Line Breaks Hip-Hop Theater Festival
David Hong
Danez Smith
media release: OMAI’s Line Breaks Hip Hop Theater Festival consists of performances, lectures, and discussions by First Wave students and invited professional artists engaging with the Madison community, on and off campus. Inaugurated through OMAI’s sponsored Marc Bamuthi Joseph Arts Institute Residency in the spring of 2007, the Line Breaks project culminated in a final performance of student work called “Just Bust!” – an event, which has evolved into our monthly open mic, now running for 15 years.
Line Breaks Festival brings the top new aesthetics in contemporary hip hop and interdisciplinary performance art to the UW-Madison campus and the surrounding community. It has evolved into a space for the investigation of contemporary American culture through the lens of hip-hop performance. Line Breaks is now one of the largest Hip Hop-centered performance festivals in the Midwest and continues to be a space for the cultivation and presentation of independent and collaborative work by First Wave artist-scholars. Here, unique responses to common human experiences are explored. The narratives, myths and legends, specific to these diverse communities, are unearthed, distilled and presented in an environment that encourages discussion, and continued investigation.
Registration is required due to capacity restrictions.
Fri, April 1, 2022
5:00 – 7:00 PM Line Breaks Opening Reception in the Wisconsin Studio, Overture Center
In partnership with the Wisconsin Alumni Association, the Line Breaks Opening Reception will feature refreshments, light catering, bar, and DJ. Throughout the space, we will install an exhibition of First Wave visual and design artists to present and discuss their work with guests.
The programme for the reception will take place 5:30 – 6:30 p.m., where we will host WAA’s Wisconsin Idea Spotlight Panel, featuring key First Wave alumni Danez Smith, and Erika Dickerson-Despenza; Professor Chris Walker, founding Faculty Artistic Director of OMAI, and Director of the Division of the Arts; and Dr. LaVar Charleston, Deputy Vice Chancellor for Diversity and Inclusion, Vice Provost and Chief Diversity Officer at UW-Madison.
7:00 – 9:00 PM Line Breaks Hip Hop Theater Festival Showcase in the Playhouse Theater, Overture Center
This evening showcase will include performances by First Wave 14th Cohort Ensemble, First Wave Touring Ensemble, and conclude with a debut staging of summer, somewhere by First Wave alum Danez Smith, featuring a small ensemble of First Wave scholars directed by Professor Chris Walker.
Sat, April 2, 2022
2:00 – 4:00 PM Badger Meet Up: Line Breaks Edition: In partnership with the Wisconsin Alumni Association, UW alumni from Classes 2007 – 2017 with an interest in multicultural arts are invited for a brunch mixer with refreshments, music and performances honoring the 15th Anniversary of UW-Madison’s Office of Multicultural Arts Initiatives.
6:00 – 8:00 PM Line Breaks Hip Hop Theater Festival Showcase in the Playhouse Theater, Overture Center
This evening showcase will include performances by First Wave 14th Cohort Ensemble, 12th Cohort member Dawry Ruiz’s Speakeasy, and the JVN Project’s Fashion Show. Featuring special performances by musical trio Klassik, B~Free, and Quinten Farr. Each musical set will have its own visual backdrop and lighting.
Also: UW-Madison Arts Crawl in partnership with the Division of the Arts, Thursday, March 31 – Saturday, April 2. Find more info at https://arts.wisc.edu/arts-at-uw/arts-crawl-2022/
Line Breaks performances
First Wave 14th Cohort Ensemble: The first-year of the First Wave curriculum includes a course instructed by Professor Chris Walker where the newest cohort in the First Wave community engage in Walker’s First Wave Process. Dance 259: Collaborative Arts Performance Lab is a unique course designed to further engage students in creative problem solving and devising performance processes. Students work together under facilitation to create work and produce performances of hip hop theater, experimental theater and other collaborative performance art works for public viewing. The course content is repeatable and the work is developed in stages in each workshop. Students are introduced to the three pillars of the First Wave Program – Arts, Activism and Academics and how they interact with and within multiple contemporary art processes. They work together in a creative workshop space to practice, collaborate and engage in creative research processes using the elements of Hip Hop and the creative problem solving tools that shape them as points of engagement and departure. The FW 14th Cohort will present their collaborative work both evenings of the Line Breaks Festival and participate in a talk back with the audience.
First Wave Touring Ensemble: The First Wave Touring Ensemble, consisting of Jackson Neal, Sarah Abbas, Azura Mizan Tyabji , and Zachary Lesmeister, fuses music, poetry, and movement to put forth new work exemplary of the First Wave collaborative experience.
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