INTERVIEW: BREAKIN' CONVENTION'S JONZI D COMES TO THE GULBENKIAN
Hip Hop Theatre pioneer brings his solo show Aeroplane Man to Canterbury as part of SystemsLAB show in March
With an eye on society’s current issues, live performance group SystemsLAB Mixed Bill brings a show to Gulbenkian Canterbury offering physicality, lyricism, surreal visuals and experimental sound.
With four very different and very personal stories to be told, the performance includes: Exhibit F an authoritative performance from Becky Namgauds in which she bares and reclaims herself, confronting ideas around controls and submission of the female body; Theo Inart’s solo Fragility of Man, alive with telling symbolism and visual storytelling; while Ffion Campbell-Davies and Tyrone Isaac Stuart collaborate on Beyond Words, using dance, sound and music to question how humans converse.
Finally, hip hop theatre legend Jonzi D returns to Gulbekian once more to revive his modern classic Aeroplane Man, a cathartic quest for identity and belonging. An MC, dancer, spoken word artist and director, he is the foremost advocate for hip hop who has changed the profile and influenced the development of the UK British hip hop dance and theatre scene over the last two decades.
Since founding the internationally-known Breakin’ Convention in 2004, Jonzi has triumphed in raising the profile and giving a platform to hip hop disciplines, which has gained worldwide recognition as being at the vanguard of the development of the art form. Through professional development projects Open Art Surgery and Back to the Lab, Jonzi has supported hundreds of hip hop dance and rap/poetry artists on their journey to creating theatre.
As well as his critically acclaimed works like 1995‘s Lyrikal Fearta and 2013’s The Letter: To Be Or To MBE? Jonzi’s has been featured in HBO’s Def Poetry Jam, had his short films Silence da Bitchin’ & Aeroplane Man screened on Channel 4 and toured his work extensively all over the world, even delivering his own TED Talk on the subject.
‘cene caught up with Jonzi ahead of his performance of Aeroplane Man as part of the SystemsLAB Mixed Bill at the Gulbenkian Theatre, Canterbury, on Friday, 6 March.
HI JONZI! WE UNDERSTAND YOU HAVE BEEN TO THE GULBENKIAN BEFORE!
Yeah, I have previously been to the Gulbenkian touring with Breakin’ Convention and a solo piece called ‘The Letter: To Be or To MBE, about four years ago.
This time I'm coming as part of a group and will be performing a solo piece I created in 1995. It's about this guy who is on a global journey to find ‘home’.
It's interesting that a piece I created 25 years ago, that was dealing with issues to do with displacement, racism and immigration, has been amplified today. In a funny way it has more relevance today than it did then.
SO, THE FACT IT HAS STOOD THE TEST OF TIME IS ARGUABLY A NEGATIVE?
It says more about the society we live in. That society has regressed over the decades, and that’s the shame about performing this piece. I imagined that piece would be about that time, then. And heading towards the year 2000 we were getting over the racism thing.
Leading up to 2000 everyone was worried about the Millennium Bug, no one was complaining about other religions, or migrants coming into the country. The media was not talking about this type of stuff. I remember a time that wasn’t fuelled with polarisation like today.
CAN YOU TELL US HOW YOU CAME UP WITH AEROPLANE MAN?
It's a story, I guess, about me. A young kid born in East London, and his global journey to find ‘home’.
It came from me growing up, seeing NF (National Front) daubed on walls, and being told ‘ni**ers go home’. I was living in a Grenadian household, my parents were from Grenada, and they referred to ‘home’, which was not where we were sat at the time.
They were talking about this other place as ‘home’. And I was constantly reminded that I wasn’t at ‘home’ and that I wasn’t wanted, even though I was born and bred in East London. So, I go on a journey to find it, the first place being Grenada. But when I get there I realise I am a fish out of water, I know nothing about the culture and I’m not ‘home’.
HOW IS IT PERFORMED?
The way I perform it is by running on the spot, while doing poetry and dance moves to show the places I am in. It's a very fun piece, with lots of comedy and pathos, and I guess it's a bittersweet tale.
IN YOUR TED X PRESENTATION FOUR YEARS AGO, YOU SAID THAT HIP HOP SHOULD BE PART OF THE NATIONAL CURRICULUM OF PERFORMING ARTS, HAVE YOU SEEN A CHANGE SINCE THEN?
Yes I have. I've seen many degree courses popping up saying they want to use hip hop dance.
This was a very natural development and always going to happen, in my opinion, given the advancements we have been making at Breakin’ Convention, in relation to presenting hip hop dance and culture on one of the most established stages in the contemporary dance world - Sadler’s Wells.
SO, THE FUTURE IS VERY BRIGHT FOR HIP HOP THEATRE...
Hip Hop in the theatre is not going to disappear, it is only going to get better and better. Because of that, we are going to be opening a hip hop theatre academy in 2022, as part of the new space that Sadler’s Wells will be building.
We are going to do a course for 16 - 18-year-olds, like a foundation course before they go onto degree-level study. It is going to be focused on hip hop dance styles., rap, and music production. There won’t be any ballet or other contemporary dance, as there are plenty of other places for that. I want us to stand out because we focus on hip hop dance styles.
TICKETS: https://thegulbenkian.co.uk/events/systemslab-mixed-bill/