Anywhere I’ve got even a shred of pull I’ve been talking up Marc Bamuthi Joseph’s show the break/s at the Museum of Contemporary Art for over a month. That being the case, I was a little disappointed, and surprised, to see the house only half-full for tonight’s opening of a three-night run. It’s especially a shame considering how well-crafted, entertaining and provocative (albeit gently so) the work is.
Marc Bamuthi Joseph in the break/s. Photo by Bethanie Hines.
A ton has been said about this piece already; it premiered nearly a year ago at the Walker and Joseph will shortly be moving onto his next performance project, red black and green: a blues. It certainly has the feeling of being lived-in; the always-onstage trio of Joseph, MC Soulati and DJ Excess anticipate each others’ decisions beautifully and the technical design of the piece (which was an order of magnitude more intricate than I was expecting) had literally hundreds of cues, each executed to perfection.
I like my hip-hop buck naked, without ceremony or a campaign for its importance. Granted, I don’t find it “difficult,” although many people do. Joseph makes his assumptions of his audience explicit: Early in the break/s, he makes a clearly intentional yet flippant aside about doing his thing in a Major Cultural Institution and hints at having put one over on people convinced he can simultaneously be high art and hip-hop, although he seems also to be suggesting the ridiculousness of the divide. (Interestingly enough, there was a group in the audience of teenagers with one foot in juvenile hall and not much respect for, well, anything, much less Joseph’s stealthy slippages into references of ballet, Renaissance art and life in academia. Read More…
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