Boy Blue: 25 Stories is a new performance work created by Michael ‘Mikey J’ Asante and Kenrick ‘H2O’ Sandy, with Inua Ellams, in recognition of its 25 years. An accompanying filmed podcast, ‘Boy Blue: 25 Years in Motion’, documents the company’s deep-rooted backstory through five episodes. Returning to Theatre Royal Stratford East to premiere 25 Stories this autumn, the company marks its quarter century by bringing together reminiscence, movement, film, music and the words of the people who built it.
Boy Blue is an Olivier Award-winning company, with 25 years of impact, innovation, and creating careers as the UK’s most celebrated hip-hop dance theatre company.
Marking the past, with attention on its future, Boy Blue’s co-founders and company present a new performance work, 25 Stories, created with writer and curator Inua Ellams. It is accompanied by a podcast series of five filmed conversations delving into the vault to, as Michael ‘Mikey J’ Asante says, “looking back, moving forward”.
Over the past year, Boy Blue invited alumni, current dancers and collaborators, some who danced with the company decades ago, others still on stage today, to share their stories in whatever form felt natural: voice notes, films, letters and conversations. Drawn from five ‘eras’ spanning the company’s 25 years, these testimonies form the raw ingredients for this part memoir and spoken word show abstracted in sound and movement.
25 Stories is created with long-time friend and collaborator Inua Ellams, who takes the stories and testimonials as source material to co-develop the work with Boy Blue through his lens as a writer, poet and creator. Working in a back-and-forth exchange with Asante and Sandy, Ellams’ writing feeds directly into new music and choreography, which is then sent back to him to respond to again, a true call-and-response cypher between the company and its extended family.
Staging the work at Theatre Royal Stratford East carries its own significance: it was here, in an earlier production, that Boy Blue first proved its ability to make theatre, the show that paved the way for the company’s breakthrough, Olivier Award-winning Pied Piper: A Hip-Hop Dance Revolution. Twenty-five years on, 25 Stories brings Boy Blue back to where that journey first began.
Co-founding Artistic Director, Michael ‘Mikey J’ Asante, says: “This isn’t about me and Ken. It’s about everyone who has ever moved through Boy Blue, the ones who stayed, and the ones who took what they learned and went and did their own thing.”
Co-founding Artistic Director, Kenrick ‘H2O’ Sandy, says: “It’s always been about family and community. 25 Stories is us handing the mic to the people who built that with us, the dancers who came from all over the UK just to be part of the tribe. This is their story as much as ours.”
Inua Ellams says: “It’s such an honour to work with a company as ground breaking as this, and friends who not only happen to be its artistic directors, but who are also open, benevolent, collaborators who have given me keys to their treasure-trove of memories, from which to sculpt an epic narrative.”
Theatre Royal Stratford East Artistic Director, Lisa Spirling, says: “We are delighted to welcome Boy Blue back to this historic building, where they first started some 25 years ago. This brilliant company continues to represent so much of what we stand for at Stratford East: community, innovation, celebration, and a hugely entertaining night out. As a theatre we have always platformed work that challenges simple genre definition, and this new piece, with its bold use of music, dance and storytelling, is an excellent addition to that lineage.”
NEED TO KNOW:
- Performances of Boy Blue: 25 Stories are at Theatre Royal Stratford East from Thurs 5 to Sat 7 Nov. For more information and to book, visit www.stratfordeast.com/whats-on/all-shows/boy-blue-25-stories
- Boy Blue’s 25 Stories podcast, Boy Blue: 25 Years in Motion, is available to view on YouTube, via boyblue.co.uk and streaming services from Monday 12 October.
