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Philip Bither

Philip Bither has been Walker Art Center’s Senior Curator of Performing Arts since April 1997, overseeing one of the country's leading contemporary performing arts programs. He has overseen significant expansion of the Performing Arts program, including the building of the McGuire Theater, an acclaimed new theatrical space within the Walker expansion (2005), the raising of the program's first commissioning/programming endowment, the commissioning of more than 100 new works in dance, music and performance, and the annual presentation/residency support of dozens of contemporary performing arts creators, established and emerging. Prior to this, he served as Director of Programming/Artistic Director for the Flynn Center, later becoming Associate Director/Music Curator at Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM). He received the Fan Taylor Distinguished Service Award in 2009. He sits on numerous federal, state, local, and national foundation arts panels and he speaks and writes about the contemporary performing arts nationally.

Performing Arts
By Philip Bither

Transforming Jazz: Philip Bither on Jason Moran

“The possibilities are limitless,” Jason Moran wrote to Performing Arts curator Philip Bither in 2003, referencing a new commission to create a jazz performance based on the Walker’s permanent collection. But, as Bither writes, “his sentiment could have applied equally to the relationship that would develop over the next fifteen years between the artist and the Walker.” As Moran opens his first solo show at the Whitney, we share Bither’s essay from the catalogue for the Walker-organized exhibition.

Performing Arts
By Philip Bither

We Are All Writing the Novels of Our Lives: Lola Arias on War, Memory, and Documentary Theater

Argentine theater director/playwright Lola Arias’s Minefield examines the 1982 Falklands War through the eyes and intense memories of six men—three British and three Argentine—who fought against each another on a small set of islands decades ago. As the work makes its way to the Walker to close Out There, she discusses her childhood memories of La Guerra de Malvinas, the process of combining theater and real life, the illusive nature of memory, and making non-heroic, female-directed art about war.