Want a dance show that combines the streetwise swagger of artists like Rita Ora and Plan B with the artistry of Manga plus a taste of the Orient? Look no further than The Five and the Prophecy of Prana. Jo Roberts reports

Dance theatre by the hippest choreographers on the UK block will end the Canterbury Festival in style this weekend.

Aimed at a youth as well as an adult audience, The Five and the Prophecy of Prana combines dazzling visuals with a fusion of hip hop and martial arts in an explosive tribute to Manga, Japan’s popular graphic novel form.

Set in modern day Tokyo, five young troublemakers are drawn into a power struggle that has divided a secret group of warriors. Given a chance to redeem themselves in the ensuing battle to restore peace, their action-packed adventure becomes a celebration of camaraderie and the triumph of the human spirit.

The show is the brainchild of streetwise Londoners Kenrick Sandy and Mikey Asante, a choreographer and music producer respectively, who form Boy Blue Entertainment.

Boy Blue combines contemporary hip hop music with theatre, and worked on the movie Street Dance 3D as well as creating the acclaimed Barbican theatre show Pied Pier: A Hip Hop Revolution.

What’s On got the inside story on Boy Blue from Kenrick, 34, ahead of the Canterbury show.

Kenrick, do you know Kent at all?

“I’ve been around the area a couple of times, my family live in Rochester. I’ve always been an East Londoner, but my family moved down a couple of years ago.”

I understand that you split your working life between Boy Blue Entertainment and your own choreography work with pop stars?

“Choreographically I’ve worked with Rita Ora, Plan B, Peter Andre, [girl band] Stooshe and I did artist development with The Saturdays when they first came out. Artist development is...how can I explain it? So you have your singer: she’s got a wicked voice but she hasn’t got stage presence, the performance is just dead, it’s boring. I would come in and empower the artist to pull out that fire so that when you’re on stage you look amazing. When Beyonce performs you are convinced that she is confident to the point where it is her concert, she has that artistry. That’s what performance development is; you’re working to push them to that next level.”

What were your own beginnings in dance?

“I started dancing in 1998. I was 18 so I started very late. I was not interested in dance to be honest, I was more sports-orientated - football, basketball - but my brother and my best friend used to go to the same youth community centre. They would go upstairs and do break dancing with the street dance crew, and I would be in a sports hall playing basketball. I went up once and because I was quite athletic I did a couple of back flips and they said, ‘Maybe you should try and do some break dancing.’ It was the physical stuff that drew me in, and I never turned back. When I started doing more choreography, my first routine I learned was taught to me by an 11-year-old! She knew the routine and I just asked her to teach me.”

How did you go about catching up in terms of formal training?

“I said to myself, ‘I’m going to change my course to a performing arts HNC.’ That’s where I got a bit of understanding of contemporary jazz, ballet and musical theatre, and acting, so that’s where I got the foundation of it. But a lot of the street dance and hip hop stuff was pretty much us having a play or meeting with people that knew certain styles and who we just learned from.”

How did you and your co-artistic director in Boy Blue, Mikey Asante, come together?

“Me and Mikey have known each other since we were 12 years old, we went to school together. He was into his dance, singing and acting and I just jumped on it and we started the company together. It was literally about facilitating - there were so many kids around the area who wanted to dance so we said, ‘Let’s just get a hall, hire it out, and let’s just dance.’ There was no business plan or niche market, we’ve just been living our lives dancing, enjoying ourselves and being creative.”

If that’s the case then you’ve done very well to establish Boy Blue Entertainment as such a credible force on the arts scene. What do you put that down to?

“I think passion, hard work, perseverance, tolerance, innovation and responsibility. One of our old dance teachers said to us, ‘You guys are talented, and you have a responsibility to push the scene’, and that’s kept in our minds. Every time we create work we’re trying to push for the rawness of it to really come through.”

Five and the Prophecy of Prana by Boy Blue Entertainment is at Canterbury’s Gulbenkian Theatre on Saturday, November 1 at 7.30pm and Sunday, November 2, at 2pm. Tickets cost £18 for adults, £12 for those under 26, and £40 for a family ticket. Visit www.thegulbenkian.co.uk, or call 01227 769075.