Last Updated on May 5, 2026
Sadler’s Wells Annual Hip Hop Take Over
3.0 out of 5.0 stars
On show days, the mezzanine area of Sadler’s Wells normally hosts exclusive receptions for company and theatre patrons and guests; but during Breakin’ Convention, it devolves to the people (ticket holders, obviously) with DJs spinning their stuff at top volume, the occasional bout of beatboxing and plenty of spontaneous dancing.
Grown ups have a lot to do to compete with the youngsters, boys and girls, who take this opportunity to show their breakin’ ability; and some, you feel sure, will be seen on stage at Sadler’s Wells before too long, as part of one crew or another.
Over three days, Breakin’ Convention covers many of the aspects of the hip hop sub-culture, with a variety of workshops and graffiti tagging, led by such luminaries as Zaki Dee, Snatch and .Epod.
However, the main business of Breakin’ Convention, now in its 23rd year, as host and artistic director Jonzi D, was proud to announce, happens on the main stage at Sadler’s Wells, where national and international hip hop crews strut their stuff. The front rows of the stalls are removed to form a mosh pit, with soon fills up – when I attended, on Saturday evening (Day Two), the rest of the house seemed pretty well sold out.
As a regular attender, I will admit I found most of the seven numbers on offer this year disappointing, but the two which closed each half of the performance really lifted the evening: the Dutch multi-national ILL-Abilities and the American Rock Force Crew.
ILL-Abilities is a truly extraordinary crew, made up of eight dancers with a variety of disabilities – the name comes from the standard in hip hop culture of using a negative term to refer to something positive. Two dancers from ILL-Abilites offered Breakin’ Convention 2026 a barn-storming, hard to believe performance. One dancer was missing a leg, the other had a prosthetic leg and was missing part of an arm. Did any of that affect their energetic, acrobatic, extremely skilled breakin’? Emphatically not.
They leapt in the air, swivelled on the ground, balanced on one arm with the rest of the body parallel to the ground, dancing together and solo, and in one case using the crutches as a normal accessory to dancing. It was simply breathtaking and I was startled to realise that the appreciative yelping at the end of their performance had come from me.
ILL-Abilities brought the show some of the positive spirit, which Jonzi D wants Breakin’ Convention to represent and spread, and so did Rock Force Crew, which was founded in 1983 in California, primarily as a group of Filipino Americans, but has since then enlarged its ranks and is now 10-strong. Rock Force Crew brought the audience at Sadler’s Wells exactly what they’d been waiting for: a standard, vibrant hip hop session, including the thrilling moves we’ve all come to expect.
In between bouts of dancing, a brief voice over introduced the dancers to come, either individually or in groups, depending on where in the USA they came from. Rock Force Crew, incidentally the last USA crew to win the world title, and winners also of a raft of awards too numerous to mention, sent us home in buoyant mood.
I understand that hip hop must evolve and has been doing so over the past few decades to remain fresh and relevant to each new generation. However, some of the numbers in this year’s Breakin’ Convention hardly fit the general brief: AS Compagnie from France, consisted two men performing a very streamlined version of locking, where they stood in a cone of line for what seemed like an eternity, performing very small coordinated gestures with arms and hands. It was interesting until it wasn’t, and it went on long after that. Sadly, there were some boos amid the lukewarm applause.
Italy’s Compagnie Bellanda was physical theatre rather than hip hop, which a man and a woman writhing on the ground, their intermittent dialogue projected onto the black cloth.
Let It Happen, three young women from the Netherlands, opened the evening with a show that was proficient, but tame; Gary Clarke Company, from the UK, appeared to have settled for the simplest format – on past performance, we were entitled to expect more.
And there was also a brief on-stage promo for the brand new Breakin’ Convention Academy, sited at Sadler’s Wells East, which is just coming to the end of its first year.
Breakin’ Convention is at Sadler’s Wells 1 – 3 May
Sadler’s Wells Angel
Rosebery Avenue
London EC1R 4TN
Check out our London Dance Previews – January to July 2026
Leave a Reply