THE BAPTISM
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Written and Performed by
Carl Hancock Rux
Directed by
Carrie Mae Weems
Commissioned by
Lincoln Center
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“The Baptism” recreates the Black body as the flower, as the field, as the seminal building blocks of life, even as architecture, as when Mr. Rux says, “Every being is a building with music — grace upon grace upon grace.”
Conceptually the piece feels like a cousin to Beyoncé’s recent visual poem, “Black Is King,” which also relished abstraction, drawing from sound and imagery and metaphor to define Blackness positively and holistically.”