It's 11 years since Breakin' Convention was launched, and still nothing about this hip-hop festival looks due for any kind of a revamp. Even during the evening's long interval break, the programme is crammed with activity. Crowds surge around ecstatic krumpers on the mezzanine floor; tiny tots queue for classes in B-boying; while the Lilian Baylis theatre plays host to younger artists such as Clara and Mouse whose sweet, silly and clever take on cultural stereotyping is delivered via a sampling of Euro-Asian moves.
Over on the main stage the programme continues to throw up surprises. One of the best is P*Fect, a gender-bending Swedish crew, dressed in black leotards and high-heeled boots who claim inspiration from drag superstar RuPaul. Deconstructing B-boy leg-work into sculpted twists and arabesques, seguing the elegance of upper body voguing with the windmilling speed of waacking, P*Fect pit themselves sexily and subversively against any dark shadows remaining from hip-hop's machismo past.
So too does Duwayne Taylor, who takes his dancing into a rapt inner space, with slow waves of movement that eddy through his body, in communion with the music from his accompanying violinist Sarah Sarhandi. Even where there's more familiar virtuosity on show, it's packaged in new ways.
Don't Hit Mama perform headspins and body rolls with a whiplash displacement of air, their precision made edgier still by the formal geometries of the stage lighting. IN-SI-DE the Cirque mix hip-hop with the slickest of jazz, slapstick and vaudeville clowning.
And if proof were needed of hip-hop's health, it's given in Boy Blue's huge ensemble piece Legacy. Danced by both adults and children, this is a work of leaping energy and ferociously drilled formations – so disciplined, so exhilarating it could stand comparison to any classical corps de ballet.
