Walker Art Center Announces 2007-2008 Performing Arts Season
The Walker Art Center released its 2007–2008 performing arts season schedule today, announcing an ambitious program of performances, world premieres, exclusive U.S. engagements, and commissions by leading figures in the contemporary performing arts.
The season opens with the only U.S. engagement by British/German performance collective Gob Squad performing Super Night Shot, a comic and ultimately poignant work which blurs the lines between a party, a live documentary film, and a performance art happening using the streetscape and passersby of downtown Minneapolis as a theatrical backdrop. The work launches a four-part series of programs entitled In:Site/Out, featuring artists who are expanding and redefining notions of theatrical space and the lines between audience and performer. Other 2007–2008 programmatic threads include a three-part fall New World Jazz series by leading composers-performers fusing elements of jazz, chamber music, and innovations on centuries-old world musical traditions; the 20th-anniversary season of Out There, the Walker’s popular boundary-crossing performance festival which celebrates 20 years by looking ahead to the next generation of trailblazers; and the Year of Trisha, which pays tribute to one of America’s most important dance pioneers through performances, site-specific productions, educational activities, talks, and a new Walker-organized exhibition of Brown’s drawings and installations.
The 2007–2008 season is also highlighted by five Walker commissions, including Ugly by ARENA Dances by Mathew Janczewski (Thursday–Saturday, October 18–20), a collaboration with electronic music pioneer Morton Subotnick and one of Minnesota’s leading choreographers; Bill Frisell’s Disfarmer Project (Saturday, October 27), an evening of new compositions inspired by the outsider photographer Mike Disfarmer; dance/theater choreographer David Neumann/Advanced Beginner Group’s Feed Forward (Thursday–Saturday, January 31–February 2), featuring live music by Eve Beglarian in a reimagination of the athletic event as contemporary performance; the world premiere of the break/s by poet/hip-hop theater sensation Marc Bamuthi Joseph (Thursday–Saturday, April 10–12), exploring the personal costs of hip-hop’s ascendancy; and Meredith Monk and Ann Hamilton’s Songs of Ascension (June 2008) in a new work that explores the spiritual, vocal, and physical notions of ascension across geography and time.
Commenting on the 2007–2008 performing arts season, Bither states: “We are thrilled with the spectrum of projects we have organized this year, which charts some of the most inspired and audacious new approaches to live performance from around the world. The season includes legendary masters like Trisha Brown and Meredith Monk, European visionaries like Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker, Jérôme Bel, and Romeo Castellucci, and a host of new voices in contemporary dance, global jazz, new electronic music, and experimental theater, who are fearlessly pushing the live arts into essential new directions.”
Long committed to presenting international work, the Walker offers a 2007–2008 season that is more global than ever, showcasing new works by artists from Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Democratic Republic of Congo, France, Germany, India, Italy, Mexico, Norway, Taiwan, Thailand, Tunisia, and the United Kingdom.
The public is invited to a free 2007–2008 Performing Arts Season Preview on Thursday, September 6, at 7 pm in the William and Nadine McGuire Theater. Philip Bither, William and Nadine McGuire Senior Curator of Performing Arts, will discuss the more than 25 dance, music, and theater events that make up the new season at this free event. A storyteller who holds audiences rapt with his descriptions of finding and witnessing new performances each year, Bither explains why every show he presents is his favorite.
Unless otherwise noted, advance tickets are on sale by phone (612.375.7600) and online at http://tickets.walkerart.org.
WALKER ART CENTER’S 2007–2008 PERFORMING ARTS SEASON
Unless otherwise noted, all events take place in the McGuire Theater.
($) = ticket prices for Walker Art Center members
SEPTEMBER
In:Site/Out Series
Gob Squad
Super Night Shot
Thursday–Saturday, September 20–22, 9 pm
$25 ($21)
Exclusive U.S. Engagement
Enjoy a free drink at the season-launching preshow party!
“Part real-life documentary, part statement on modern society, hilarious, beautiful and saddening, Gob Squad are as modern and real as you can get.” —Ely Standard (England)
Super Night Shot begins exactly one hour before you arrive at the theater. Declaring war on anonymity, U.K./Germany’s Gob Squad takes to the streets of Minneapolis armed with videocams as the public becomes unwitting costars in this often moving, surreal, and comic journey of unexpected surprises and unplanned encounters. The audience welcomes the Gobbers back to the theater with drinks and sparklers and then all enter the McGuire Theater to witness a four-screen cinematic performance adventure mixed live in front of everyone. Ticket price includes complimentary drink in the Walker’s 20.21 Restaurant & Bar for the preshow season-launch party each night.
New World Jazz
Dhafer Youssef
Thursday, September 27, 8 pm
$22 ($18)
“The kind of gig you watched and prayed would never end, charged with such magic that you knew you would be telling people about it in years to come.” —Straight No Chaser
Tunisian-born singer and oud (Arabic lute) virtuoso Dhafer Youssef’s hypnotic, Sufi-inspired music connects the ancient with the modern, the east with the west in an enticing coalescence of culture. Youssef draws on the evocative sound of his Islamic heritage, combining it with new directions in European jazz and “a voice that could stop wars” (Songlines) to create timeless atmospheres of sound. In his Minnesota debut, Youssef will be joined by a string quartet and the omnidextrous U.S. percussionist Satoshi Takeishi.
OCTOBER
Cloud Gate Dance Theatre of Taiwan
Wild Cursive
Saturday, October 13, 8 pm
$42, $36, $31 ($35, $29, $25)
Northrop Auditorium, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis
“[Cloud Gate] is not only on a par with the best modern dance companies of the Old World and the New, but perhaps even beyond.” —Ballet International
On its last U.S. tour, Cloud Gate Dance Theater stunned local audiences with the beautiful and meditative Cursive, which the New York Times named “best dance of the year.” The company returns with Wild Cursive, featuring a singular mix of Asian and Western dance styles and graceful movement inspired by the ancient Asian art of calligraphy, choreographed by Lin Hwai-min (named “Choreographer of the 20th Century” by Dance Europe). Streams of black ink flow across massive scrolls of rice paper, filling the huge Northrop stage, as the astounding dancers of Cloud Gate move with incantatory power.
Copresented with Northrop Auditorium. Funded in part by the National Dance Project of the New England Foundation for the Arts. This tour is made possible by a grant from the Council for Cultural Affairs, Taiwan.
ARENA Dances by Mathew Janczewski
Featuring Electronic Music Pioneer Morton Subotnick
Ugly
Walker Commission, World Premiere
Thursday-Saturday, October 18–20, 8 pm
$25 ($21)
“Janczewski’s choreography has a seamless quality rooted in intelligence, thoughtfulness and grace . . . The dancers perform his works with elegance and strength.” —Star Tribune
America’s obsession with outward physical perfection is investigated in this evening-length work by one of Minnesota’s leading choreographers, Mathew Janczewski. With his eight-member company and West Coast electronic music legend Morton Subotnick (and music ensemble), he explores notions of beauty and ugliness through movement. Following on the success of its 10th-anniversary season, ARENA performs one of its most ambitious works to date.
Co-commissioned by the Walker Art Center through funds provided by the Jerome Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts.
Musical Portraits from Heber Springs: Bill Frisell’s Disfarmer Project
Featuring Greg Leisz and Jenny Scheinman
Walker Commission
Saturday, October 27, 7 and 9:30 pm
$35 ($30)
“Bill Frisell is the Clark Kent of the electric guitar. Soft-spoken and self-effacing in conversation, he apparently breathes in lungfuls of raw fire when he straps on his [guitar].” —Spin
An eccentric and an outsider, photographer Mike Disfarmer took portraits of the residents of Heber Springs, Arkansas, in the 1940s, chronicling heartland America’s working poor. Inspired by these arresting portrayals of postwar rural life, guitar genius Bill Frisell continues his long association with the Walker with an evening of new compositions. His atmospheric and innovative musical language offers a perfect complement to the photographer’s images dissolving across multiple screens framing the stage. In a score of diverse styles—including jazz, classical, and traditional Ozark fiddle music (which Disfarmer played)—Frisell is joined by violinist Jenny Scheinman and lap steel guitar virtuoso Greg Leisz.
Copresented with the Northrop Jazz Season. Co-commissioned by the Walker Art Center and the Wexner Center.
NOVEMBER
In:Site/Out Series
Faustin Linyekula and Les Studios Kabako
Festival of Lies
Thursday–Friday, November 1–2, 8 pm
$20 ($18)
Festival of Lies: Minneapolis
Saturday, November 3, 8 pm (doors open/drinks), 9 pm (show begins)
$25 ($21)
Cedar Cultural Center
“An ethereal figure with a spirit of steel . . . the Congolese choreographer is an intellectual and practical force to be reckoned with.” —The Star, South Africa
Join celebrated Congo-based choreographer Faustin Linyekula and his five-member company as he turns the Cedar into a Kinshasa social club and replicates an all-night soukous party. Linyekula and a diverse range of Twin Cities artists and African immigrant community members including an all-star live band (featuring Yawo Attivar and Siama Matuzungi) and catering by Steven Kaggwa (owner/chef Tam Tam’s African Restaurant) will create an immersive, emotionally resonant piece that radically reinvents an age-old yet politically timely and relevant combination of tradition and myth in which villagers gather to drink, dance, feast, and concoct outrageous lies about their leaders as a way to both laugh about and respond to the violence, corruption, and poverty surrounding them. Saturday’s presentation is further expanded in celebration of local talent with performances by Twin Cities artists from spoken word, dance, theater, storytelling, and community activism.
Copresented with the National Performance Network (NPN) and made possible in part by a grant from the NPN Community Fund. Additional funding provided by the MetLife Community Connections Fund of the National Dance Project, a program administered by the New England Foundation for the Arts; the Performing Arts Fund, a program of Arts Midwest; and the National Endowment for the Arts.
New World Jazz
Frode Haltli Quartet
Featuring Maja Ratkje
Saturday, November 10, 8 pm
$25 ($21)
“Magnificent. . . . When you sometimes feel jaded about music, a performer like Haltli totally wakes you up again.” —Songlines
Acknowledged as one of the outstanding accordion soloists in contemporary music, Norway’s Frode Haltli deepens and makes anew traditional folk sources turning them into stunning, ritualized chamber music of our time. An exceptional improviser and a folk music authority, Haltli has a repertoire that includes lyrical waltzes from Sweden, free jazz experiments inspired by Albert Ayler, and traditional psalms and ballads from his homeland. The quartet also features rising avant-garde Norwegian composer/vocalist Maja Ratkje and viola player Nils Oklandy.
Jérôme Bel and Pichet Klunchun
Pichet Klunchun and Myself
Wednesday–Thursday, November 14–15, 8 pm
$22 ($18)
“A performance of a rare intelligence with very little means.” —Le Figaro (France)
Jérôme Bel is back! Notorious for his hotly debated conceptual dance, Parisian provocateur/innovator Bel turned the dance/performance world in the Twin Cities on its head in 2005 with his highly celebrated The show must go on. Now, in a frequently funny and intimate dance dialogue, two artists from radically different worlds—Bel and classical Thai dance master Pichet Klunchun—come together for a fascinating exchange of ideas and movement, all combining for a understated, yet captivating conceptual performance that revels in our common humanity.
Supported in part with funds from FUSED: French U.S. Exchange in Dance, a program of the National Dance Project/New England Foundation for the Arts and the Cultural Services of the French Embassy in New York, in collaboration with FACE (French American Cultural Exchange). Additional support provided by King’s Fountain/Barbara Watson and Henry Pillsbury.
New World Jazz
Kinsmen/Svajanam
Featuring Kadri Gopalnath and Rudresh Mahanthappa
Friday, November 16, 8 pm
$25 ($21)
“With this visionary new work, Rudresh Mahanthappa is boldly breaking some exciting new ground while going all the way back to his Indian roots.” —Jazz Times
Two alto sax masters—Kadri Gopalnath, a living legend of South Indian carnatic music, and Rudresh Mahanthappa, a fiercely innovative Indian American jazz musician—unite to fuse East and West, tradition and innovation, in an evening that traverses unexplored sonic terrain. Most recently at the Walker performing with jazz pianist Vijay Iyer, Mahanthappa is joined by Gopalnath and the Dakshina Ensemble, featuring Kanya Kumari (violin), Rez Abbasi (guitars), Carlo de Rosa (bass), Gautam Siram (mridangam), and Elliot Kavee (drums). Presented in association with the Indian Music Society of Minnesota (IMSOM). U.S. tour commissioned and presented by the Asia Society.
Choreographers’ Evening
Curated by Emily Johnson
Saturday, November 24, 7 and 9:30 pm
$18 ($15)
“[An] annual smorgasbord of classic, offbeat, up-and-coming, or just plain zany talent.” —The Rake
For more than 30 years, Choreographers’ Evening has served as the major gathering for the Twin Cities’ vital independent dance community. Witness and celebrate the remarkably diverse range of Minnesota dance. From established choreographers playing with new ideas to some of the freshest talent on the scene, this mix of short works typically ranges from ballet to clogging, classical Indian dance to Spanish flamenco, dramatic dance-theater to comic vignettes. Curated by the “fresh and fierce, evocative and disciplined” (Dance Magazine) choreographer and former Momentum artist Emily Johnson.
Supported by the Moore Family Fund for the Arts of the Minneapolis Foundation.
DECEMBER
Steven Bernstein’s Millennial Territory Orchestra
Saturday, December 1, 7 and 9:30 pm
$35 ($30)
“. . . when the time comes, Bernstein clicks an invisible switch and the band pops into semi-flawless unison. At that point, you might imagine yourself in Harlem in 1929 . . .” —The Village Voice
Tearing into witty and funky new arrangements of little-known jazz nuggets from the 1920s and 30s, Steven Bernstein (Grammy-nominated composer/Sex Mob leader/trumpeter) leads an improvisational nine-piece outfit playing irreverent 21st-century jazz. The band is consistently praised for uniting sexy grooves spanning a century of music—from Don Redman to Sly Stone to the present—with free jazz abandon. Featuring Matt Munisteri (guitar), Ben Allison (bass), Charlie Burnham (violin), Ben Perowsky (drums), Erik Lawrence (reeds), Doug Wieselman (reeds), Peter Apfelbaum (reeds), Clark Gayton (trombone), and Bernstein (trumpet, slide trumpet). Copresented with the Northrop Jazz Season.
Nortec Collective
Saturday, December 8, 8 pm
$22 ($18)
“Frighteningly original, refreshingly cool.” —Rolling Stone
Viva Nortec, la nueva frontera de la música! Made up of DJs, graphic artists, and filmmakers, Tijuana’s Nortec Collective delivers some of the freshest electro-ambient dance music in North America. Riffing and ripping traditional norteña and ranchera music, Nortec DJs fuse frenetic beats, deep bass, loco samples, and Tijuana brass for an infectious collision of style and culture, tradition and innovation. Presented in conjunction with the exhibition Frida Kahlo, on view at the Walker October 27–January 20. Supported by the Consulate of Mexico in Saint Paul.
JANUARY
Out There 20: Two Decades of Looking Forward
January 9–February 2
For 20 years, the Out There Festival of boundary-crossing performance has brought some of the most provocative, exhilarating, unexpected theatrical experiences to the Twin Cities, featuring artists who naturally mix movement, media, text, performance styles, visual culture, and technology with abandon. Fitting for a series that has always looked ahead, Out There celebrates its 20th season by inviting four American ensembles new to the Walker and to Minnesota, but whose breathtaking work is helping to point the way to the future of live performing arts. In recent seasons, Out There has focused in particular on works (Out There 18: Performance meets the Moving Image) and more heavily text-based pieces (Out There 19). This year, physicality holds the day, with each work offering a new style of dance-theater or physical drama.
In:Site/Out Series
Miguel Gutierrez and the Powerful People
Everyone
Wednesday–Thursday, January 9–10, 8 pm
Friday–Saturday, January 11–12, 7 and 9:30 pm
$20 ($14 Wednesday; $16 Thursday–Saturday)
“At a time when so much art lacks a heartbeat, Mr. Gutierrez’s chest pounds. Everyone [is an] adrenaline burst, smart and moving and full of questions, the way only real art can be.”
—The New York Times
As the first event of Out There 20, Everyone (by New York City free radical choreographer Gutierrez) upends the traditional theatrical experience by seating the audience on the stage and creating an unforgettably intimate event about the here, the now, and the personal lives of the Powerful People performers. Presented in intricately woven, beautifully realized scenes of movement, live music, and text, Everyone is a tender and daring look at what it means to be together while taking care of one’s self in a climate of uncertain and violent times. Very limited seating available for this unforgettable performance, which kicks off the next 20 years of Out There. Copresented with the National Performance Network (NPN).
The TEAM
Particularly in the Heartland
Thursday–Saturday, January 17–19, 8 pm
$20 ($14 Thursday; $16 Friday and Saturday)
“Simultaneously intelligent, rueful, celebratory, delightful, and devastatingly sad . . . the show actually lives up to its ambitions.” —Time Out New York
After the Rapture, Bobby Kennedy’s ghost, fundamentalist orphans, and a pregnant alien converge in Kansas for a mischievously surreal, disarmingly dreamlike and profound rumination on the American soul. Creating new theater in the spirit of the Wooster Group, Ann Bogart, and Elevator Repair Service, this young and witty New York City-based company has gained considerable notice in the United Kingdom. Lending raucous intelligence and exuberant athleticism to its refreshingly post-ironic world view, the TEAM reflects their generation’s interest in authentic emotion and a willingness to see goodness where one might least expect it.
Claude Wampler
PERFORMANCE (career ender)
Thursday, January 24, 8 pm
Friday–Saturday, January 25–26, 7 and 9:30 pm
$20 ($14 Thursday; $16 Friday and Saturday)
“Visual artists who create performance works are nothing new, but Claude Wampler, a tiny woman with austere artistic intent, is a wonder.” —The New York Times
In this multilayered more-than-meets-the-eye performance experience—equal parts rock show and art installation—polar bears, smoke, ghost rock, and the unexpected coexist and twist between formality and playful abandon, virtual and actual. Championed as an unfettered, boundary-hopping force, Wampler has spent the last decade researching, reformulating, and destabilizing the notions of theatrical expectations to challenge audiences in the best of all possible ways.
David Neumann/Advanced Beginner Group
Feed Forward
Walker Commission
Thursday–Saturday, January 31–February 2, 8 pm
$20 ($14 Thursday; $16 Friday and Saturday)
“Take a smart kid with a fluid physique, steep him in both TV and the Downtown theater scene from toddlerhood, mix virtuoso dance technique with a healthy dose of street and club culture, and you’ve got . . . a recipe for startling creativity.” —The Village Voice
Neumann’s challenging and humorous Feed Forward features live music by leading-edge composer Eve Beglarian and reimagines the athletic event as contemporary performance. This epic gambol usurps the rules, strategies, movement, and behavior of such sports as baseball, basketball, and football to create an arresting, homemade, and curiously complex performance. At the intersection of sport and dance, Neumann’s famously diverse cast and Beglarian’s trombone choir explore larger themes of physicality of aggression and the mind’s relationship to time—all shaped and exploded on human bodies. Imagine Merce Cunningham coaching a soccer team comprised of members from your last family reunion.
Copresented with the National Performance Network (NPN). FeedForward is a NPN Creation Fund Project, co-commissioned by the Walker Art Center in partnership with Alverno College, and the NPN. Additional funds provided by the Moore Family Fund for the Arts of the Minneapolis Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts.
FEBRUARY
Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker/ROSAS
FASE: Four Movements to the Music of Steve Reich
Exclusive U.S. Engagement
Thursday–Saturday, February 7–9, 8 pm
$28 ($23)
“A thrilling work: rigorous and pure, the dancing burns like dry ice. And like the splendid early Steve Reich compositions it’s set to, its minimal elements stir up rich cross-currents . . . a stunning image of daring within order and turbulence within calm.” —The Village Voice
A leading force in European dance returns to the Walker with an intense and intricate duet, one of her first masterpieces. Performed by De Keersmaeker and Rosas principal dancer Tale Dolven, FASE is a landmark of contemporary dance from 1982 set to the music of American minimalist composer Steve Reich. Embodying the simple rhythmic structure of the music, which becomes more complex as the dance progresses, De Keersmaeker captures with spellbinding clarity the power of visual geometry. Ultimately, this breathtaking work celebrates the tension between rigorous formal structures and the dynamics of human emotion.
Romeo Castellucci and Societas Raffaello Sanzio
Hey Girl!
Thursday–Saturday, February 14–16, 8 pm
$35 ($30)
“Hypnotically beautiful [with] a visual resonance that you find all too rarely on stage . . . Exquisite intensity flows through much of what Castellucci calls his ‘drama of movement.’” —Financial Times
Bear witness as a girl evolves from birth through the brutality of adolescence to the sexual independence and power of womanhood. Trained as a visual artist, Italy’s acclaimed Romeo Castellucci creates an otherworldly theater of the subconscious in which visual and sonic landscapes are nuanced with deeply layered historical and spiritual allusion that feel timeless yet uncannily current. With raw architectural sets, large-scale paintings and sculpture, projections, exploding glass, and riveting performances by two actresses (and 40 additional male performers), Hey Girl! constructs a world that alternates between the beautiful and the horrific. Note: Contains nudity and simulated violence.
Copresented with the University of Minnesota Department of Theatre Arts. Support provided by Mike Sweeney.
MARCH
William Yang
Shadows
Wednesday–Thursday, March 12–13, 8 pm
$20 ($16)
“Rich in detail, politically astute and powerful . . . Shadows illuminates the ‘stains’ which make us human and the ‘shadows’ of history which continue to haunt.” —The Sydney Morning Herald
Through the deceptively simple format of a slide show, one of Australia’s great photographers/performance artists spins an engrossing web of stories about two communities that have suffered under ignorance and fear—Australia’s aborigines and its migrant Germans. Understated yet visually striking, and peppered with a wry sense of humor, Shadows is part social documentary and part personal storytelling, illuminating the lives of other “outsiders” through the eyes of a gay Chinese Australian. Yang’s understated language and arresting imagery come to life along with a haunting live score by fellow Australian multi-instrumentalist Colin Offord.
Prezens Quartet (David Torn/Tim Berne/Craig Taborn/Tom Rainey) and Drew Gress’ 7 Black Butterflies (featuring Ralph Alessi)
Friday, March 28, 8 pm
$25 ($21)
“Mr. Torn’s quartet is committed to a dark, eruptive, oceanic sound . . . propelling a transit from panic to trance.” —The New York Sun
Avant-guitar god David Torn’s all-star quartet strikes the perfect balance between jazz and electronic, elemental and explosive, free and form. Tim Berne (alto sax); Minneapolis-native Craig Taborn (Rhodes, B3, mellotron, bent circuits), and Tom Rainey (drums), all respected new jazz iconoclasts from New York’s Downtown school, complete the exhilarating live combustion. The opening quintet, 7 Black Butterflies, also features Berne, Taborn, and Rainey along with the astonishing Ralph Alessi on trumpet, and is led by the superbly articulate bassist Drew Gress.
APRIL
Marc Bamuthi Joseph
the break/s
World Premiere, Walker Commission
Thursday–Saturday, April 10–12, 8 pm
$22 ($14 Thursday; $18 Friday and Saturday)
“Rarely do word and movement mesh so seamlessly and elegantly. . . [Joseph’s] stories put sound and gesture on a single continuum of expression.” —The Washington Post
the break/s explores the personal costs of hip-hop’s ascendancy from a local political/arts movement to a worldwide cultural force that creates racial and cultural expectations on an unprecedented scale. Taking its lead from Jeff Chang’s seminal hip-hop history Don’t Stop, Won’t Stop, this dynamic new work was forged by the charismatic poet/hip-hop theater sensation Marc Bamuthi Joseph, who deftly combines movement, spoken word, personal storytelling, and poetic revelation. Featuring live music by remarkable human beatbox/percussionist Tommy Shepherd and DJ Excess, and live video by David Slzasa.
Co-commissioned by the Walker Art Center through funds provided by the National Endowment for the Arts.
Trisha Brown Dance Company
Present Tense, Foray Forêt, and New Work (TBA)
Friday, April 25, 8 pm
$42, $36, $31 ($35, $29, $25)
Northrop Auditorium, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis
“Brown has defined the cutting edge of American dance since her first experiments at the Judson Dance Theater in the ’60s . . .” —The Village Voice
An icon of contemporary dance, Trisha Brown is regularly seen in the world’s great opera houses and festivals. She has consistently pushed the limits of choreography, creating some of the most compelling and visually powerful work of the past four decades—from her roots in the experimental Judson Church to her early site-specific dances that took place on rooftops and down walls to the fluid, precise movement of her more recent work. This evening of new and classic dances includes Foray Forêt, a signature work by the company originally commissioned by the Walker in 1991 (featuring the sounds of an invisible marching band), and Present Tense, a new work set to the music of John Cage.
Presented as part of the Year of Trisha, a collaboration between the Walker Art Center, Northrop Dance Season, and the University of Minnesota Dance Program. A Walker exhibition of Brown’s drawings and site-specific performances run April–August 2008.
The Year of Trisha, which includes the reconstruction of several early works, was made possible by the National Endowment for the Arts American Masterpiece: Dance Initiative, administered by the New England Foundation for the Arts. Additional support is provided by the National Endowment for the Arts.
MAY
The World of Dosh—Martin Dosh & Friends
Saturday, May 3, 8 pm
$20 ($18)
“Grafting dissonant nods to Brian Eno, Autechre, and My Bloody Valentine, Anticon affiliates Alias and Dosh inject their own genetic peculiarities into the ever-pulsing pedigree.” —_The Austin Chronicl_e
Spend an evening exploring the sonic worlds of Minneapolis avant-rock luminary Martin Dosh, along with local and national special musical guests, including Andrew Bird, Jel, Jeremy Ylvisaker, Andrew Broder, Mike Lewis, and others.This venerated Anticon recording artist is lauded by fellow musicians for his astounding solo, multi-instrumental abilities, combining elements of jazz, electro, hip-hop, minimalism, and ambient. A key collaborator with the likes of Andrew Bird, Redstart, Fog, Lateduster, and many others, the World of Dosh promises to be a surprising, magical place.
JUNE
In:Site/Out Series
Back to Back Theater
Small Metal Objects
Thursday–Friday, June 5–6, 7 pm
Saturday, June 7, 1 and 7 pm
$22 ($18)
Minneapolis Sculpture Garden
“Small Metal Objects turns the notion of theatre and the everyday inside out. It is a pure, open-hearted, complex and breathtaking production . . . a unique meditation on human worth.” —The Sydney Morning Herald
Gary and Steve are men who normally escape notice—possibly mentally disabled and seemingly homeless. But they play an inadvertently pivotal role in the life of two ambitious executives who arrange to meet for a “transaction.” Set against the shifting backdrop of the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden in summer, this ingenious site-specific gem unfolds before an audience wired with headphones. Master provocateurs, Back to Back does a mighty job nudging and subverting its viewers into seeing beauty where it is hidden. This unforgettable work expands the theatrical frame with the unpredictability of public space.
Meredith Monk and Ann Hamilton
Songs of Ascension
Featuring the Meredith Monk Vocal Ensemble
Walker Commission
June 2008
“[Meredith Monk is a] high priestess of enchantment . . . she invites you to bypass the part of your brain that craves logic and understanding and to respond intuitively to the wondrous qualities of her . . . sounds and images.” —The New York Times
Songs of Ascension explores the spiritual, vocal, and physical notions of ascension across geography and time. Combining the pristine music and iconoclastic theatricality of Meredith Monk with raw, sensuous visual elements by visual artist Ann Hamilton as well as the otherworldly sounds of Monk’s Vocal Ensemble collaborating with a selection of top New York instrumentalists, this evening-length work will refocus your perceptions of music-theater. Join us for “one of America’s most brilliant and unclassifiable theatrical artists” (The New York Times).
Co-commissioned by the Walker Art Center through funds provided by the National Endowment for the Arts.