Staging acclaimed, innovative productions across the U.K. and Europe for nearly a quarter-century, Boy Blue returns to Lincoln Center for the U.S. premiere of its latest work, Cycles, at the Rose Theater March 27–29.
With Cycles, New York audiences will be able to witness the culmination of what Boy Blue—and its founders, composer Michael “Mikey J” Asante and choreographer Kenrick “H2O” Sandy—has been building over several earlier shows and the dozens of dancers who have been part of the collective of movement at some point in their careers.
That collective was born in 2001 in East London as a way to bring together a thriving, multicultural community and the Hip-Hop culture that powerfully connected with those living there. “I would say it’s Michael’s fault,” Sandy laughs, then continues: “I used to watch him perform—singing, dancing, acting— and was inspired by his greatness. I realized I could transfer my skills over to the dance side as opposed to the dark side. It was also about giving our young people the opportunity to dance.” Asante agrees: “There was a need in our community and we filled that need and found a way to make it happen.”
Boy Blue’s Cycles takes its title from movement itself, and how the nine dancers onstage—taking as their starting point Sandy’s intricate choreography—connect with Asante’s propulsive musical grooves. To that end, the music came first, as Asante thought about the cycles that surround us: “physically, mentally, spiritually—birth, life, death, birth—just trying to fill it into a beat,” he says. “The constant for me was what affects those cycles. It’s always perpetual motion—I wanted the music to continually move, to build momentum in a particular way. I wanted to bring the Hip-Hop energy back. That constant forward motion was the algorithm.”
For his part, Sandy took the music as a starting point for dance moves that would always include the freestyle or improvisational elements that have always been part of Hip-Hop dancing. “However you move one day might be changed the next day,” he says. “You go by a feeling or a new relationship with what you hear in the music. There’s a beauty in doing something completely different, for once you create the framework, you can make those onstage changes—it gives the artists a chance to play and investigate and evolve.”
To Asante, a constantly evolving show meant that his music was also changing. “The playlist wasn’t completely locked in,” he notes. “With the dancers performing a different show each day, it was literally us figuring out the playlist. I wanted every song to feel like they could just go round and round onstage, so I originally made 70 to 80 different tracks—now it’s less than 20. It took us many iterations to get it right. The cycle was being spun between us all—that drive went back and forth among the team.”
Of course, Asante and Sandy hope that those who see Cycles at Lincoln Center will respond to it as a fluid, ingenious piece of constant movement. The improvisatory aspect will “also allow freshness for the audience,” Sandy says. “Our aim is to create and sustain momentum for the length of the performance.”
“The dancers can take another’s track if they want,” Asante explains, “and that makes it so much fun for us too because we don’t know what we’re going to see that night—the beauty of that moment, that cycle, that particular setting.
“It’s a happening—that is what you always want a show to be for those who see it.”
Cycles is co-commissioned by the Barbican Centre and Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts. Visit LincolnCenter.org.
