Program Notes for Shamel Pitts | TRIBE: Marks of RED

Walker Art Center and Northrop present
Shamel Pitts | TRIBE
Marks of RED

Friday–Saturday, March 10–21, 2026

7:30 pm

McGuire Theater

Marks of RED

Concept Direction & Choreographer
SHAMEL PITTS

Performers
ASHLEY PIERRE-LOUIS, MARCELLA LEWIS, IMANI GAUDIN, DOMINICA GREENE, KE’RON J. WILSON, KRIS LEE

Artistic Associate
NIALL JONES

Scenic Design
MIMI LIEN

Video Light & Mapping Designer
LUCCA DEL CARLO

Artistic Production Manager & Lighting Designer
SARAI FRAZIER

Costume Designer
SHARIFA MORRIS

Fabrication Director & Design Consultant
ERRIN SHIN

Original Music Composition
SIVAN JACOBOVITZ

Original Vocal Music Composition
DORIAN WOOD

Original Saxophone Composition
BENDIK GISKE

Text
CLAUDIA RANKINE, from PLOT

Spoken Word Voiceover
MOOR MOTHER

Music Mixing & Mastering
MANNY CATECHIS

Additional Music
“it is what it is in d minor” (from “sleep with a cane” by Klein)
“winner’s clause” (from “marked” by Klein)
“Channel X: into the tranquility” (Ryoji Ikeda)
“F****t” (Arca)
“Child” (Arca)
“Ænnihilator” (Domingæ)
“enemy of the state” (from “marked” Klein)
“let is sink in” (from “sleep with a cane” by Klein)

Artistic Doula
MELANIE GEORGE

Photographers
ALEX APT, TYLER BLINT-WELSH

Stage & Tour Manager
KAZ RUSSELL

Creative Director
MIRELLE MARTINS

Artistic Administrator
E KATRINA LEWIS

Managing Director
BRITTANY WILSON

Development Director
ERIC UMBLE

Digital Creative & Development Associate
PAM PANOZZO

Worldwide Bookings
LOTUS ARTS MANAGEMENT | SOPHIE MYRTIL-MCCOURTY

Marks of RED was developed during a Summer Stages Dance @ The Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston residency in 2024. Marks of RED was developed at MASS MoCA in Spring 2026. The work was commissioned by Northrop at the University of Minnesota and the Walker Art Center for presentation in 2026, with lead support from the Arison Arts Foundation and Marcel Przymusinski.

Creation of Marks of RED was made possible in part by a YoungArts Microgrant; by the New York State Council on the Arts (NYSCA) with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature; the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, and with additional support from UCLA’s Center for the Art of Performance, Mellon Foundation, Howard Gilman Foundation, SHS Foundation, TRIBE’s individual donors, and our Board of Directors. The development of Marks of RED was made possible in part by NCCAkron, Powerhouse Arts, and MASS MoCA. To view TRIBE’s complete list of supporters visit itsatribe.org/support.

Development & Technical Residencies
– Summer Stages Dance @ The Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston (Summer 2024)
– Orsolina28 Art Foundation (Co-produced, Summer 2025) *
– DOCK 11 EDEN, Berlin (2025) *
– Kaatsbaan Cultural Park (Creation and/or preview residency, Summer 2025) **
– Powerhouse Arts (Spring 2026)
– MASS MoCA (Spring 2026)

* Marks of RED was commissioned by Northrop at The University of Minnesota and the Walker Art Center (2026).

** Creation made possible by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature.

Tonight’s performance runs approximately 60 minutes with no intermission.

A Q&A with the artists will follow Friday’s performance.

Join us in Walker’s Cityview Bar for a reception with the artists after Saturday’s performance.

Accessibility Notes

Sensory Note: This performance contains stroboscopic lighting and electronic music.

For more information about accessibility, visit our Access page.

Program Notes

A work of magical realism narrated by and featuring the viewpoints of six women, Marks of RED continues award-winning choreographer Shamel Pitts’ research exploring Black embodiment, aliveness and human connection.

Marks of RED is an Afrofuturistic meditation on the “womb space,” divining the effect that memory has on our experiences, senses, bodies, reality, and our imaginative possibilities.

The multidisciplinary work includes scenic designs by Mimi Lien, video mapping projection by Lucca Del Carlo, lighting design by Sarai Frazier, and production by TRIBE arts collective. The fourth chapter in the RED Series by Pitts, Marks of RED explores the nuanced multiplicity and deep complexity of self-expression, and the perceived spaces for regeneration, enfoldment, implosion, rupture & potential.

itsatribe.org/mor

Artist Bios

Shamel Pitts (Concept Direction & Choreographer) (Brooklyn, NY), a 2024 MacArthur Fellow, is a performance artist, choreographer, conceptual artist, dancer, spoken word artist, director, and teacher. Born in Brooklyn, NY, Pitts began his dance training at LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts and, simultaneously, at The Ailey School. He is a first prize winner in The National Arts Competition from YoungArts. Pitts went on to receive his BFA in dance from The Juilliard School and was awarded the Martha Hill Award for excellence in dance. He began his dance career in Mikhail Baryshnikov’s Hell’s Kitchen Dance and BJM_Danse Montreal. Pitts danced with Batsheva Dance Company for seven years under the artistic direction of Ohad Naharin and is a certified teacher of Gaga movement language. Pitts has created a triptych of award-winning performances, with his multidisciplinary arts collective TRIBE, known as his “BLACK series,” as well as their newly emerging “RED series,” which has toured extensively to many festivals & performance spaces around the world since 2016. He is an adjunct professor at The Juilliard School, a guest faculty member at Princeton University, New York University, Wesleyan University, and has been an artist in residence at Harvard University. He is the recipient of a Princess Grace Award in Choreography, a NYSCA/NYFA Fellow in Choreography, Doris Duke Artist Award Recipient, Knight Choreography Prize Winner, United States Artists Fellow, Strokes of Genius Fellow, a Jacob’s Pillow artist-in-residence, and a 2020 Guggenheim Fellow. Shamel Pitts | TRIBE has been artist in residence at 92Y Harkness Dance Center and at New York Live Arts’ Live Feed Creative Residency.
shamelpitts.com
instagram.com/shamelpitts

TRIBE
Multidisciplinary Visual Performances, d.b.a. TRIBE) is a Brooklyn, New York based multidisciplinary arts collective founded by Shamel Pitts in December 2019. The arts collective, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, is composed of international and local artists working across mediums such as movement, choreography, lighting design, video mapping projection, poetry, spoken word, painting, cinematography, scenography, dramaturgy, costume styling, and music composition. TRIBE’s mission is cultivating space to create a platform for artists – most specifically artists of color – with huge inspiration from the Afrofuturism movement. This movement states that we have a responsibility through our work to tell new stories and create a brighter future that is different, and shines more luminously, from its past. Understanding that Performance Art and Live Art are practices of human connection, TRIBE acts nationally and internationally by developing art exchanges in collaboration with institutions and artists, with a focus on the African diaspora. TRIBE art projects include, but are not restricted to: movement based work, live multidisciplinary performance, video art, video documentary, photography, exhibition, commissioned dance choreography, art residency, and workshops. Ultimately, TRIBE aims to bring the audience and community into experiences that humanizes Black and Brown bodies and shares the colorfulness within Blackness that allows us to be multiplicitous.

itsatribe.org/
instagram.com/itsatribe

Ashley Pierre-Louis (Performer) is originally from Miami, FL. For high school, she attended New World School of the Arts and continued her education at Florida State University, where she earned her BFA in Dance. Now based in New York City, she is a dance artist, choreographer, producer, educator, and cook, whose practice centers pleasure through dancing, communal gathering, and food.
Through her creative work, Ashley invites both herself and audiences to imagine their deepest, strongest, and richest expressions of the self, asking how we might share these collectively to cultivate freedom in both mind and body. She is a performer and creator with Shamel Pitts’ multidisciplinary arts collective TRIBE, and plays a vital role in arts leadership as the Associate Producer at Performance Space New York (PS122) and Dream Partner/Program Manager for Florida State University’s Arts in NYC program.
instagram.com/ashleypierrelouis

Marcella Lewis (Performer) hails from Los Angeles, California where she began her dance training at the Lula Washington Dance Theatre. She then continued her studies at the Los Angeles County High School for the Arts (LACHSA). She later received her BFA from the Purchase Conservatory of Dance in 2016, where she was awarded the Adopt-A-Dancer Scholarship. Marcella joined A.I.M by Kyle Abraham in fall 2016, as a dancer, soloist, and company liaison. While with A.I.M, she performed works by Kyle Abraham, Trisha Brown, Doug Varone, and Andrea Miller. Marcella was featured with A.I.M in “Dance Magazine” in August 2017 and was a recipient of the Princess Grace Award in Dance in 2018. As a freelance artist, Marcella has performed works by Marjani Forte, Chris Emile, Micaela G. Taylor, Rosana Taverez, Genna Moroni, JA Collective, Jodi Melnick, and more. Marcella has presented her own choreographic works at Dance Theatre Lab, Odyssey Theatre, Highways Performance Space, and Stomping Ground L.A. Marcella is currently a performing artist with TRIBE multidisciplinary visual performances led by Shamel Pitts and is a freelance artist, choreographer and teacher in Los Angeles and New York.
instagram.com/marcella_thecosmicmirror

Imani Gaudin (Performer) is a multidisciplinary dance artist and the founding artistic director of gaudanse, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization dedicated to expanding accessible, sustainable, wellness-based arts practices for underserved communities. As a movement artist, Imani is currently a performer with TRIBE under the artistic direction of Shamel Pitts. In 2024, she was commissioned by Baryshnikov Arts and the Hudson Yards Hell’s Kitchen Alliance to premiere jakob&imani, a durational performance created in collaboration with visual artist Jakob Vitale. In 2025, she premiered nanibu, a multidisciplinary dance-theater work at the Marigny Opera in New Orleans, with support from Kaatsbaan Cultural Park, which was made possible by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature. That same year, imani&jakob debuted ALL YOU SEE IS COWS IN THE CITY at Churchtown Dairy in Hudson, NY, and led gaudanse’s international debut with her work mamihlapinatapai in Paris, France. Imani has held residencies with Baryshnikov Arts, Kaatsbaan Cultural Park, Pepatian Dancing Futures at BAAD!, and New Dance Alliance. She was named a 2025 Gambit 40 Under 40 Honoree, received the Alonzo King Lines Ballet Homer Avila Scholarship Award, SUNY Purchase’s Bert Terborgh Dance Award for Leadership and Excellence in Dance, and a Delta Sigma Theta Artie-Rising Star Award. Imani trained at New Orleans Center for Creative Arts (NOCCA), SUNY Purchase Conservatory of Dance, Amsterdam University of the Arts, and The Juilliard School. She has performed works by artists including Ohad Naharin, Netta Yerushalmy, Amos Ben-Tal, Rena Butler, Roderick George, Akira Yoshida, and Kayla Farrish.
instagram.com/imani.angele

Dominica Greene (Performer) is a movement-based conceptual artist, dancer, and facilitator based in Brooklyn, New York. She values dance as one of the purest forms of expression, utilizing it as an energetic entity capable of affecting real and palpable change. Her company and freelance experience is extensive, having collaborated with, performed, and toured the work of many notable artists domestically and internationally. As a Queer, bi-racial, Caribbean-American woman, she is committed to dreaming up and worldbuilding alternative realities and more expansive futures with her BIPOC and LGBTQIA+ community.
dominicagreene.com
instagram.com/draminica

Ke’ron J. Wilson (Performer) is a movement artist, choreographer, model, actor, musician, and poet based in NYC. She trained at Harrison School for the Arts and Florida Dance Theater, and graduated with a BFA from Sam Houston State University (2019). She was a founding member of Social Movement Contemporary Dance Theater and a recurring guest choreographer for the Pilot Dance Project in Houston, TX (2018-2021). Her current research explores trans embodiment, alchemy, and spiritual exile through ritual performance informed by tarot, astrology, and occult symbolism. Ke’ron is Triskelion Arts’ 2026 Artist-in-Residence.
Other recent support includes Movement Research’s Van Lier Emerging Artist of Color (2025) and MNE’s Emerging Choreographers Series (2022–24); credits include TRIBE (led by Shamel Pitts), the Tamron Hall Show (with Sonya Renee Taylor) and modeling Bad Binch Tong Tong’s NYFW SS24 & SS25. She leads wellness and meditation portals both independently and with Angelito Collective for NYC’s queer and trans community.
instagram.com/keronjwilson/

Kris Lee (Performer) (she/they) is a New York based dance artist, performer, and DJ. Most recently they have performed in works by Julie Tolentino, Kevin Beasley, Moriah Evans, Ishmael Houston-Jones, Ralph Lemon, Isabel Lewis, Miguel Gutierrez, Andros Zins-Browne, Jonathan González, Okwui Okpokwasili, and Shamel Pitts | TRIBE. Kris has been recently named Dance Magazine’s 2026 “Top 25 to Watch”. They have shown work in the Black Aesthetics Series at Judson Memorial Church, Cathy Weis Projects’ Sundays on Broadway, and Draftwork at danspace project. Kris received their BFA in Dance from University of the Arts in 2019.
“Lee’s fearless artistry is grounded in community. “I see my practice as a social dialogue,” they say. “I feel like I’m just getting started, and I want to keep digging deeper.” —Sarah Cecilia Bukowski (Dance magazine)
instagram.com/mellowbastard

Niall Jones (Artistic Associate) is an artist, performer, curator, and teacher based in New York City. His work navigates a constellation of curiosities, obsessions and practices that move across dance, performance, sound, text, photography, and video. He constructs immersive, liminal sites that attend to sensual, collective registers of fiction, dis/order, dis/placement, and in/completeness. Jones’ recent performance works have been presented at Abrons Arts Center, The Chocolate Factory Theater, The Shed, Performance Space New York, Danspace Project, The Kitchen at Queenslab; JACK (Brooklyn, NY); MoMA PS1; Staatliche Akademie der Bildenden Künste in Stuttgart, Germany; and as part of the School for Temporary Liveness, Vol. 3, in Philadelphia. He has also co-curated & produced Vols. 1, 2 & 4 of the School for Temporary Liveness. Jones is currently a 2025 – 2027 Princeton Arts Fellow and also a visiting faculty member in the B.F.A. Dance Lab and Low-Residency M.F.A. in Dance program at Bennington College.
instagram.com/niallllain

Mimi Lien (Scenic Design) is a designer of sets/environments for theater, dance, and opera. Arriving at set design from a background in architecture, her work often focuses on the interaction between audience/environment and object/performer. In 2015, she was named a MacArthur Fellow, and is the first stage designer ever to achieve this distinction. Mimi received the 2017 Tony Award for her design of Natasha, Pierre and The Great Comet of 1812 on Broadway. Previous work with TRIBE: Touch of RED.  Selected work includes Grounded (Metropolitan Opera and Washington National Opera), Parsifal (Bayreuther Festspiele), The Righteous (Santa Fe Opera), Intelligence (Houston Grand Opera), The Comet/Poppea (Prototype/The Industry/AMOC*), Die Zauberflöte (Staatsoper Berlin), Sweeney Todd (Broadway – Tony nomination), Fairview, and An Octoroon (Soho Rep). Her stage designs have been presented in New York and around the country at the Public Theater, Signature Theatre, Playwrights Horizons, The Kitchen, Berkeley Rep, A.R.T., Mark Taper Forum, Wilma Theater, Longwharf Theatre, Goodman Theater, La Jolla Playhouse, Portland Center Stage, Alliance Theatre, and Playmakers Rep, among others.  Collaborators include: Sarah Benson, Yuval Sharon, Rachel Chavkin, Susan Marshall, Jay Scheib, and Pig Iron Theatre Company.  Her large-scale public artworks include The GREEN (2021, New York), a public space intervention commissioned by Lincoln Center; PARADE (2022, Toronto), a conveyor-belt installation commissioned by The Bentway Conservancy; MODEL HOME (2017, San Diego), a performance installation utilizing a 60-ft crane; and 2×4 tree (2016), a kinetic sculpture commissioned by the Philadelphia International Festival of the Arts. Her design work has been exhibited in the Prague Quadrennial, and her sculpture work was featured in the exhibition, LANDSCAPES OF QUARANTINE, at the Storefront for Art and Architecture. Selected awards include a Bessie Award, Drama Desk Award, Lucille Lortel Award, American Theatre Wing Hewes Design Award, and an OBIE Award for sustained excellence. Mimi is a co-founder of the Brooklyn performance/art space, JACK.
mimilien.com

Lucca Del Carlo (Video Light & Mapping Designer, Transmedia Artist) is a graphic designer and video artist from São Paulo, Brazil. He is a founding member of the Brooklyn, NY based multidisciplinary arts collective TRIBE, which received a New York Times Critic’s Choice, CROSS Award, and a Bessie Nomination for BLACK HOLE – Trilogy And Triathlon. He has created the lighting and video mapping projections for numerous performance works and has toured and performed live with the collective in many countries all over the world. He specializes in transmedia, mixing cinema techniques, concepts of architecture, visual arts, light design, and technology, and integrating those into the direction and creation of scenography, immersive environments and visual live shows. In his view, all ways of visual communication have interlacing points, not only using technology but also using human cognition and its related censorial illusions. Del Carlo’s specialty is mixing it in new ways to inspire and break common patterns in visual expression. He describes his work as an inversion of Georges Méliès fused with the spirit of German Expressionism. While Méliès translated stagecraft and illusions into the language of film, Del Carlo does the opposite: takes the cinematic illusions and the dramatic chiaroscuro of Expressionism and translates them back onto the stage.
luccadelcarlo.com
instagram.com/luccadc

Sarai Frazier (Artistic Production Manager & Lighting Designer) is a Bessie-nominated lighting designer, production manager, and artist, born and raised in New York City. Her creative work lives at the intersection of live events, performance art, immersive installations, and theater—always rooted in collaboration, curiosity and care.
Sarai’s pedagogical journey began with leading lighting design and technical workshops for technicians and has since evolved to support artists in deepening their understanding of lighting , helping them see it not just as a tool, but as a language of its own. She’s drawn to lighting as a medium that can hold, shape, and shift meaning — a way to see, feel, and listen differently. She is particularly interested in lighting design as its own expressive form—one that invites viewers to see, engage, and interact, while supporting and expanding storytelling.
Selected works as a lighting designer include Paradise Container (Pioneer Works), Tremor (Museum of Contemporary Arts Chicago), Anyyywayyy Whatever (Amant), and All Things Under Dog: where two things are always true (Performance Space New York + HAU2).
saraifrazier.com

Sharifa Morris (Costume Designer) is a New York–based multidisciplinary creative who, at the core of her work, examines fashion and wardrobe as materials for worldbuilding. For Sharifa, fashion operates as both texture and narrative architecture—an essential layer of storytelling. Working across styling, creative direction, visual storytelling, and object-making, she builds worlds that transform the everyday into something charged with desire, wonder, and intimacy. Her work pulses with surrealism, bold silhouettes, and tactile form, blurring the line between fantasy and reality.
Following her studies at Temple University, Sharifa began her career in fashion editorial, contributing to publications such as Document Journal and MYTH. In 2021, she founded Nuff Studio, where she develops and directs projects that honor personal mythology while pushing contemporary image culture forward. Her work is rooted in reverence—for story, for body, for transformation.
Her practice has intersected with artists, institutions, and brands including Google, Nike, Versace, Kelsey Lu, Essence, and Gogo Graham.
sharifamorris.com
instagram.com/______sharifa

Errin Shin (Fabrication Director & Design Consultant) is the founder of The Air in Sin, an evolving design universe that translates philosophy, dream logic, and Kafkaesque corporeal inquiry into materially precise form. A multidisciplinary fashion artist, technical director, and designer based in New York City, Shin holds a BFA in Fashion Design from Parsons School of Design, a BA in Philosophy from Eugene Lang College of Liberal Arts, and completed additional training at Central Saint Martins in London. Her practice bridges sculpture and garment construction, merging rigorous craft with experimental textile development. The Air in Sin investigates corporeality and the notion of the “past-human” through distorted pattern-making, embodied draping, and Dada-inspired automatism. Shin has worked with fashion houses including Oscar de la Renta, Melitta Baumeister, and Eleen Halvorsen, cultivating couture-level construction, advanced patternmaking, and technical precision. The Air in Sin has been worn for covers and performances by Eartheater, Coco Jones, HorsegiirL, Kim Wan Sun, and Sophia Lamar. Shin’s work has been featured in Metal Magazine, Office Magazine, Galore Magazine, King Kong Magazine, and more. She was recognized as “Designer on the Cusp” by Photobook Magazine and as a “NYC Creative Renaissance Artist” by French Fries Magazine.
theairinsin.com
instagram.com/the_air_in_sin

Sivan Jacobovitz (Original Music Composition) lives in NYC. Dance collaborations include: Shamel Pitts’ BLACK HOLE – Trilogy And Triathlon & Touch of RED, MENAGERIE (with Gibney Company); Kimberly Bartosik’s blUr (currently touring), I Hunger For You (BAM Next Wave) and Through The Mirror of Their Eyes (Bessie Outstanding Production Honoree); Guggenheim Works & Process with Kimberly Bartosik/Matthew Ritchie; ASSEMBLY with GREYZONE.

Melanie George (Artistic Doula) is an educator, choreographer, scholar, and certified movement analyst. As a curator and dramaturg, specializing in rooted jazz dance and adjacent dance forms, and contemporary dance-theatre, she has worked on projects for Urban Bush Women, Raja Feather Kelly, LaTasha Barnes, Helené Simoneau, Susan Marshall, Dormeshia, Alice Sheppard, Kimberly Bartosik, Machine Dazzle, and SW!NG OUT!, among many others. From 2020-2025, she was Associate Curator at Jacob’s Pillow, the first in the institution’s 90+ year history. Melanie is the Chair and Producing Artistic Director for the dance department at Marymount Manhattan College, and has guest lectured at Harvard University, Yale School of Drama, and The Juilliard School. As an artist, scholar, and consultant, Melanie has worked with the National Center for Choreography – Akron,  New York Public Library,  National Jazz Museum in Harlem, Apollo Theater, The Joyce Theatre, Works & Process at the Guggenheim, among others. Named one of Dance Magazine’s 30 over 30, she is the recipient of the Outstanding Leadership Award from the National Dance Education Organization. Upcoming projects include collaborations with Dance Lab New York, Jasmine Hearn, and Sekou McMiller & Friends.
melaniegeorge.org

Kaz Russell (Stage & Tour Manager) is a seasoned Stage Manager with over 30 years of international experience spanning theater, dance, music touring, and festivals. Originally from Sydney, Australia, Kaz began her career as Festival Director for a music and arts festival. Her work as tour manager for Midnight Oil launched her international career, taking her craft across multiple continents. Throughout her tenure, Kaz has managed a diverse range of projects, from the Australian production of The Rocky Horror Show to landmark global events like World Youth Day. Currently, she serves as business and tour manager for musician Jennifer Knapp and brings her expertise to OZ Arts Nashville (a contemporary art and performance center), as Event & Production Consultant. Deeply dedicated to the technical execution of live performance, Kaz is committed to creating positive, healthy, and logistically seamless environments that allow artists to bring their absolute best to their work. She is proud to bring her technical skills and a commitment to operational excellence to the TRIBE team.

Living Land Acknowledgment

The McGuire Theater and Walker Art Center are located on the contemporary, traditional, and ancestral homelands of the Dakota people. Situated near Bde Maka Ska and Wíta Tópa Bde, or Lake of the Isles, on what was once an expanse of marshland and meadow, this site holds meaning for Dakota, Ojibwe, and Indigenous people from other Native nations, who still live in the community today.

We acknowledge the discrimination and violence inflicted on Indigenous peoples in Minnesota and the Americas, including forced removal from ancestral lands, the deliberate destruction of communities and culture, deceptive treaties, war, and genocide. We recognize that, as a museum in the United States, we have a colonial history and are beneficiaries of this land and its resources. We acknowledge the history of Native displacement that allowed for the founding of the Walker. By remembering this dark past, we recognize its continuing harm in the present and resolve to work toward reconciliation, systemic change, and healing in support of Dakota people and the land itself.

We honor Native people and their relatives, past, present, and future. As a cultural organization, the Walker works toward building relationships with Native communities through artistic and educational programs, curatorial and community partnerships, and the presentation of new work. 

About Northrop at the University of Minnesota
Situated at the heart of the University of Minnesota Twin Cities campus and a state historic landmark, Northrop has served as the University’s primary gathering place for the performing arts, world-renowned dance performances, concerts, academic ceremonies, and major civic events for nearly 100 years. From touring international and favorite local dance companies, musicians, and film screenings to the hottest comedy acts, renowned speakers, celebrated authors, and prestigious UMN lectures, Northrop offers opportunities for all ages to explore, learn, and engage.

About the Walker Art Center
Known for presenting today’s most compelling artists from close to home and around the world, the Walker Art Center features a broad array of contemporary visual arts, music, dance, theater, and moving image works. Ranging from concerts and films to exhibitions and workshops, Walker programs bring us together to examine the questions that shape and inspire us as individuals, cultures, and communities. The adjacent Minneapolis Sculpture Garden, one of the first urban sculpture parks of its kind in the United States, holds at its center the beloved Twin Cities landmark Spoonbridge and Cherry by Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen as well as some 60 sculptures on the 19-acre Walker campus.

Acknowledgments

Copresented and Co-commissioned with Northrop.

Many thanks to our partner – Northrop at the University of Minnesota.

In honor of Dale Schatzlein (1948–2006) and his important work in dance and jazz in the Twin Cities, support is provided by Emily Maltz. Walker commissioning support provided by Lois and John Rogers.

The Walker Art Center’s Performing Arts programs and commissions are made possible by donors and Producers’ Council members: AJT Fund; Bridge Fund for Dance program through the City of Minneapolis Arts & Cultural Affairs Department; Christina Evans and Weston Hoard; Nor Hall and Roger Hale; Judith Brin Ingber and Jerome Ingber; Neal Jahren; the Jerome Foundation; King’s Fountain/Barbara Watson Pillsbury; Knox Foundation: Susanne Lilly Hutcheson, Zenas Hutcheson IV, Henry Hutcheson, and Perrin Hutcheson; Sarah Lutman; Emily Maltz; the David and Leni Moore Family Foundation; National Endowment for the Arts; National Performance Network; Rebecca Rand; Lois and John Rogers; the Serendipitous Leverage Fund; Therese Sexe and David Hage; Elizabeth and Mike Sweeney; John L. Thomson; Villa Albertine and Albertine Foundation; Sue and Jim Westerman; and Frances and Frank* Wilkinson. Media partner MPR News, The Current, and YourClassical MPR.

*deceased

To learn more about upcoming performances, visit 2025/26 Walker Performing Arts Season.