Northrop Presents

BRKFST Dance Company

Sat, Jun 8, 7:30 pm 
Sun, Jun 9, 2:00 pm
McGuire Theater, The Walker Art Center

Jun 8 Tickets
Jun 9 Tickets
Captioning
Five dancers appear in a spotlight otherwise surrounded by darkness. Four of the dancers form a circle around the fifth dancer who is up in the air with their leg outstretched.

Alert: Performances have been rescheduled for Jun 8 & 9 at Walker Art Center. Previous ticket holders have been contacted via email. Contact the Northrop Box Office at 612-624-2345 (Mon-Fri, 10:00 am-5:00 pm) and umntix@umn.edu for questions regarding your event tickets. 

Tickets to the rescheduled dates at the Walker Art Center are available for purchase now.

BRKFST Dance Company presents two wildly different works of art in celebration of their 10-year anniversary. BRKFST continues to “show us the future of dance” (Star Tribune) with STORMCLUTTER, a world premiere co-commissioned by The Cowles Center and Northrop, with composition by company member Renée Copeland. Their unique style of breaking and storytelling shines through in a restaging of Dancers, Dreamers, and Presidents by composer Daniel Bernard Roumain. 

STORMCLUTTER is an exploration of relationships and ongoing efforts to resolve opposing states of interpersonal tension. Misunderstanding, compassion, resentment, egoism, love, loss, betrayal—moving through or attempting to compartmentalize complex dynamics between family and friends and the emotional baggage collected over time becomes an overwhelming task, while maturation requires people to accept that which they cannot change. BRKFST members illustrate the efforts individuals may take when working to resolve the inner chaos that triggers feelings of dissociation, paralysis, and isolation.

BRKFST interprets Dancers, Dreamers, and Presidents as a commentary on American life that is filled with a mix of ambition, passion, blame, justice, hope, and love. And while this country is deemed the “land of the free,” it is riddled with systemic problems that seem impossible to overcome. For many, the “American Dream” remains just that—a dream.

 

Rescheduled from Apr 27-28 at The Cowles Center.

Gallery

Know Before You Go

Event Information

If you need assistance with your tickets, please call the Box Office at 612-624-2345, email umntix@umn.edu.

 

Learn More - Explore These Themes

The content below derives from the Northrop Across Campus Program that supports Northrop's mission towards intersections between performing arts and education for the benefit of all participants now and for generations to come.

Find ways to make thematic connections to these suggested topics:

  • Dance: Urban & Street Dance, Modern/Contemporary
  • Music: Composition, Orchestra, Modern

Start a conversation about the performance, or encourage reflection, using these questions as inspiration.

In April, Northrop and the Cowles Center will be copresenting Twin Cities-based BRKFST dance company. The program includes the premiere of a Northrop Centennial Commission and a proscenium adaptation of a National Dance Project-funded work set to Daniel Bernard Roumain’s Dancers, Dreamers, and Presidents, an orchestral tone poem inspired by Ellen DeGeneres and then-senator Barack Obama dancing on the Ellen Show in 2007. 

  • Why do you think a dance company known for breaking would choose to set their work to a classically-based form of music? 
  • Do you believe that collaborating across forms will introduce new audiences to breaking and to classical music? Why or why not?

Breaking, the original hip-hop dance form, was pioneered by Black and Brown communities in the Bronx, New York in 1973. It emerged as a way of reclaiming power and identity through movement in response to widespread disregard by the government for the livelihoods and prosperity of BIPOC individuals.

  • How do you take a street style and put it on the stage, without losing the essence of the dance form?
  • Would you say that seeing breaking or other street dance forms on proscenium stages–traditionally Eurocentric spaces–could be a form of activism? Why or why not?

In July 2023, BRKFST collaborated with the Minnesota Orchestra for a special interpretation of Beethoven’s Grosse Fuge–the first time BRKFST choreographed a piece to classical music. Igor Stravinsky once called Grosse Fuge “an absolutely contemporary piece of music that will be contemporary forever.”

  • What makes a piece of art contemporary? 
  • How do you imagine combining two distinct art forms–classical music and breaking–might breathe new life into an almost 200-year-old piece like Grosse Fuge? 
  • What challenges might a collaborative ensemble like BRKFST face when choreographing to Grosse Fuge?

Acknowledgments

The creation of Dancers, Dreamers and Presidents by Daniel Bernard Roumain was made possible by the New England Foundation for the Arts’ National Dance Project, with lead funding from the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation and the Mellon Foundation and commissioned by the Hartford Symphony Orchestra of Hartford, CT and Minnesota Orchestra of Minneapolis, MN.

Northrop and BRKFST wish to thank the Walker Art Center for providing its McGuire Theater and staff management support at a time of pressing need due to the unexpected closure of Cowles Center for the Arts.

Minnesota State Arts Board - logos

This activity is made possible by the voters of Minnesota through a Minnesota State Arts Board Operating Support grant, thanks to a legislative appropriation from the Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund.

Part of a Series

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2023-24 Northrop Dance Series