Walker Art Center presents
Tell it anyway, 2024
Friday–Saturday, October 4-5, 2024
7:30 pm
McGuire Theater
Tell it anyway, 2024
Tell it anyway, 2024 is an event/performance involving the participation of Kevin Beasley, Dwayne Brown, Lysis (Ley), Paul Hamilton, Darrell Jones, Ralph Lemon, April Matthis, Roderick Murray, Mariama Noguera-Devers, Okwui Okpokwasili, Angie Pittman, Samita Sinha, and Mike Taylor.
Music composed by Kevin Beasley.
The performance runs approximately 70 minutes without intermission.
Artist's Acknowledgements
The National Endowment for the Arts for funding, in part, the development of Tell it anyway
The Walker Art Center:
Performing Arts: Philip Bither, Doug Benidt, Rob Cosgrove
Event Production: Elizabeth MacNally, Wyatt Heatherington Tilka, Doug Livesay, Jon Kirchhofer, Aaron Robinson, KD Deutsch, Garvin Jellison, Jeremy Ellarby, Amber Brown
Visual Arts: Pavel Pyś
Collections: Joe King, Jeff Sherman, Peter Murphy
The collaborators:
Kevin Beasley, Dwayne Brown, Paul Hamilton, Darrell Jones, Lysis (Ley), April Matthis, Roderick Murray, Naoko Nagata, Mariama Noguera-Devers, Okwui Okpokwasili, Angie Pittman, Katherine Profeta, Ann Rosenthal, Samita Sinha, Louis Sparre, Mike Taylor
To all those in Little Yazoo and Bentonia, Mississippi:
Edna Carter, Betty Clifton, Albert Johnson, Christy Johnson, Geneva Johnson
MoMA PS1:
Connie Butler, Thomas Lax, Kari Rittenbach, Nick Scavo
For all the past and ongoing support:
Anthony Allen, Joaquim Guilherme Blanc Esteves Bento de Melo (Forum do Futuro), Adrienne Edwards, Gene’s Bar and Grill, Hendrik Folkerts, Djédjé Djédjé Gervais, Gina Gibney, Tim Griffin, Kathy Halbreich, Judy Hussie-Taylor, Jack Kupferman, Malcolm Low, Gesel Mason, Sarah Michelson, Aram Moshayedi (Hammer Museum), Omagbitse Omagbemi, Katherine Reynolds and James McAnally (Counterpublic), yon Tande, David Thomson, Triple Canopy, Watermill Center, Marcus Williams
Accessibility Notes
Content note: This performance contains profanity.
Sensory note: This performance contains loud sounds.
For more information about accessibility, visit our Access page.
For questions on accessibility, content and sensory notes or to request additional accommodations, call 612-253-3556 or email access@walkerart.org.
Learn More
See More
In tandem with tonight's performance, Ralph Lemon and Kevin Beasley's moving image installation Rant Redux is on view in Walker's Perlman Gallery from October 3-13, 2024.
Read More
Artist/choreographer Ralph Lemon’s relationship with the Walker Art Center dates back to the 1970s. Growing up in Minneapolis, he regularly attended exhibitions, concerts, and dance performances there. After moving to New York and establishing his dance and performance career, he and the Walker reunited to forge a decades-long, mutually supportive artist-institutional relationship.
Dramaturg Katherine Profeta has collaborated with and written about Lemon since 1997. In the run up to the premiere of Lemon’s Tell it anyway, 2024, Profeta reflected on the creation of this new work in an article for the Walker Reader: Walker Reader | Tell the history
SONG 1.
EMANCIPATION
Today… I’m shattering inside.
That’s what it felt like. That’s what it feels like when I love someone.
I’ll do anything and that’s scary to me. My total surrender. My freedom.
I begged him, “give it to my ass, fill up my ass.” There was no pain no fear of pain just my open mouth, my open legs, my open skin, my opening, that’s how much love—is how much of that freedom I could be filled with. I’m insatiable. He could kill me. We were dogs doing it. I told his/her father, I can’t take his/her life. But I will take his/her life (stop yapping). I’m fighting for this freedom.
Chorus:
…There’s no wonder if you want it I don’t want it
I don’t want it
I don’t want it
There’s no wonder if you want it I don’t want it if you want it
I don’t want it
I don’t want it
Our mantra: We even think that up in heaven, our class lies late and snores, while poor black cherubs rise at seven to do celestial chores.
This is how we had religion. We would meditate every day. Sometimes facing each other. Focusing on each other’s bellybutton or feet, hands, sternum, the faint imprint of the thoracic cage just beneath the skin. Then we would make love, always after meditating, another meditation. All of this, sometimes, without talking, only, Oh shit, Oh shit, and Oh shit...
And Oh Jesus Christ, Oh Jesus Christ, Oh Jesus Christ... I would scream.
Chorus:
I know exactly how you feel
I know exactly how you feel
I know exactly how you feel
I know exactly how you feel
I know exactly how you feel
It is music.
In these moments I think about Beyoncé, she’s ravenous, screaming singing getting an audience riled up, her body is there for us to fill. She is filled. Isn’t that some sort of surrender? Because I loved so deeply, because I loved so vainly, the master in his infinite mercy offers the boon of death. Sleep my honey.
Chorus:
Sleep my honey
Sleep
Rest, at last? Doesn’t love to the point of total surrender involve dying? A loving, complete freedom. He could do anything to my body. He did many things, but not everything. Pain and hurt were erased because of my openings my ability my loving.
And you listen to this. My audience. Worship me you little shits! I love you too. I hope that makes sense.
Chorus:
Worship me you little shits!
So OK, let’s talk about zombies, the spirited undead, mimicking life, and let’s say they are Mexican zombies, just to make a point, Mexican soul, post-soul, the kind you really want to shoot at, or cut up, limbs and heads, feet, hands, blow them away and watch them come back to life, eyes rolled back in ecstasy. And then there’s all the screaming, or for purposes of linearity, let’s call it high-pitched singing, pop wailing, gospel funk…
But it’s not the end of everything, cause dead is something you can be, and because like Jesus Christ, the Zombies have their St. Paul, the founder of their church, the stage, a sound system, an audience, a new beginning. Bristling extinction! Beyoncé is now the Pope. With an ass to truly worship!
© 2015 Okwui Okpokwasili and Ralph Lemon
**
SONG 2.
BECAUSE
Because I love
Because I loved…
© 2015 Okwui Okpokwasili and Ralph Lemon
**
SONG 3.
DREAM #1
Speaking of nostalgia—what ever happened to Ben Webster?
I had this dream recently. A series of graveyard visits, witnessed from across a wide roadway. Formal outings, but only partially viewed—the end of the processions. All the graveyards were gated, walled, or fenced in, an armored architecture hiding a lot of marble, granite, and grass within.
In each event some vehicle—a large car or hearse—carrying the deceased Ben Webster would have to break through an unmanned barricade on its way to the graveyard, through thick waist-high concrete obstacles embedded in the road. Approximately ten to twenty feet of road would be broken up, shattered by the vehicle by the time the graveyard site was reached. Next the vehicle would sit idling, and then suddenly crash through the wall, or fence, or gate. There were occasionally open entrances to all the different graveyards—six once, and later three. But never did the vehicle go through an open entrance. It was clear that when entrances did appear they were only decoration. The scene kept changing, with angle shifts, close-ups, pans, a different vehicle, always large, imposing, sedan-sized, sparkling, sometimes black, sometimes another color (once fire-engine red), different men driving, always formally dressed and wearing hats, then another graveyard, different barricades. One or two of the scenes had dreary weather, and one was especially sunny.
A dream-film, with its mise-en-scène of the barriers that surround absence. How the complete blanking of something has to be contained, is incomprehensible otherwise. Also another counter-memorial, because it couldn’t have happened, and therefore couldn’t be remembered. Ultimate freedom is nothing without a wall or fence, I suppose.
I woke up screaming. Mommy! Mommy! Thinking about 'Black music' via that number in the movie, Dreamgirls: the singers make their first minor hit that is then redone, smoothed out, slowed down, and made into a major hit by some white group. Ridiculous but somehow accurate... Oh yeah, and even Beyoncé and Jay Z have no idea how soft and impotent the music becomes...
Just ask Nas, remember Nas? Just ask Biggie, another ghost.
© 2010 Ralph Lemon
**
SONG 4.
DREAM #2
A period piece from the 80s… judging by the way that everyone was dressed. Some street corner in the East Village. A very familiar old-fashioned scene. Faded colors. A small group of six, seven young men and a couple women. Fred Holland was there, so was Pope.L, completely naked, except for his glasses and baseball cap. Everyone acting out for a video camera. Animated bodies, almost dancing.
And then they began to throw rocks, playfully/performatively, towards the camera’s frame, and towards the group of us watching. (I don’t really know what group we were, the others around me, watching the scene.)
Because it was a dream it could have also been live. How perfectly real the time and place seemed.
One rock was tossed high, right towards us, and disappeared from the frame.
And then I felt a hard thud on the top of my head.
“Dammit.”
But I was also expecting it.
The small group laughed. One of the women slapped Pope.L hard on his bare ass, and the snap of the slap was loud. Pope.L didn’t flinch, kept laughing.
And then David appeared, Hammons, walking in front of the frame, from behind where all of this was being documented. Or maybe it was Bob (Thompson), or Sam (Gilliam), or Jack (Whitten), or Alma (Thomas), maybe... whoever it was, they were wearing a dark brown knit cap.
I shouted out, tears in my eyes, “This is great! Fucking amazing! Where has this been hiding all these years!? How come I’ve never seen it before, anywhere!?”
“Wait until you see the one where I make a rainbow,” the one wearing the knit cap turned around and said.
© 2024 Ralph Lemon
**
SONG 5.
TELL IT ANYWAY
So beautiful
This picture
This implication
Yeah
The only one looking
Yeah
It’s arresting and critical
Yeah
And you’ve blown it up
Yeah
And now you have to do something with it
But it’s wrong!
It’s exploiting
Yeah
It’s doing it again
Exactly
Replaying that moment before...
Right
The spectacle, terror, accusation
It’s still not giving anything
You’re not saving, there's no voice
No
You’re using
What do you do?
What do you do?
Nothing. This.
Try to tell the story
Try
With terrible earnestness
It will all be for naught
Try to tell it anyway
He refused to tell the straight story
A stubborn resistance.
The train arrived. A conveyance was in waiting. There was not a shout. A funeral procession could not have been more quiet.
He gazed abstractedly into the faces of the crowd, never uttering a word. It is believed that he told the truth. Never once wincing.
Did I sing too loud?
No, that’s not why
God have mercy
Prayin’ won’t do you no good
His petition to heaven was almost incoherent
Send this dime to my daddy!
That’s it?
Almost
Now he had gone wild
Missouri Negro
A king
Jumping at the air
Jumping at nothin’
Jumping
Jumping the garden wall
What do you do?
What do you do?
Nothing. Just this
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO…
© 2017-2020 Okwui Okpokwasili and Ralph Lemon
**
SONG 6.
SILENCE
This next song is something I wrote, in part, about how the saxophone came to be, was discovered...
It was meant to fill in the empty gaps. The other lonely sounds waiting. Lonely or missing a possibility. There are a few options to consider
I am golden I breathe
Their sounds came from Belgium, Germany. Someone figured it out. The radiant covering made a difference you could see it shine out. What’s the difference between invention and inventive
I don’t care I want to see something imaginative, impressionistic
Let’s say Belgium. Let’s cross into to Belgium
Travel through the countryside. When it was dirty. When we were dancing
When we were happy and had no future. Ok, a memory
It will take a long time to get good at this
To believe in a season of love
That a season of love can’t die. We were totally happy together
This night my only prayer is silence...
© 2015 Ralph Lemon and April Matthis
**
SONG 7.
WATER
There was a flood.
And right afterwards there were voices out on the street, with accents, the same voices that play and sing loud Salsa music outwards from their apartments, sharing, whether a foreigner to this neighborhood wants to hear it or not. No Salsa music this night. And no singing, mostly laughing, and “Oh gosh.”
I went out wearing rubber boots and the street was flooded knee high.
There were many folk on the street, smoking, drinking, taking photos, until the nearby power plant popped and all the lights went out and everyone ran, a few feet and then were back, more photos with flashes and loud, “Oh gosh!”
One woman was sweeping a lot of water from her ground floor apartment’s front hallway, as water from the street flowed back in. It made her feel better, I thought.
I lost all of my drawings in a nearby storage space, drawings made at my kitchen table. 15 years of stuff. Memories from: Port-au-Prince, Gonaives, Haiti; Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire; Conakry, Guinea; Accra, Kumasi, Ghana; Bali, Indonesia; Yunnan, Lijang, Beijing, China; Tokyo, Kyoto, Hiroshima, Niigata, Sado, Japan; Delhi, Chennai, Varanasi, Jaipur, Mahabilipuram, India; Houston, Texarkana, Mississippi, USA.
Underwater they swam, tried to swim, sank. It took a month before I could get to them.
The funeral went like this:
We woke up in the kitchen sayin' how the hell did this shit happen aw baby
Last thing I remember is our beautiful bodies grindin' off in that club…
We waited till Spring. Went to a nearby garden. Laid them out in the sun. Paper holds water well. In this case, salt water, piss shit water, water. Until it goes back to pulp, pulp, pulp... Until it goes back to water. Oh me, how sad.
Water displaced. Lost.
But most of the water returns home. Flows. Probably doesn’t return the same way, ever.
When a photograph gets wet, really wet, the image completely disappears.
Emulsion is also water, two liquids in fact, colloids. An empty frame. One can't even remember what picture was taken--who, where, when.
© 2015 Ralph Lemon and April Matthis
**
SONG 8.
STILL IN LOVE
I want to end with something sweet. My favorite (forever lost) love letter, what I remember, memorized, what they wrote (on a yellow piece of paper)... (So sweet.) We were traveling. Let's cross into Belgium, travel through the countryside, they said. But I was tired and wanted to go home.
Late Spring. Writing from Paris, from le Marais, inside my little study, on the third floor. At my desk. Next to my monk’s bed, that’s what I call it. Wouldn’t fit the both of us. Just as well. Some Euro coins on my desk, and a few drawings. Looking out the one window onto the courtyard. There was a party last night in the courtyard. A Japanese painter. I didn’t go. I took a walk along the Seine, late last night, it was raining, softly. No moonlight. One can’t buy a cheap disposable umbrella at a corner deli like home. I got wet. Was a little drunk. Felt perfectly alone, in such an old modern city. How unusual. Enjoyed the wet in the maze of my hair, on my face, on my short-sleeved arms, my tight pants, in my pointy shoes, squeaking. I walked for as long as I could. Back to water.
The sun is shining today. I am not so busy. Feels good. I haven’t done anything all day. Some passive window-shopping, it is Paris after all. Bought food at a local Supermarché Casino; packaged salad, cheese, tomatoes, bread at a Boulangerie Paul. I will eat soon. My slight pleasure. A baroque boredom. Immaculate. A gentle labor of time.
No diversion from missing you. Love becomes loud, imagined, naïve.Be love, my dear, you wrote in your last letter. Thank you for that. Full, of both sides, your side, my side...all sides, up, down, back, forwards, in the cracks....the folds. Maybe that's why love feels so thrilling, dangerous and complete sometimes. “Mr. Johnson, when I’m with you I feel afraid,” said the Princess. Remember Alphaville, somewhere in the middle, my princess?
Oui.
And no wonder, when it's gone, so completely devastating. But then, in actuality, it's always there, like a water lily, living for a thousand years, able to revive into activity after stasis, always right there. Floating. (Sky connected to mud.) The catastrophe and the lightness, the mundane, the daily. As long as our hearts beat there’s the possibility of never forgetting one beautiful day in the many days that will be forgotten.
And when the heart stops, because it can, a breathtaking pause becomes an unfathomable kind of love, another beginning, capacious, spanning the river, like durable weather, creating every moment of the world's days. Back to water.
There’s also the possibility, no, the opportunity of not being missed.
Imagine that. Not you, not me. Our not being there, me for you, you for me, and still in love. Still in love.
I have nothing to do tonight, a blessing. Absolutely nothing.
© 2015 Ralph Lemon and April Matthis
**
SONG 9.
DELIRIUM
I can’t sleep, she said, as she sat in her seat. I just sit here and wait. A sky dark with menace.
But she went anyway.
Of course I did; by then it was too late to turn back.
And what happened?
I didn’t recognize myself.
That’s all?
That’s all. I didn’t recognize myself.
She began to sing, I go hungry, I go black and blue... Go to the ends of the world for you...
...and fell asleep.
Have I slept for long?
No, the space of an instant.
Where are we? In the Outlands?
Not yet.
© 1965 Jean-Luc Godard
© 1997 Bob Dylan
About Low
Darrell will enact his 1-hour long Low practice beginning 1 hour prior to curtain, onstage with a single invited audience member. (The house will fill with audience at the normal 1/2 hour call, and thus others will also be able to witness the second half of his practice). When Darrell finishes, he and the single audience member will exit the theater, and Tell it anyway will begin. Darrell will then repeat his practice in reverse order, in another Walker space, with a different invited single audience member. As Tell it anyway concludes, Darrell will still be in progress, and so in exiting, some of the main audience may be able to witness a part of his Low practice, a different part than before, from a different perspective than before.
– Ralph Lemon
Some words about the practice and why it should be both seen and unseen.
LOW did not have a clear inception. It was something living alongside the rigorous work we were doing in the choreographic work (CHCP, HCYS, 4Walls, RANTs) and the movement modalities we used there (Fury, Ecstasy)… It was something we might have initially labeled as a warm-up or recovery, on the edges of the spectating. The circle of interest (over time, over years) widened to include what was usually not seen—the prep and post work. And to label it, study it, practice it…
Practice it.
The way I’m describing it sounds like something stable enough to research in linear ways.
YES and… There is a healthy dose of the metaphysical here -- of unexplainable states and moments that are not easily held onto. In that way, it pairs with similar sensibilities we’ve found in "unwatchable dances," "no style" improvisations, and movement koans, and that’s fascinating and frustrating enough to keep practicing.
It’s a big ask, to ask an audience to sit in the time of this rigor.
I still have questions about it being seen. I’m edging more towards observers being complicit in our time together—a little more weight on our shared presence, over the ocular.
– Darrell Jones
About the Artists
KEVIN BEASLEY (b. 1985, Lynchburg, VA) lives and works in New York. Beasley received his BFA from The College for Creative Studies, Detroit in 2007 and his MFA from Yale University School of Art, New Haven, CT in 2012. Beasley’s practice spans sculpture, photography, sound, and performance, while centering on materials of cultural and personal significance, from raw cotton harvested from his family’s property in Virginia to sounds gathered using contact microphones. Beasley alters, casts, and molds these diverse materials to form a body of works that acknowledge the complex, shared histories of the broader American experience, steeped in generational memories.
A selection of performances include Plastic/Soul/Capture/Play – Notes in Public, University of Chicago, IL (2024); e-flux, New York, NY (2024); Dust, with Darrell Jones, Ralph Lemon, and Okwui Okpokwasili, Counter Public, St. Louis, MO (2023); A View of a Landscape, with Taja Cheek (L’Rain), Ben Chapoteau-Katz (L’Rain), Eli Keszler, and Moor Mother, Performance Space New York, NY (2023); The Sound of Morning, a series of outdoor performances for the Performa 2021 Biennial, New York, NY; Rant, an ongoing series with Ralph Lemon initiated at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY (2019), with other iterations at Fórum do Futuro, Palacio Dos Correios, Porto, Portugal (2019), The Kitchen, New York, NY (2020), and Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, CA (2022); ASSEMBLY, organized with Lumi Tan, Tim Griffin, and Nicole Kaack, The Kitchen, New York, NY (2019); a series of performances for Kevin Beasley: A View of a Landscape, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY (2019); Your face is/is not enough, The Renaissance Society at the University of Chicago, IL (2016); and I Want My Spot Back,The Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY (2012).
DWAYNE BROWN is a native New Yorker. He trained at The Ailey School, The School of American Ballet, and received a B.A. in Psychology from Vassar College. As a professional dancer and performer his credits include: (Theatre/Stage) The Metropolitan Opera, San Francisco Opera, The Kennedy Center, Lyric Opera Chicago (Soloist), Carnegie Hall (Principal); (TV/ Film) She Came To Me (Round Films), At Home With Amy Sedaris (TruTV), The Get Down (Netflix), NYC Summer (FX), Great Performances at The Met (PBS); (Commercial) NYFW, Mount Gay Rum, Stadium Goods, The Consistency Project; (Modern Dance) Bill T. Jones/AZ Co., Ralph Lemon, Kevin Beasley, Sean Curran, Reggie Wilson, and Douglas Dunn. Recent credits include: Le Prophète at The Fisher Center (Bard Summerscape 2024). Upcoming dates: MoMA PS1, Aida (Metropolitan Opera). He is represented by Clear Talent Group. In addition to working as talent, Dwayne is a Teaching Artist for New Victory and DreamYard Project. He is also the Stage Manager for ArtBath NYC, an immersive performance salon series at the historic Blue Building.
LYSIS (LEY) is a trans-disciplinary caretaker and dancer based in New York.
PAUL HAMILTON is a Bessie-nominated dancer with a distinguished career spanning decades. He began his dance training in Jamaica at the Jamaica School of Dance before continuing his studies at SUNY Purchase, where he honed his skills under the guidance of Kevin Wynn and Neil Greenberg. Further refining his technique, Hamilton studied at the Alvin Ailey School of Dance, the Martha Graham School, and Dance Theatre of Harlem. His early career included collaborations with Elizabeth Streb, The Martha Graham Dance Ensemble, and others.
A significant milestone in Hamilton's career was his long-standing collaboration with Reggie Wilson Fist and Heel Performance Group, dating back to 2000. Together, they created acclaimed works such as Black Burlesque (revisited), the Bessie-winning Big Brick, The Good Dance dakar/brooklyn, The Duet, Moses(es), and Power.
Seeking to expand his vocabulary and explore new creative avenues, Hamilton collaborated with choreographer Keely Garfield on Scent of Mental Love, Telling the Bees, Wow, and Pow. In 2014, he realized a long-held dream of working with Ralph Lemon, resulting in Chorus, a powerful performance that earned him a Bessie nomination.
Hamilton's impressive resume also includes collaborations with Jane Comfort, David Thomson, Bruce Nauman, David Gordon, Melinda Ring, Neil Greenberg, and Susan Marshall. His contributions to the dance world have been consistently recognized and celebrated.
DARRELL JONES is a performer, educator, researcher, and choreographer. He has performed extensively across the United States and globally, in all kinds of venues, including Links Hall in Chicago, Danspace Project, Dance Box – Kobe, Japan, and the Venice Biennale. He maintains long-term collaborative relationships with Bebe Miller Company and Ralph Lemon. Additional foundational experiences have included working with Min Tanaka, Ronald K. Brown, Kokuma Dance Theatre (Birmingham, UK), and Urban Bush Women. Jones is a two-time Bessie Award recipient and has received grants and awards including the 3Arts Award, Chicago Dancemakers Forum Lab Artist, Foundation for Contemporary Arts, and the MAP Fund. For the 2016-17 academic year he was the Creative Campus Fellow in Dance at Wesleyan University. He also has an ongoing relationship with the Maggie Allesee National Center for Choreography (MANCC) and was the Florida State Alumnus Fellow for 2020-2021.
As a highly collaborative generative artist, Jones has sought out partnerships with other choreographers (Paige Cunningham, Lisa Gonzales, Damon Green, Angie Hauser, J’Sun Howard, Kirstie Simpson, Jeremy Wade), writers (Cheryl Boyce-Taylor), musicians (Jesse Mano, Brian Schuler, Justin Mitchell) and designers (Mahwish Syed) in dance films, documentations, and interactive multimedia installations. He is a tenured faculty member at The Dance Center of Columbia College Chicago where he teaches classes in physical practice, performance, and improvisational techniques. He holds an MFA in Dance from Florida State University.
RALPH LEMON is a choreographer, writer and visual artist based in New York. His most recent works include Rant (2018-2022. A live performance with film installation in collaboration with Artist/DJ Kevin Beasley). Chorus (2015-2018), Scaffold Room (2015), Four Walls (2012), and How Can You Stay in The House All Day And Not Go Anywhere? (2008-2010). His book, Come home Charley Patton, the final in a series documenting his The Geography Trilogy (1997-2004), was published in 2013 by Wesleyan University Press. Mr. Lemon was honored with one of the first Doris Duke Performing Artist Awards; he was also one of the first artists to receive the United States Artists Fellowship (2006). He is a recipient of three "Bessie" Awards (1986, 2005, 2016); two Foundation for Contemporary Art Awards (1986, 2012); a 2009 Guggenheim Fellowship; and the 1999 CalArts Alpert Award. He received a 2015 National Medal of Arts from president, Barack Obama. The first monograph of his work was published by The Museum of Modern Art (part of their new Modern Dance Series) in 2016. He is a 2018 percipient of the Heinz Family Foundation Award and a 2020 John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Fellowship. In 2022 he won the Bucksbaum Award for his work included in the 2022 Edition Whitney Museum of American Art Biennial. His works are in the permanent collections of the Walker Art Center, Studio Museum in Harlem and the Whitney Museum of American Art.
APRIL MATTHIS is an Obie Award-winning actor. With Ralph Lemon: Scaffold Room (Walker Art Center/The Kitchen). With Deborah Hay: The Blues (MoMA). With Jérôme Bel: Jérôme Bel (L’Alliance New York Crossing the Line Festival). Matthis has worked extensively in the New York Theatre scene. Broadway: Mary Jane, August Wilson’s The Piano Lesson. Off-Broadway: Primary Trust, Toni Stone (Roundabout), Help (The Shed); Fairview, LEAR (Soho Rep); Signature Plays—Funnyhouse of a Negro (Signature Theatre); IOWA, Antlia Pneumatica (Playwrights Horizons). With Elevator Repair Service: Baldwin/Buckley at Cambridge (Festival d’Avignon), The Sound & the Fury; Fondly, Collette Richland (NYTW); Measure for Measure (The Public); Everyone’s Fine with Virginia Woolf (Abrons Art Center); GATZ (Perth Festival). TV: FBI (CBS), Life & Beth (Hulu), “The Blacklist” (NBC), “Evil” , “The Good Fight” (Paramount Plus), “New Amsterdam” (NBC). Film: Black Card, Fugitive Dreams, Ramona at Midlife.
RODERICK MURRAY has designed installations and lighting for performance, internationally since 1989. The majority of his work has been with dance, operas, and music, both experimental and traditional. In 2001 and in 2020 he received Bessie Awards recognition for Outstanding Design. He has designed the lighting for Ralph Lemon’s performance works since 2004 including major touring works in the US, including at BAM, and in France for the Lyon Opéra Ballet.
Murray has been designing and creating the lighting and environments in all of Kimberly Bartosik's choreographic works since 2000, including performing a duet for light and body with Bartosik. Together they also teach workshops that use light as a generative element for choreography. Murray’s designs for Benjamin Millepied, and Los Angeles Dance Project, include many world premieres at venues in Europe and the U.S. and he has designed Millepied’s commissioned works for NYCB, ABT, Ballet du Grand Théâtre de Genève, Lyon Opèra Ballet, Ballett Dortmund and others. In 2006 he designed the lighting for Sekou Sundiata's epic 51st (dream) state at the BAM opera house. In 2008 he was invited to design the lighting for Paul Simon's Songs from the Capeman, in the BAM Harvey. Murray designed the premiere of Grisha Coleman’s Hot Mouth at the Peacock Theater at the West End in London in 1996.
Installations and environments of light are a major part of Murray’s approach to designing spaces, performances, fund-raising galas, and gallery openings. Over the course of years of approaching his designs in this way, he has fabricated and created unique lighting fixtures and prototypes that were used in the context of specific events, but are also available as singular pieces for purchase and display. His first major installation in 2011 was commissioned and supported by FIAF’s Crossing the Line Festival at the Payne Whitney House on Fifth Avenue in NYC.
He collaborates regularly with Kathy Westwater, and Dusan Tynek, and designed many projects for Wally Cardona both at BAM and internationally. Murray designed many projects with Luca Veggetti, including the US premiere of Iannis Xenakis’ Opera Oresteia at the Miller Theater in New York, and for Morphoses, and Cedar Lake. He designed the lighting Karen Sherman’s remarkable Softgoods, and has also designed for Roseanne Spradlin, Ballet di Roma, Jessica Mitrani, David Thomson, Troy Schumacher (Ballet Collective), Yanira Castro, Melinda Ring, Yasuko Yokoshi, Tim Fain, Ethel, Morphoses, Donna Uchizono, Paradigm, Scotty Heron, Pepatian, Pennsylvania Ballet, Clarinda Mac Low, Ballet Idaho, Cori Olinghouse, Risa Jaroslow and Dancers, Bill Young and Dancers, Ricochet Dance, and many others.
Murray also performed for nine years with the fabulous Circus Amok and was recently the DJ in Jérôme Bel’s “The Show Must Go On”. He is currently the Director of Production for Beth Morrison Projects.
MARIAMA NOGUERA-DEVERS hails from Trinidad and Tobago and has been dancing and performing since the age of 5. She began performing professionally at 15 as one of the youngest members of the Noble Douglas Dance Company. Mariama has studied Graham modern, folk from Trinidad and Tobago, Ballet, West African, Hip Hop and even Capoeira. She holds a Bachelor of Arts in Dance and Global Studies from The New School, with a focus on how The Arts can address and mitigate social justice issues. During her college career, she worked with many esteemed choreographers including Ishmael Houston Jones, Nami Yamamoto and Reggie Wilson. She continues to collaborate and perform with Havanna Fisher through The Cotton Series (since 2014) and Ralph Lemon (since 2018), and in 2023 returned to working with the Noble Douglas Dance Company.
Mariama started teaching dance as a camp counselor at 17. Since then, she has honed her own style, she calls ‘Soca Fitness’ that combines folk, dancehall, wining and aerobic movement. She has taught these classes in public schools, dance studios, staff building events and women’s conferences. As a Teaching Artist with Art Start (2017-2019) she taught various dance styles to youth experiencing homelessness and youth navigating the juvenile justice system. In 2023, she choreographed for the play “Splintered” that premiered at the London Soho Theatre. Presently she teaches dance to children ages 4-9 at her alma mater Lilliput Theatre and consults for a Trinidad-based dance company called XO Dance Label.
OKWUI OKPOKWASILI is a Brooklyn based performer, choreographer and writer creating multidisciplinary performance pieces. The child of immigrants from Nigeria, Okpokwasili was born and raised in the Bronx, and the histories of these places and the girls and women who inhabit them feature prominently in much of her work. Her highly experimental productions include "Bessie" Award winning Pent-Up: A Revenge Dance, "Bessie" Award winning Bronx Gothic, Poor People's TV Room, When I Return Who Will Receive Me, and Adaku's Revolt. Recent works include installations in the exhibitions: “Grief and Grievance, Art and Mourning in America” at the New Museum, “Witchhunt” at The Hammer Museum in LA, and “Sex Ecologies” at Kunsthall Trondheim in Norway. Commissions include the performance On the way, undone at the Highline in New York City and at Weeksville Heritage Center in Brooklyn as part of FIAF’s Crossing the Line Festival, the film Returning for Danspace Project, and the site specific performance Swallow the Moon at Jacob’s Pillow. She has worked with film and theater directors: Carrie Mae Weems, Ralph Lemon, Arthur Jafa, Terence Nance, Josephine Decker, Mika Rottenberg, Mahyad Tousi, Charlotte Brathwaite, Jim Findlay, Annie Dorsen and Peter Born.
Okpokwasili’s residencies and awards include The French American Cultural Exchange (2006-2007); Maggie Allesee National Center for Choreography Choreographic Fellowship (2012); Baryshnikov Arts Center Artist-in-Residence (2013); New York Live Arts Studio Series (2013); Under Construction at the Park Avenue Armory (2013); New York Foundation for the Arts’ Fellowship in Choreography (2013); Lower Manhattan Cultural Council’s Extended Life Program (2014-17, 2019-20); ICPP at Wesleyan (2015), The Foundation for Contemporary Arts’ artist grant in dance (2014); BRIClab (2015); Columbia University (2015), the Rauschenberg Residency (2015), the Mellon Creative Futures Fellowship at Carolina Performing Arts, UNC-Chapel Hill (2018-2021). Okpokwasili was the 2015-2017 Randjelovic/Stryker New York Live Arts Resident Commissioned Artist (RCA.) She was a 2018 Princeton University Hodder Fellow, a 2018 Herb Alpert Awardee in Dance, an Antonyo Awardee, a 2018 Doris Duke Artist Awardee, and a 2018 MacArthur Fellow. She was the inaugural artist for the Kravis Studio Residency program at MOMA in 2022.
ANGIE PITTMAN (she/they) is a New York-based dancer-choreographer whose choreographic work uses dance, text, and sound inside of a Black Radical Tradition. Their work has been performed at The Kitchen, Gibney Dance, BAAD!, Movement Research at Judson Church, Triskelion Arts, STooPS, The Domestic Performance Agency, The KnockDown Center, The Invisible Dog(Catch 73), The Chocolate Factory Theater, Danspace Project, and Roulette. As a dancer, they have danced in work by Larissa Valez-Jackson, MBDance, Tere O’Connor, Anna Sperber, Donna Uchizono Company, and many others and is currently dancing in the work of Cynthia Oliver and Ralph Lemon. Her choreographic work has been supported by New York State Council for the Arts, Foundation for Contemporary Arts Emergency Grant and residencies through Earthdance, Tofte Lake Center, Movement Research, New Dance Alliance Black Artists Space to Create, and Djerrassi. They are currently a 2024-2025 Center for Humanities Faculty Fellow and an Assistant Arts Professor of Dance at New York University.
Artist, composer, and educator SAMITA SINHA creates expansive works of performance and sound that evolve and unravel Indian vocal traditions through the body to create a non-colonial, multivalent language of vibration and voice. She performs her work nationally and internationally and shares her practice and pedagogy extensively, including as Visiting Professor of Sonic Practice at Dartmouth College. Sinha has received awards from the Mellon Foundation, Fulbright Foundation, National Endowment for the Arts, National Performance Network, and others.
MIKE TAYLOR writes, directs and produces video, audio, theater and art installations. www.artasexperience.net
Living Land Acknowledgement
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.
Acknowledgments
Producers' Council
About the Walker Art Center
Media Partner
To learn more about upcoming performances, visit 2023/24 Walker Performing Arts Season.
)