BRKFST performs “STORMCLUTTER” at College of the Holy Cross

The breaking bodies on the bare black stage are bodies of political discord, bodies of a strife between families in an age of tumult and tempest.

This is at least one way to approach the performance. Co-founder of the dance group BRKFST, Joseph Trần (a.k.a. “MN Joe”), explains that the original idea for STORMCLUTTER, which the group performed on Sept. 24, 2026, at the Prior Performing Arts Center at College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts, was to address the relationship rifts he saw occurring because of disagreements over political stances and ideologies.

“There was a lot of turmoil happening in the world,” Trần said about the political divides he saw opening up around him a few years ago. “And we had a lot of family and friends that had varying opinions on these matters.”

BRKFST co-founder Lisa Berman (a.k.a. “MonaLisa”) said the show then “evolved,” and the group began “looking at our relationships with each other, with the people that we were creating it with.” For Berman, the show is about accepting others. “All the baggage that we have from each of our individual pasts [. . .] accepting what people bring with them,” Berman said.

Trần and Berman are not just co-founders of BRKFST but a couple with a long history. Minnesota natives, the two met while learning to breakdance back in the early 2000s. “We both did it just for breaking. [. . .] We both loved breaking. We loved the culture,” Berman said. They also enjoyed the competition and dance battles of the breaking world. But for a time, Berman went to New York to test her mettle as a dancer. She achieved success and performed in a show called Battle of Yestermore with Bgirl Rokafella, which toured to other cities. The show was pivotal, not only because it meant a paycheck, but because Berman realized dancing could sustain her: “It opened my eyes to the possibility [of a career as a breaker].”

BRKFST performs STORMCLUTTER at College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts, September 2026. Images courtesy of College of the Holy Cross. Photography by Caroline Axvig at The Prior Performing Arts Center.

Following her stint as a dancer in Battle of Yestermore, Berman returned to Minnesota and joined efforts with Trần in 2014 to start a new group, which eventually became BRKFST. It was basically friends and dancers in the community with whom, as Trần said, they could “collaborate and make some work.” While they didn’t begin as a breaking crew, as the group transformed, they seemed to have a specialty. “[W]hat remained were just breakers,” Trần said, though their music composer Renée Copeland has always been with the group.

According to Trần and Berman, BRKFST is unique. They focus on breaking specifically, rather than popping, locking, and other modes of street-style movement. Trần said they are one of the few groups in the United States with a breaking focus. Their mission, in part, is “to cultivate a collaborative and equitable space for artists through breaking.”

BRKFST has always been a small group of six or so performers and understudies. With full-time jobs, the members of the group had limited time to create and rehearse their earliest work. “It took us three years to make our first show,” Berman said. They performed their first show, Seconds, in 2017, and another show, Paper/Trails, in 2019. The group has been commissioned by many arts centers and performance venues, and it has received numerous grants over the years. One in particular, the highly competitive New England Foundation for the Arts National Dance Production Grant, was perhaps the most important. “[I]t opened a lot of doors,” Berman said, explaining that BRKFST then caught the eye of College of the Holy Cross. With the help of Jeffrey de Caen, the Nancy Savage Skinner ’79 Director of the Prior Performing Arts Center, BRKFST was awarded an artist residency at Holy Cross.

BRKFST performs STORMCLUTTER at College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts, September 2026. Images courtesy of College of the Holy Cross. Photography by Caroline Axvig at The Prior Performing Arts Center.

BRKFST chose to perform their show STORMCLUTTER as part of their residency, which had its debut at the McGuire Theater (Walker Arts Center) in Minnesota in 2024. I had a front row seat for the latest rendition of the show, which took place in a prop-less performance space. In STORMCLUTTER, the bodies themselves are kind of like props, at least at times during the 45-minute show. Trần and Berman choreographed and directed the movements, in collaboration with Travis “Seqal” Johnson, Marie Thayer, and Azaria “AZ” Evans-Parham.

The show begins with a group of five bodies at center stage. The bodies are performed by Trần, Berman, Evans-Parham, Thayer, and Cecil “Virgo: The Final Warning” Neal. Trần’s character stands in the middle of the other four who surround him. As the performance begins, Trần’s character raises his hand to the flies. He slowly lowers his hand until it finally reaches the ground, and then the group begins to move. Throughout the show, original music by Copeland plays as the dancers dance. Garvin Jellison recreated the lighting (originally by Karin Olson) for the Holy Cross performance. The group’s green costumes were designed by Sarah Bahr.

The show is a series of stories which form what Trần and Berman agree is a “non-linear narrative.” At different times throughout the show, bodies isolate, collide, sustain each other. Two dancers might form a single entity through a strange twining or embracing. Bodies also resemble driftwood on a shore, perhaps an allusion to the bodies thrown onto the beach at the outset of Shakespeare’s The Tempest—a different kind of storm clutter.

Joseph (“MN Joe”) Trần performs in STORMCLUTTER. Images courtesy of College of the Holy Cross. Photography by Caroline Axvig at The Prior Performing Arts Center.

As one element of the non-linear narrative, Berman explained that her character experiences an awakening, when “I can’t take care of other people anymore—I have to take care of myself. [. . .] I remove myself.” Trần added that “[Berman’s] character has to let the person hit rock bottom essentially.”

The breaking includes windmills, footwork, and a number of freezes, where the dancers sometimes put their full weight on their arms and hands and hold it for a time. A fascinating display of creativity and prowess occurs at the end of the performance, as the dancers interlace and interlock their bodies into a single flesh, a single humanity. Neal’s character then tugs and pulls the mass of humanity (rickshaw-like) across the stage to the wing, stage right. In retrospect, I see a similarity between this final movement and the final movement of Bertolt Brecht’s Mother Courage and Her Children. Only in STORMCLUTTER, the wagon is made of people. But, in a Beckettian echo, both Mother Courage and the characters in STORMCLUTTER are determined to go on, despite their hardships, despite their divides, despite their losses.

This ending, this entire show, is especially poignant when you understand that Berman only recently beat cancer for the second time. Even as the group planned to perform the show at Holy Cross, uncertainties developed around Berman’s health. “This performance of STORMCLUTTER was my first performance back,” Berman said. The show’s themes of carrying one another, holding onto one another, and surviving storms are thus all the more powerful when you realize what the performers themselves have endured.

BRKFST performs STORMCLUTTER at College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts, September 2026. Images courtesy of College of the Holy Cross. Photography by Caroline Axvig at The Prior Performing Arts Center.

Of course, as Trần said, STORMCLUTTER is open to other interpretations. Viewers can see many things within the bodies and the relationships of the characters. It may be a political commentary for one viewer and something else for another.

The Prior Performing Arts Center at Holy Cross has offered BRKFST a second residency for September 2027, so the group will be working on a new show for audiences next year. Before that, however, Trần and Berman will be in creative residence at the Maggie Allesee National Center for Choreography (MANCC) to develop a two-person performance, which will take place at Florida State University in Tallahassee, Florida, in November 2026. They will then premiere this duet in New York in January 2027. Originally, the two planned to work on the duet last spring, but Berman’s health took precedence. Trần explained that Berman’s survival will be a theme in their duet, but it will also contain themes of identity, lineage, and, as Trần said, “what gets passed down to you.”