BOP is short for Body Of People Jazz Theatre Company, founded in 1996 by choreographer Dollie Henry MBE and composer Paul Jenkins, and I’ve not heard of them—how remiss is that? “BOP have produced and delivered performances and educational programmes across the globe, and are dedicated to the ongoing legacy, artistic development and creative practices of the Jazz Theatre art form.”
An evening of two halves, under an hour each, opens with a warm-up act from London’s Impact Dance, a youth company of eleven, hip-hopping to beats that put a smile on everybody’s face. Follow that, I think.
A good title Jazz Conversations, dance conversing with music, contemporary jazz with Miles Davis—composer Paul Jenkins is bold in taking on the inimitable man. The first half of five short pieces, Footprints in Jazz, is mostly his own music with the exclusion of one personal number by dancer Valentina Dolci remembering her father to Michel Camilo’s “The Resolution”.
Three pieces are over ten years old, the last one, a heartfelt statement with Maya Angelou’s voiceover speaking “And Still I Shall Rise”, was created in 2019. Anguish, slavery, a narrative voice, but music, that ever-soulful jazz trumpet, matches and transcends her moving words.
Before the women join them, the two male dancers (Oraine Frater and Bafana Matea) amongst seven female (Dolci, Nafisha Baba, Chloe Bertini, Ilaria Breschi, Alice Miano, Lara Renaud, Harley Charles) hold their own in a splendid duet duel in Footprints in Jazz, the opening number, which seems to roam the world.
Baba stands out in a troupe of women smouldering in colourful dresses under Joshua Harriette’s red lights. The colour scheme is red and black in this sultry first half. Cabaret club in hot Havana comes to mind.
With the newest creation in this first half, Tapestry of Life, a solo danced by Nafisah Baba, BBC Young Dancer 2017, and whom I last saw in ZooNation’s Message in a Bottle, Dollie Henry excels herself.
But there is too much voiceover for me: “in the dance of life we find our rhythm, and find out who we are…” “I am a unique tapestry of life”… Baba’s body and expressive fingers speak for themselves.
The second half, Touches of Miles, colour scheme is appropriately blue and black—“Kind of Blue”... A live band of six superlative musicians (Rob Barron on piano, Elias Atkinson trumpet, Joel Rocca on tenor sax, tyroneisaacstuart alto sax, Noah Ojumu drums, Jihad Darwish double bass) take to the stage and put the nine dancers and Henry’s choreography in their place.
I’d close my eyes and listen but for the back projection of select Miles Davis images, collaborations, videos, album covers—a condensed history of the man. A homage to the ‘unique genius”: no doubt, Henry is aiming at the rising new generation she is schooling, at those who don't know of him yet. The legendary man with the horn... what a rewarding mission.
Nine numbers, some heavenly musical interludes, try to get under the skin of Davis’s invention—and what a time he lived through (1926–1991), think Coltrane, think Gillespie, think Gill Evans—with pieces from Henry that recall Bob Fosse and Shirley MacLaine and Sammy Davis Jr in Sweet Charity for me.
Musical theatre numbers: a painter with his muse; a solo danced by Baba called Aranjuez from Davis’s popular “Sketches of Spain” which sends shivers down the spine; Gershwin’s “The Man I Love” arranged by Davis. But it is the riffing solos—each musician shows off his skills—in a band that plays Miles Davis like a dream, that get to me. They deserve the bows from the dancers.