All about: Kate Prince and ZooNation - Dance Saturday
Hello everybody and welcome back to another blog post,
Today I'm going to be talking all about ZooNation and Kate Prince, in continuation with this series.
Now, I've actually done a lot of research on Kate Prince's life and the ZooNation dance company when I was completing part of my coursework for BTEC dance. As I found out more about Kate and her company, I felt inspired to tell you guys about her since she isn't very well known and through what she's done, she has changed the way we look at dance and therefore deserves to be talked about today. I hope you enjoy reading about her story and the life of ZooNation! It's really interesting.
Kate Prince was born in 1974 in Southampton. She is the founder and artistic director of ZooNation: The Kate Prince Company, an urban, contemporary, and hip hop specialised dance company, based in London. Kate has choreographed many pieces in her own musicals and has a real eye for creative, new, and raw talent. One of her popular musicals that she directed was Into The Hoods, which was an original idea that was inspired by the classic Little Red Riding Hood story. In Into The Hoods, she introduced each character with an urban solo/group piece and linked each part with acting and comical scenes, to create a new and innovative dance show that many families could come and see. Into The Hoods now goes down in history as the first hip hop dance show to be performed in the West End.
ZooNation: The Kate Prince Company
However, Kate started out in other forms of dance, before eventually moving onto hip hop. At the age of 5, Kate took part in ballet, jazz, and tap classes at her local village hall and gradually understood the medium of dance through her dance teacher, who was her idol and inspiration. At the age of 12, Kate also attended a boarding school and even shared a dorm room with the famous actress, Emilia Fox! Although she enjoyed school very much however, she didn't have any dance classes as part of her curriculum and so she would often choreograph some of her own pieces for fun in fashion shows and plays instead.
Kate did eventually get into hip hop after watching it on MTV and since then, she has been continually inspired by it. She lived, breathed, and studied hip hop, training in LA, Paris, London, and New York, before she went onto choreographing hip hop routines for many stage schools. In 2004, Kate finally formed ZooNation from the crew she gathered from her Box Beat dance show and her musical Into The Hoods, evolved from the performance she did at the Breakin' Convention in Sadler's Wells.
What I like most about ZooNation is their ability to make hip hop dancing look different. It isn't just a case of doing flips and tricks for many of the dancers in the company, it's also about telling a story and not just acting but feeling the dance. Kate has cleverly choreographed her pieces to suit the storyline like in Message In A Bottle, a unifying and uplifting production, the style is still urban but also athletic and energetic, with a contemporary feel to it. This really helps to portray the mood of the piece and in comparison to Into The Hoods, which is a musical with classic old-town hip hop, Message In A Bottle shows a different and smoother side to hip hop that no one has ever really seen before. This helps to show that hip hop is a force to be reckoned with and dancers don't just have to perform ballet pieces in order to produce something iconic. I think this brings a more positive side to hip hop than all the gangsterism that is often associated with this style.
Dame Gillian Lynne also performed at Sadler's Wells and you can read her All about post here!
Sadler's Wells Theatre
Kate Prince has gone onto choreographing routines in Strictly Come Dancing, the Street Dance 3D film, and Everybody's Talking About Jamie, which is another one of her musicals starring Layton Williams from School For Stars. She has also worked in So You Think You Can Dance and Blue Peter. Kate was later awarded an MBE in the 2019 Birthday Honours for her fantastic services to dance!
Musicals/shows:
- Into the Hoods
- Spinderella
- Some Like It Hip Hop
- Groove on Down the Road
- Mad Hatter's Tea Party
- Message In A Bottle
- Everybody's Talking About Jamie
Comments
Post a Comment
Thanks for leaving your comments! I really enjoy reading your positive and constructive messages. They really make my day! 💜