It started as a joke,” says Prince. “A friend had seen one of our routines at
a show, where I had tried to tell a story. He was saying, ‘I can tell you're
not really committed to doing a narrative. Why don't you try telling a
hip-hop fairytale?' I immediately thought of Stephen Sondheim's Into the
Woods, which tangles together four different fairytales, and I jokingly
suggested doing an urban hip-hop version called Into Da Hoodz. And then we
both thought, actually, that's not a bad idea...”
During a two-week workshop at the London School of Contemporary Dance, the
story quickly took shape. The two lost children of Sondheim's story are
transformed into truanting schoolkids who find themselves stranded in an
inner-city tower block called the Ruff Endz Estate, where they encounter
urbanised versions of fairytale characters. Cinderella becomes Spinderella,
a beautiful, put-upon DJ; Rapunzel becomes a blonde MC called Rap-On-Zel;
Little Red Riding Hood is the hoodie-clad R&B singer Lil' Red; Prince
Charming is a two-timing hip-hop Lothario; while Jack from Jack and the
Beanstalk is a skateboarding, beat-making producer called Jaxx who lives in
the basement (geddit?) and who routs the drug-dealing Giant.
The finished production is a buzzy, vibrant and often very funny show, told by
a narrator and accompanied by a montage of hip-hop, soul and pop songs that
chime perfectly with the story (thus Lupe Fiasco's Kick Push plays when the
skateboarder enters and Prince Charming's entrance is heralded by 112's
Girl, I'm a Player). But the main weight of the narrative is carried by the
cast, comprising 18 adult dancers (aged 17-35), and two seven-year-olds
(Russell Royer and Alicia Lai) as the lost infants.
“The challenge when casting this is that we don't just need incredible
dancers, but we need people who can do comedy, or play a romantic lead, or
play an elderly character,” says Prince. “And a lot of dancers - who are
trained to do backing routines as part of a chorus line - simply can't do
that. So we need a mix of talents. You've got Roger Davies, who plays Prince
Charming, who is primarily an actor who also dances. There are a handful of
people who have some contemporary dance training, a few who are street
dancers and one, Denny Haywood, who is a genuine, old-school hip-hop b-boy.
“It was also important to have as many styles as possible. One minute the
dancers will be lindyhopping, the next they'll be crumping, then clowning,
then popping, then body-locking, then doing acrobatic flips across the
stage, then some physical theatre. They even waltz on one number.”
A version of the show was initially presented at the Peacock Theatre in London
in 2006. After some good reviews it was taken to the Edinburgh Fringe two
years in a row, where it became a huge critical and commercial hit and was
seen by the big-name comedy and theatre promoter Phil McIntyre (the man
behind We Will Rock You and Strictly Come Dancing Live). He sensed that an
expanded version of the show had hit potential.
“When we first played in London, our audiences were predominantly young, urban
and black,” says Prince. “But in Edinburgh we attracted a much more
middle-class white audience, and that convinced everyone that this could
really cut across boundaries.”
ZooNation's roots lie in a community project that Prince led at Stratford
Circus, East London, in 2002. “Our brief was to write a musical in a week,”
he says. “So I had 50 kids, aged 12 to 18, who had no interest in musicals,
had never been to a theatre, and who were all snarling and shrugging their
shoulders and sucking their teeth at me. And I quickly realised that the way
to get them involved was to use music and dance. So we started to explore
MC-ing, pirate radio, beats making.
“Suddenly these kids who I thought were going to knife me at the start of the
week were reading me their rhymes, writing these sweet lyrics and coming up
with ideas. By the end of the week they were all hugging each other,
laughing and cheering. You could see that it was a huge adrenalin rush for
them.
“If I have one aim with ZooNation it's that I want young urban dancers to have
a career structure, a way into the theatre, just like a young ballet dancer
might have. I want hip-hop dance to be taken seriously - up there with
ballet, contemporary and jazz as a recognised art form.”
Into the Hoods, Novello Theatre, London WC2, now in preview, opens March 26
(www.zoonation.co.uk 0844 4825170)
