At first, it may seem as if Marina Tabassum’s carapace-like pavilion will be the wrong venue for Malcolm-x Betts and Nile Harris’s performance piece. While the audience is covered by the wooden and plastic canopies, the playing space is open to the elements, and a ginkgo tree stands in the middle. It’s been raining all day, but for the 50 minutes of Temporary Boyfriend, the heavens, mercifully, remain closed.
The two American performers begin in their piece in darkness and when one of them rides in on a Boris bike, the setting appears distinctly British. Betts performs little tricks on the bike – nothing special – just, perhaps, a teenage boy whiling away the time. Harris saunters in wearing a similar hoodie with Basquiat-inspired graffiti sucking a lollipop. He holds the bike securely as Harris tries more balancing stunts. Are these two men cruising for company in a park?
The answer is never given. For the next 20 minutes or so in this semi-improvised performance, the two men dance mainly alone to a sound design by GENG PTP. There are a few nods to hip-hop, even more to vogue; a flick of a leg, the backwards flip of a neck. Rarely do the two men come together until this section ends with them in a half-embrace up against the gingko tree. It’s intriguing to watch, but the deliberate looseness is sometimes frustrating.
Temporary Boyfriend is more engaging when the two men retrieve microphones hidden under the pavilion’s benches. As they chat, their performance increasingly becomes more familiar as Live Art. Bundles of fluorescent lights are thrown around while spotlights are placed in the gap between the two halves of the pavilion to create some impressive shadows. What it all means is never explained, but alludes, at times, to Radical Blackness and queer black masculinity.
By the time Harris pulls a covered trolley on stage, we are completely on their side, and the ending feels strangely British and understated. As we walk back through a completely dark Kensington Gardens, the rain threatens again.
Runs until 13 September 2025
