Dance: Kate Prince on why Edinburgh is a second home for Some Like It Hip Hop

IF I COULD live in Edinburgh but work in London, I would,” says Kate Prince, one of the driving forces behind British hip hop dance, and a woman with a serious crush on the Scottish capital. I’m in London to meet Prince prior to her company ZooNation’s first ever UK tour. The excitement surrounding it is palpable, but it’s the Edinburgh dates that Prince is really looking forward to. When Some Like It Hip Hop arrives at the Festival Theatre next week, she knows exactly how she’ll spend her free time – eating in her favourite cafés, showing her dancers the sights and reminiscing about the high points of her time in Edinburgh.

A student at Edinburgh University in the 1990s, Prince took part in several Fringe shows. So, in 2006, when ZooNation was looking for the right venue to showcase its first full-length production, Into The Hoods, she knew exactly where to go.

“We’d all been involved with a lot of Edinburgh Fringe shows before, either choreographing or performing, so we had a history there,” says Prince. “And we had a hunch that Into The Hoods might go down well with a Fringe audience. We knew it was a huge risk, but we sold out and got our money back.”

Prince started ZooNation in 2002, as a way to throw some limelight on the dancers she was choreographing in the music industry. They were, she says, “much more talented than the singers they were dancing behind, but there was no platform for them to be artists”. Into The Hoods solved that, proving just how talented her team was.

Two Fringe runs and a long spell on London’s West End sealed the show’s reputation as one of the most joyous and uplifting dance shows of all time. Anything following it had a lot to live up to – did Prince feel a pressure to come up with the goods a second time?

“Yes, absolutely. But I really took my time. I started writing Into The Hoods in 2005 and I didn’t write Some Like It Hip Hop until 2010. There was a pressure, but all you can do is your best, and sometimes it will touch people and hit the mark – and I think I’ve just been fortunate that both of my shows have done that.”

Loosely based on the 1959 film Some Like It Hot, Prince’s latest show features cross-dressing, mistaken identity and prohibition – but of a different kind. Whereas Jack Lemmon and Tony Curtis faced a shortage of booze, the characters in Some Like It Hip Hop are denied access to books. And all the good jobs in Prince’s fictional world are given to men, forcing two women to don suits and moustaches to hoodwink their way into employment.

Compared to Into The Hoods, Prince has created a more convoluted plotline this time around, but went to great lengths to avoid confusion. “We have a narrator so we’re able to really spell it out for people. Because we have quite young audiences, we try to make it easy for them – we’re not the kind of company that creates something abstract you can interpret in your own way. It’s more about us trying to tell a story to young people, and hoping that other generations will connect with it as well.

“We were very aware that three generations from the same family were coming to see Into the Hoods – and now we’ve started that, we want to continue it.”

That cross-generational success was aided by Prince’s eclectic music choices. By using wall-to-wall hits with a broad appeal, feet of all ages were tapping along. This time around, the company has taken a different approach, composing an entirely original score for Some Like It Hip Hop. Not only that, but Prince has drafted in singers to deliver the material, leading one London critic to dub the show a “hiphopsical”.

“It’s very difficult to get a big company of hip hop dancers who are also cracking singers. So we’ve taken the best singers and the best dancers we could find. It’s like a musical but it’s not, because the characters don’t sing about themselves – the singers are almost like a Greek chorus who take you through the story, while the dancers interpret the songs.”

When Prince talks about “the best”, she’s not joking. Experts in the intricacies of streetdance have been brought in to ensure the “locking”, “crumping” and “waacking” is authentic. But although the movement is lively and dynamic, Prince understands that there’s only so much room for thrills and spills.

“The ‘showing off’ aspect is part of it, but we’re talking about a two-hour show, and a dancer can’t sustain that level of activity for that long – and I don’t think you can sustain an audience’s interest in head spinning and acrobatics for two hours either. The dancers in ZooNation have to be able to do a bit of everything – acting, dancing many different styles, switching roles, it’s a huge challenge.”

Despite the show’s title, some of the rich influences that fed into the birth of hip hop music also feature in the score. Propelled by powerhouse vocals, elements of funk, soul, disco, blues and gospel help foster the family friendly atmosphere Prince is so keen to create.

“Some Like It Hip Hop is not a niche show. It’s very accessible and funny and silly, and that’s not what people think hip hop is going to be – they think it’s dark and mean and manly, and actually this is a very light and uplifting way to spend two hours.”

The idea of hip hop being “manly” is something Prince addresses in the show, however, with a subtle questioning of the misogynistic side to the genre. Has Prince encountered that first hand?

“Yes, I have, but I’m over it now. At the time, I remember thinking ‘this really sucks’. I’ve worked closely with a male choreographer over the past ten years, and our careers have been very similar – but if we were working on the same job, the way he and I were treated was vastly different, even the language people used to speak to me. But I think it’s got less and less as time has gone on – and I’ve learned to stand up for myself.”

Times have indeed changed in the world of hip hop music and dance, and the idea of a show like Prince’s playing in major venues across the UK is no longer alien. But the emergence of hip hop dance, and its integration into the mainstream, doesn’t please everyone. “There’s a lot of debate within the hip hop community as to whether that’s a good or bad thing,” says Prince. “Are the history, culture and foundations being taught properly or are they being diluted?

“But I hope and predict that hip hop dance will grow and grow, and there will be academies across the country, and one day we’ll have a Royal School of Hip Hop Dance just as there is with ballet. I think we need to get past the negative connotations and start looking at the positive, vibrant, beautiful culture that hip hop is.”

• Some Like It Hip Hop is at the  Edinburgh Festival Theatre from 6-7 November.