ZooNation Youth Company Review 4*
ZooNation Youth Company brought the Next Generation Festival to a blistering end with an explosion of hip hop
ZooNation Youth Company claims to include some of the best young hip hop dancers in the country – and on this showing I would certainly not quarrel with that.
And when they say ‘young’ they mean young: two of the most engaging dancers in the current cohort, the pint-sized Maya Harris and Inês da Costa, can’t be much older than 10, but they more than held their own against their elders.
ZooNation Youth Company, Maya Harris and Inês da Costa in Lights Out. Photo: Johan Persson
For its Youth Company’s fourth appearance in the Next Generation festival at the Linbury ZooNation created Lights Out, a pulsating hour-long show conceived by founder and director Kate Prince and choreographed and directed by the company’s associate artistic director Danielle ‘Rhimes’ Lecointe.
Over the years ZooNation has proved beyond doubt that hip hop can sustain a narrative and tell a story with hit shows like Some Like It Hip Hop, The Mad Hatter’s Tea Party, Message in a Bottle and many more. And the tradition continues with its Youth Company.
Lights Out tells the story of a competition to win “5,000 moolah”. It starts slowly, with the 17-strong cast ambling onto the stage, trying get acquainted and make friends; but already the two little enforcers are hard at work enlisting people to join their game.
ZooNation Youth Company, Maya Harris, Inês da Costa and Liberty Greig in Lights Out. Photo: Johan Persson
Once they’ve joined, they return to the stage wearing identical red boiler suits with their numbers, 0 – 15 clearly visible, and they will remain locked in until there’s a winner.
A disembodied voice sets the various challenges: the first failure earns a yellow card, the second elimination. The challenges are modelled on children’s games: there’s a kind of grandmother’s footsteps, a memory game where the contestants have to reproduce a fiendish choreography demonstrated earlier, ‘stay in the light’, akin to musical chairs, only the contestants have to stay within shifting pools of light, and so on.
Set to a series of well-known hip hop musical numbers, the increasingly difficult challenges elicit ever more exciting street moves from the contestants; they break a little, krump a little, waack a little… in their eagerness to win they’re not averse to cheating and turning on each other.
ZooNation Youth Company in Lights Out. Photo: Johan Persson
Finally only two are left: the hugely charismatic number 15, Andrew Jackson, and the original contestant, 0, Liberty Greig. Their styles are complementary: his all acrobatic swagger, hers more fluid, arising from the centre, but equally exciting.
ZooNation Youth Company, Andrew Jackson and Liberty Greig and Lights Out. Photo: Johan Persson
Greig is the winner; but all’s well that ends well, and after the finale, there’s a reprise where each dancer is allowed an opportunity to show their moves. Which they do, with gusto and flair, sending me out into a summer day full of joy and wonder at the sheer depth of talent up and down the country.
© Teresa Guerreiro
(Banner image credit: ZooNation Youth Company in Lights Out. Photo: Johan Persson)
ZooNation Youth Company performed at Next Generation festival on 29 June 2025 at 1 pm and 4 pm.