Jade Hackett on hip-hop dance: ‘Black joy is just as powerful as protest’ | Dance

‘With the year we’ve had, we just needed people to have insanely, intensely engrossing, almost relentless fun,” says choreographer Jade Hackett of the weekender she has curated for the Southbank Centre’s Summer Reunion series. Working with music producer DJ Walde under the umbrella of ZooNation dance company, Hackett is taking over the Thames riverside terrace for a free mini festival, three days celebrating UK hip-hop culture, and just celebrating full stop, having been starved of live shows and social occasions during the pandemic.

“It’s the first stepping stone to reintegration, bringing people together in a really safe way,” she says. “We’ll kick it off with music by Afrika Bambaataa, Earth, Wind & Fire, Stevie Wonder, that’s the vibe; awesome social dances, the electric slide, Soul Train lines, it’ll be super fun.” Audiences can watch dance battles and performances from the likes of female popping collective AIM and Afrobeats dancers HomeBros, but there’s an emphasis on participation, with a series of workshops covering dance from the 70s, 80s and 90s as well as newer styles such as Litefeet. There are daytime family activities and evenings dancing to DJ collective The Midnight Train playing garage, grime, house, R&B, hip-hop and soca – a little carnival fix for those feeling the gap left by the cancellation of Notting Hill carnival for the second consecutive year.

UK hip-hop is a culture Hackett calls resilient and ever evolving: “Whenever the music moves so does our dance with it.” One thing particular to the UK scene, and especially London, she says, is its inclusivity. “I think you could find every single nationality in London and that melting pot has made our street culture. Hip-hop is so accessible to everybody – where maybe ballet and other styles of dance might have felt unattainable, with hip-hop, the only criteria is you’ve just got to be dope, and that’s it.”

Hackett started dancing at youth clubs in and around Waltham Forest, north-east London, where she grew up. “Back then there was a youth club on every corner, which unfortunately isn’t the case now,” she says. “You’re losing the gems, those super-creative and underrepresented young people. All you need to give them is space to flourish and they will run with it.” Hackett flourished and started teaching dance at 16, performing with east London groups Boy Blue Entertainment and Unity before joining ZooNation for their shows Into the Hoods: Remixed, Sylvia and the Mad Hatter’s Tea Party. She’s currently working on a piece about the immigrant experience with Talawa theatre company (her father and grandmother were born in Jamaica).

These days the 35-year-old would call herself a dance activist. “My work comes out of passionate spaces,” she says. “And my voice is much stronger with movement. You can’t always articulate a feeling, sometimes it’s only dance that can do that.” Following the murder of George Floyd and the intensification of Black Lives Matter protests, Hackett made a film, Why Do I Love Us So Much?, which has been selected for New York’s Urbanworld film festival next month. “Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, it was relentless at one point,” she remembers, “and I just wanted to change what we were seeing on our timelines, not just the merciless killing of black bodies but looking at those bodies living vehemently with bountiful life and love and family.” She gathered her family at their allotment and recorded a dance video that’s full of strength, warmth and light. “The humanity of black bodies was being eradicated and I couldn’t stand it. And if you can’t stand something, then do something about it,” she says. “I wanted to see loving families and black people together in fun and harmony.”

For Hackett, retaining joy is equally as important as demanding change. “Black joy is just as powerful as protest,” she says. That’s at the root of her Southbank weekend. “I need to feel intense happiness right now, I need to make art that brings joy,” she says. It’s a party, but it’s also a statement of intent.