The UK’s leading dance platform for Hip Hop and beyond heralds a golden era for street styles.
Breakin’ Convention, one of the biggest events of the dance calendar, finishes its 2025 edition with a bang in its takeover of Sadler’s Wells. The theatre is a hive of activity with grooving sessions, DJs, cyphers and graffiti murals across the building. But the main focus of Breakin’ Convention, as always, is the stellar lineup of acts taking over the main stage, all under the artistic direction of the jovial Jonzi D, guiding us through the proceedings.
The evening kicks off with BLADE FROM YOUNG performed by the youth ensemble Unity Dance Company UK. Though young, they are technically faultless and remarkably versatile — one minute they’re tearing through acrobatic floor work, the next they’re pulling out fouettés or popping en masse. The piece, which deals with knife crime among teenagers, sets the tone for a programme of introspection and emotional examination.
Max Revell’s compelling little work The Party sees a quintet of lockers manipulate a headless, suited man. The group shiver and waddle like Chaplinesque penguins in a dreamy world of sepia tones and mimery. Revell’s meditation on loss particularly comes alive as he manipulates a dangling suit and trilby hat like a marionette, sharing a duet with a spectre seen only by him. Greece’s Vasiliki Papapostolou aka Tarantism brings her signature bone-breaker articulations in PANOPTICON. The solo’s tense atmosphere is somewhat diluted by a bombastic second half and somewhat obvious allusions to a controlling higher power. Tarantism is nevertheless a performer with an uncanny talent for architectural articulation, her limbs and joints set off on some beautifully wince-inducing journeys.
Belgian krumper Illi Wild describes his solo BeZarbi as a declaration, rather than decoration. He runs into the starkly lit stage in silence, slicing the air with strained arms and fists, stamping assertively. As the work progresses he demonstrates his possession, his hand grabs his face making him convulse and jerk. While there is no clear narrative — other than perhaps the obvious cliché of ‘the power of dance’, Wild manages to keep us captivated. He glances back at us occasionally, daring us to come into his world of extremes.
Dutch crew The Ruggeds bring Olympian breaking with 20yRS, celebrating two decades of their achievements as performers and competitors. The six lads cheer up the mood with some boy band charm as they bound about to jungle tracks in matching camo outfits. While the tricks are highly impressive they still make time for some old school grooves, showing off their choreographic know-how with a playful nonchalance. In the Lilian Baylis Studio next door, Simeon ‘Kardinal’ Campbell presents SADBOI in collaboration with the home-grown contemporary Hip Hop company BirdGang. The work is an intense and sometimes overly busy biography about existing with neurodiversity. Although hampered by some tinny sound-mixing and a clunky set, Campbell’s work has an inspiring honesty to it. This is massively helped by his charismatic presence and highly expressive mannerisms, particularly while monologuing in BSL.
The undisputed highlight of the night comes from France with Témoin by Saïdo Lehlouh, an epic work of theatre performed by an ensemble of twenty highly individual dancers showcasing a range of styles. The work opens with a krumper on stage, pleading his case to the onlooking chorus. Bodies start to circulate the space as acapella rap verses loop and echo. Waackers spar with b-boys, people begin to run like packs of animals. Lehlouh certainly has a detached aesthetic; the dancers are dressed as pedestrians, they stare out at us from the darkened stage during frequent moments of stillness and beats only kick in sporadically. However, in this shadowy limbo, Lehlouh manages to create a piece so atmospherically rich, so fixated on the dancing body, that one can’t help but become subsumed.
What keeps the piece’s momentum during its lengthy hour and ten minutes is a feeling of uncertainty. Groups reconfigure, individuals peel out into rebellious solos to prove their mettle. Piercing eyes stare from the sidelines into the arena of camarades and enemies, willing one another to lead the herd. It feels as if nobody on stage is certain of what will happen next. I have seen countless dance works, but I have never felt quite as thrilled as I have by this pulsating fleshiness. Témoin demonstrates not just the choreographic voice of Saïdo Lehlouh, but that we are reaching a golden age for street styles in theatrical spaces.
Breakin’ Convention has highlighted some of dance’s most compelling voices in Hip Hop companies like Boy Blue and Far from the Norm — one has the sense that we are now at the crest of a wave. Though grumbly nay-sayers may protest it, some of the best works of the new European canon have roots in the streets. Dance shall forevermore be moulded by its innovations.