Family Y has just come back after a fun weekend in NewcastleGateshead exploring the excellent sticking work done by the Dragon Steps installation team. It is all looking very strong, aided by a beautiful bright sunny day. Also as part of the Juice Festival we managed to take in some graffiti art in progress up behind Sage Gateshead, a good exhibition at Baltic and a night of Hip Hop at Dance City where I’m not sure even a pair of trainers would have helped me blend in.

It was a hugely enjoyable evening. A series of acts from across Hip Hop culture were warmly embraced by an audience of friends and fans. The acts were mostly dance groups with varying degrees of experience and sophistication. Throughout there were great moves – a joy of the form is you can shout out mid-dance if you see something you like (I’m keen on trying this at the Ballet). DJ Rasp‘s turntabalism was so amazing that though I knew in theory what he was doing I had absolutely no idea without the aid of extreme slo-mo what he was ACTUALLY doing.

For me the principle interest was seeing how the groups were looking to deploy b-Girl / b-Boy moves to tell stories or to blend with ‘contemporary dance’. In this direction my favourite piece was an extract of Contains Spoilers by Trash Dollys, which was difficult to pin down and not consistently brilliant, but ambiguous enough to ultimately prove compelling.