Breakin’ Convention: Social DisDancing, Sadler’s Wells, review: meet our future Olympic champions

Following the recent announcement that breakdancing is joining the Olympics in 2024, all eyes are on productions like Social DisDancing. Is this a world-class discipline? And will it, as hoped, attract a youthful demographic?

Sadler’s Wells’ Breakin’ Convention has been instrumental in bringing hip hop to a mainstream audience. Along with ZooNation’s West End-conquering productions, the festival has helped establish it as a popular theatrical form.

Inevitably, Covid measures curb the fun. This hour-long version, assembled following the May festival’s cancellation, isn’t accompanied by the usual pop-up workshops in the hallways and cheering mass of people in the mosh pit.

Instead, it’s a reduced, masked and socially distanced audience. There’s a pause between each act for cleaning, covered by two short films made during lockdown.

Nevertheless, this energetic production demonstrates the explosive power and creativity that may well make breaking a new Olympic favourite – and Team GB serious medal contenders.

Boy Blue Entertainment, choreographed by Kenrick "H2O" Sandy, are already superstars: the award-winning crew appeared in the London 2012 Opening Ceremony.

Their new piece Untethered 3.0, reflecting on this difficult year, features vertical beams of light evoking the bars of a cage. Through hard-hitting krump (fast, exaggerated hip-hop movement) and body-popping, the dancers release pent-up emotion in sharp bursts – as though drawing poison from a wound. Longed-for liberation is expressed in propulsive, 360-degree jumps.

As the number ends, we’re plunged into darkness. All we can hear are the performers’ exhalations, gasps and shouts. It’s an invitation for everyone to release a collective breath.

Jamaal O’Driscoll of O’Driscoll Collective – escaping Tier 3-trapped Birmingham – joins forces with "b-boy" (or breakdancer) Marius Mates for One%, exploring mental health struggles. It’s inner torment dramatised via high-flying bodies blocking and manipulating each another: breaking as therapy.

There are striking images, as the duo launch into huge air flares – spinning while upside down, leaping from hand to hand – and then hurtle to the floor, defeated. A great shaft of diagonal light gives their conflict, and eventual reconciliation, an epic quality.

The Olympics will feature b-girls too, and there’s always been strong female representation at this festival. AIM Collective’s Suspended begins with five female dancers, dressed in dark clothes, physicalising our current woes. There’s lethargic slow motion, desperate prayer, and long-idle limbs wobbling.

Happily, the piece builds to a joyful renewal. A hip hop-disco fusion produces crisp popping and funky freezes, along with playful shoulder and hip wiggling.

This theatrical hip hop differs from the more obviously competitive battles. But the keen desire to outdo what has come before is what makes this a spectator sport, for viewers of all ages.

In the absence of international acts, the depth and variety of our homegrown talent, mixing artistry with thrilling athleticism, is evident. Olympic breaking could be Britain’s time to shine.

Runs until Sunday December 12: sadlerswells.com