Barbican, London
In ragged rocksteps and snaredrum springs, choreographer Kenrick Sandy and composer Michael Asante catch the connections between sound and movement
Founded in 2001, Boy Blue is a close and enduring partnership between choreographer Kenrick “H2O” Sandy and composer Michael “Mikey J” Asante, and has been a major player in the 21st-century ascendance of hip-hop dance theatre. Their latest piece returns the duo – here joined by Jade Hackett as associate choreographer – to their own roots, focusing intensely on those two alchemical elements that, when put together, can produce choreographic gold: dance and music.
The framework for Cycles is deceptively simple, a kind of tracklist of separate numbers, each initiated by a change of music, each developing distinct dance moods and motifs, and each lit by spotlights and searchlights that might here suggest a turntable, there a distant star. The costumes are strange hybrids of sci-fi, streetwear and desert robes, transmuting under the lights from ice-white to space-grey to burnished yellow.
