Into The Hoods review at the Royal Festival Hall, Southbank Centre

This August, hit West End street dance show from ZooNation, Into the Hoods returned to the Southbank Centre, bringing with it new talent from Akai Osei, winner of Sky One’s Got to Dance. So in keeping with the spirit of fresh talent TooMuchFlavour sent 14 year old Leah Maddocks to tell us what she thought.

Into the Hoods is a London fairytale, including well known characters from everyone’s favourite childhood stories such as Little Red Riding Hood (Lil Red), Cinderella (Spinderella) and Rap-on-zel (Rapunzel) to name a few.

This London fairytale is set on the Ruff Endz estate, which is the home to all the main characters; DJ Spinderella, Prince, MC Rap-on-Zel, Lil Red, Wolf, Jaxx, Giant and the Landlord.

When two children – played by Lauren Halil and, Akai Osei) – run away from school one day in search of freedom, they find themselves lost in ‘the hood’ with no way out.

The children are found by the Landlord (Frank Wilson) of the Ruff Endz Estate promising to help the children find their way home safely, on one condition – the children must find four presents for the Landlord’s daughter, Rap-on-Zel’s (Rhonda Humphrey) 18th birthday.

Rhonda Humphrey as Rap-on-Zel / Photo: Bill Cooper

During the course of the children’s mission, they come across DJ Spinderella (Sarah Richards), Prince (Roger Davies), Lil Red (Tasha Gooden), Wolf (Dre Oporia), Jaxx (Ross Sands) and Giant (Jeffrey Felicisimo) and watch as the stories and dreams of these characters come to life before your eyes.

The choice of dance moves and songs used in Into the Hoods was good and accessible to all tastes and styles. You do not have to be a dancer to appreciate the incredible choreography and dance moves and styles used in this production. There were a few mistakes here and there (Lil Red falling off laps for example, but always nicely styled out!)

This show is a definite must see for everyone. The storyline is amazingly brilliant, funny and entertaining – it doesn’t matter if you’re into dance or fairytales. I guarantee you will love ZooNation’s Into the Hoods.

For more information on events surrounding Leah’s experience at Into the Hoods, read the TooMuchFlavour blog and find out which dance group showed up with their own camera crew in a vain attempt to keep the spotlight firmly on them…