Boy Blue: 25 Stories is a new performance work created by Michael ‘Mikey J’ Asante and Kenrick ‘H2O’ Sandy, with Inua Ellams, in recognition of its 25 years.
An accompanying filmed podcast, ‘Boy Blue: 25 Years in Motion’, documents the company’s deep-rooted backstory through five episodes.
Returning to Theatre Royal Stratford East to premiere 25 Stories this autumn, the company marks its quarter century by bringing together reminiscence, movement, film, music and the words of the people who built it.
Boy Blue is an Olivier Award-winning company, with 25 years of impact, innovation, and creating careers as the UK’s most celebrated hip-hop dance theatre company. Marking the past, with attention on its future, Boy Blue’s co-founders and company present a new performance work, 25 Stories, created with writer and curator Inua Ellams.
It is accompanied by a podcast series of five filmed conversations delving into the vault to, as Michael 'Mikey J' Asante says, “looking back, moving forward”. Over the past year, Boy Blue invited alumni, current dancers and collaborators, some who danced with the company decades ago, others still on stage today, to share their stories in whatever form felt natural: voice notes, films, letters and conversations.
Drawn from five ‘eras’ spanning the company's 25 years, these testimonies form the raw ingredients for this part memoir and spoken word show abstracted in sound and movement.
25 Stories is created with long-time friend and collaborator Inua Ellams, who takes the stories and testimonials as source material to co-develop the work with Boy Blue through his lens as a writer, poet and creator.
Working in a back-and-forth exchange with Asante and Sandy, Ellams' writing feeds directly into new music and choreography, which is then sent back to him to respond to again, a true call-and-response cypher between the company and its extended family. Staging the work at Theatre Royal Stratford East carries its own significance: it was here, in an earlier production, that Boy Blue first proved its ability to make theatre, the show that paved the way for the company's breakthrough, Olivier Award-winning Pied Piper: A Hip-Hop Dance Revolution. Twenty-five years on, 25 Stories brings Boy Blue back to where that journey first began.
Co-founding Artistic Director, Michael 'Mikey J' Asante, says: "This isn't about me and Ken. It's about everyone who has ever moved through Boy Blue, the ones who stayed, and the ones who took what they learned and went and did their own thing.”
Co-founding Artistic Director, Kenrick 'H2O' Sandy, says: "It's always been about family and community. 25 Stories is us handing the mic to the people who built that with us, the dancers who came from all over the UK just to be part of the tribe. This is their story as much as ours.
"Inua Ellams says: “It’s such an honour to work with a company as ground breaking as this, and friends who not only happen to be its artistic directors, but who are also open, benevolent, collaborators who have given me keys to their treasure-trove of memories, from which to sculpt an epic narrative.”
Theatre Royal Stratford East Artistic Director, Lisa Spirling, says: "We are delighted to welcome Boy Blue back to this historic building, where they first started some 25 years ago. This brilliant company continues to represent so much of what we stand for at Stratford East: community, innovation, celebration, and a hugely entertaining night out. As a theatre we have always platformed work that challenges simple genre definition, and this new piece, with its bold use of music, dance and storytelling, is an excellent addition to that lineage.
Ahead of and during the stage show, Boy Blue releases a companion five-episode video podcast series, Boy Blue: 25 Years in Motion, from Monday 12 October 2026, produced by RMG Studios.
Taking listeners through the company's history in five-year chunks, the podcast sees Asante and Sandy in conversation, asking each other the questions often left unasked, surfacing the textural details and the in-between moments of 25 years building Boy Blue.
Together, the filmed podcast and 25 Stories form two halves of a retrospective: one told through conversation, the other transformed into performance.
As the longest-serving hip-hop dance company in the UK, Boy Blue's co-founders are now turning their attention to its legacy, with its extensive archive being curated for the first time.
25 Stories is one of several multi-disciplinary projects and commissions that focus on honouring and celebrating community through hip-hop and storytelling, featuring contributions from alumni and long-standing collaborators.Asante and Sandy will continue to spearhead the ambitious creative direction of the company, with a strong focus on nurturing the next generation of leaders.
'Boy Blue Young Leaders' programme, launched in 2025, has established positions for nine current dancers or alumni to develop leadership skills. Aged between 18 and 25, the cohorts will have the opportunity to learn about operations, governance and the charity sector. They will create their own event in the summer around networking, career pathways and community to expand their industry networks, and contribute to the company's creative future.
Performances of Boy Blue: 25 Stories are at Theatre Royal Stratford East from Thurs 5 to Sat 7 Nov.
Press Night: Friday 6 November, 7.30pm
Running Time: Approx. 2hrs (inc interval)
Ticket Prices: From £19 (plus booking fee)
Age Guidance: 12+
www.stratfordeast.com/whats-on/all-shows/boy-blue-25-stories
