Contemporary choreographers consistently push the boundaries of what constitutes dance, performance art, and visual art. Join leading, local dance curators Laurie Van Wieren, Pramila Vasudevan, and Jeffrey Wells as they discuss this increasingly blurred line, especially as it relates to the Walker’s current performing arts season.

An education program for Walker members, Art School demystifies contemporary art by putting it into context. Tickets are $5/member (free for Contributing members). Register at walkerart.org/membership, membership@walkerart.org, or 612.375.7655.

About the Presenters

Laurie Van Wieren’s choreography has been seen in Dance-space, DTW, Links Hall, Walker Art Center, fabrik Potsdam (Germany), and Art of Movement Festival (Yaroslavl, Russia). She is the recipient of fellowships from McKnight, Jerome, Bush, NEA, and Rockefeller Foundations for her dance-making, and is the host and curator of a monthly dance/discussion series: 9×22 Dance/Lab at the Bryant Lake Bowl Cabaret Theater, which is now in its 12th year. Van Wieren was a member of the Dance USA Minneapolis host committee for the 2014 conference. Recently, she has been researching and performing improvisational solos around memory, history, and direct contact with the audience.

Pramila Vasudevan is an experimental artist who creates immersive performance environments using an interdisciplinary voice of dance and electronic media. She is the artistic director of Aniccha Arts (2004–present), a company of designers and dance collaborators who construct immersive performance environments that question individual agency inside the systems in which we live. Vasudevan has a background in classical and contemporary Indian dance (more than 30 years), visual media design, and political science, which are reflected in her interdisciplinary voice as she pursues a socially conscious performance practice.

Jeffrey Wells is one-third of SuperGroup, along with cofounders Sam Johnson and Erin Search-Wells. SuperGroup makes performance that strives to challenge audiences to “dream, imagine new realities, think inventively, and make connections between broadly disparate ideas.” Through collaboration, improvisation, and layering, their works “rigorously and playfully question the forms and content of contemporary dance.” Wells tours with SuperGroup both locally and nationally, recently performing the group’s acclaimed work The Tent Has Been Pulled Down at the Invisible Dog Art Center in New York.