Boy Blue: Cycles review – a constantly shifting hip-hop high

Barbican theatre, London
The company’s exploration of the act of dancing ebbs and flows loose-limbed precision – and some astonishing pyrotechnics

It will soon be 50 years since hip-hop emerged from the Bronx to become the dominant dance form of the modern world. And it’s 23 years since Kenrick “H20” Sandy and Michael “Mikey J” Asante founded Boy Blue in east London. Over that relatively short period, hip-hop has become as virtuosic as ballet, demanding that its adherents hone body and mind to controlled perfection in pursuit of a demanding discipline.

Boy Blue’s latest creation, Cycles, an abstract exploration of the act of dancing itself, has the serenity and purity of a piece by Balanchine. To doubters that may sound daft, but there’s something about the precision of the movement and the pleasure the dancers display that lifts the heart.