Everybody Bounce!

Hip-hop dance has become a staple of the mainstream now: even ballet companies throw in a spot of b-boying when they are feeling contemporary. Despite the high profile of events like Breakin' Convention, and the number of former b-boys going through the doors of the dance schools, it is rare that a complete, large scale choreography uses breakin' and poppin' as the foundation. Insane in the Brain comes from Sweden, but boasts its hip-hop credentials with a soundtrack that includes Cypress Hill and Missy Elliot. It reworks the classic One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest, the novel most famous for a film adaptation starring Jack Nicolson but a cult favourite in itself. Nurse Ratched, the stentorian matriarch charged with keeping down the psychiatric patients is re-imagined as a ballet fan – a sly dig, perhaps, at dance orthodoxy. It is sweet to see a hip-hop based dance that doesn't need to go all guns and gangster to prove it is street: that the company use tap and lindy-hop, two older urban styles, suggests that the tough-guy nonsense would be misplaced anyway. Yet the core conflicts in the story – between freedom and control, self-sacrifice and abuse of power – lend themselves nicely to a dance form that is all about the challenge and competition. If Bounce can capture hip-hop's fascination with the impressive moment, the showing out and display, and be harnessed to a sharp story and detailed characterisation, it is a good move forward. At the EFT, it is staking a claim for intelligent choreography that experiments with earthy moves that can appear at the same venue as Scottish Ballet. If it works, this is one for b-boys, breakers and the bourgeoisie.