Julian Andrews

When Antony Hamilton and Alisdair Macindoe take the Walker stage this weekend, they will do so in unlikely company. The Australian duo will perform the genre-bending MEETING to a percussive score played by 64 tiny robots.

“We need to be seeing each other. It’s all about your neighbor. It’s all about the stranger. It’s all about how we create community.” The founders of 600 Highwaymen discuss The Fever, to be presented at the Walker as part of Out There 2018.

Rifling through three-packs of men’s underwear at a nearby TJ Maxx isn’t a job Julian Andrews imagined he’d be tasked with as a Walker intern. But the show must go on: Havana’s Teatro El Público, delayed in traveling to the US due to a series of nerve-wracking bureaucratic complications, had finally arrived in Minneapolis, and they needed the final part of their costumes—briefs in the colors of Cuba’s flag and a pair of women’s knee socks.

Out There is marking its 30^th year, but the festival—much like the art it showcases—continues to defy easy categorization. From the rise of solo performance to the influence of technology on artists to the increasing abundance of nonlinear storytelling, the ways in which performing artists engage with and push the limits of their craft is in constant transition.

“As a child and for a very long period of my life I was very afraid of Leila because she represented death for me,” says Ali Chahrour, on the inspiration for Leila’s Death, a new performance work that combines dance, music, storytelling, and theatrical movement. “The Shiite way of crying is not just to sit and cry; it’s a whole performance with the body. It’s engaged. It’s very rich about the presence of the body and the voice.”