The Walker Art Center released its 2005–2006 performing arts season schedule today, announcing an adventurous array of performances, world premieres, and commissions by leading figures in the contemporary performing arts. Season highlights include performances by three of the most influential women reinventing and rejuvenating dance today—Sarah Michelson (Walker-commissioned world premiere, Daylight (for Minneapolis), September 15–17), Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker (Once, December 1–3), and Meg Stuart (FORGERIES, LOVE AND OTHER MATTERS, April 20–22). De Keersmaeker and Stuart’s works will only be seen in two U.S. cities, New York and Minneapolis, while Michelson’s season-opening work is a large-scale site-specific project inspired by and performed throughout the new Walker expansion designed by Herzog & de Meuron.
The 2005–2006 theatrical offerings feature manically inventive theater auteur Lee Breuer bringing together small men and tall women in his grand-operatic dismantling of Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll’s House (November 9–13); a world premiere by techno-visionaries Builders Association, who get behind today’s headlines to wonder about the theft of your personal data (SUPER VISION, Walker Commission, October 13–16); and the monthlong Out There festival of new performance (with companies from Holland, Paris/Vienna, Providence, and New York) turning on the projectors all January long to examine the captivating and diverse ways projected image and live humans are coming together to create a vital new brand of stage art.
Other highlights include a one-day mini-festival around the music of composer-saxophonist John Zorn, a puppet rock opera by a collective of leading conceptual visual artists (Don’t Trust Anyone Over Thirty), music-performance work by punk legend Jon Langford (Mekons), and a new series of experimental rock double bills.
Commenting on the inaugural performing arts season in the William and Nadine McGuire Theater, Philip Bither, William and Nadine McGuire Senior Curator, Performing Arts, states: “In just a few short months, the Walker’s incredible McGuire Theater has assumed an essential role as a new home for performance innovation locally and nationally. In the face of continuing reductions of funds for art and artists nationally, particularly risk-taking art, and the increasing dual dominance in our times of the conservative or the commercial—the opening of this new creative home is, I believe, an explosively hopeful thing.
We are at long last bringing it home, injecting the most daring and exciting music, dance, and performance art we could find into the new body of the Walker, allowing the program to have increased visibility and greater artistic synergy with our other Walker disciplines, something that can only fully happen under one roof.”
Unless otherwise noted, advance tickets are on sale by phone (612.375.7600) and online at http://calendar.walkerart.org.
THE WALKER ART CENTER’S 2005-–2006 PERFORMING ARTS SEASON
SEPTEMBER
Sarah Michelson
Daylight (for Minneapolis)
World Premiere, Walker Commission
Thursday–Saturday, September 15–17, 8 pm
$20 ($16)
“Michelson transforms performance spaces in the most extraordinary way . . . it is as if Fassbinder could dance.” —Artforum
Celebrating architecture through choreography, Sarah Michelson premieres a dance/installation experience inspired by the design of the Walker’s new building and the McGuire Theater. Commissioned by the Walker, Daylight (for Minneapolis) is an investigation of space, architecture, and audience perception informed by conversations with the Herzog and de Meuron’s design team. Based in New York by way of Manchester, U.K., Michelson, called “Fearless, witty, and completely individual . . . one of the most riveting dancers in New York,” (Time Out New York) brings with her a cast of highly skilled dancers and collaborators, including visual artist Claude Wampler and London-based architect Dominic Cullinan of Cullinan and Buck Architects Ltd.
Co-commissioned in partnership with P.S. 122 and the National Performance Network Creation Fund. Major commissioning funds provided by the Creative Capital Foundation Multi-Arts Production Fund, the William and Nadine McGuire Commissioning Fund, and the Doris Duke Fund for Jazz and Dance.
Supported in part with funds from Community Fund of the National Performance Network (NPN), the Bush Foundation, the National Dance Project of the New England Foundation for the Arts, the Jerome Foundation, the Moore Family Fund for the Arts of The Minneapolis Foundation, Heartland Arts Fund, New England Foundation for the Arts Contemporary Art Centers Initiative, and the National Endowment for the Arts, which believes that a great nation deserves great art. Presented in association with the National Performance Network (NPN).
Black Dice + 13 & God
Saturday, September 24, 8 pm
$15 ($12)
“One of the most conceptually inscrutable and sonically inventive bands currently in existence.“ —Stylus Magazine
Black Dice’s latest release, Creature Comforts (DFA Records), reveals subtle inflections of several terms employed to describe this Brooklyn three-piece band’s evolving sound—no-wave, art rock, post-noise, avant-psych—but is forged in an undeniably modern method of composition that is tightly orchestrated but leaves ample room for unexpected shifts during live performances. Their minimalist take on symphonic noise is laced with propulsive beats, swooping guitars, and a near-shamanistic frenzy of sonic textures that is at once transcendent and brutal. Germany’s electronic futurists the Notwist and the Anticon label collective’s notorious hip-hop philosophers Themselves converge as supergroup 13 & God. Complementary and distinctive, lush melodies meet chaotic free rap—idiosyncratics for a new age.
Bill Frisell’s Unspeakable Orchestra with Hal Willner
Sunday, September 25, 6 and 8:30 pm
$35 ($28)
“Taking fragments of obscure vinyl records as a launching point, the (orchestra) traverses a landscape that passes, in an almost hallucinatory way, through myriad styles. A special pleasure is the lush yet piquant string arrangements . . . this is an utterly gorgeous and captivating disc.“ —Billboard
The 2005 Grammy winner for Best Contemporary Jazz Album, Unspeakable paired the spellbinding innovation of guitarist/composer Bill Frisell and producer/turntablist Hal Willner, long-time “Saturday Night Live” music director and record-producing auteur (Stay Awake, Amarcord Nino Rota). Frisell and Willner are joined by core artists from that recording: Tony Scherr (bass), Kenny Wollesen (drums), Jenny Scheinman (violin), Eyvind Kang (viola), and Hank Roberts (cello). Using the album’s ecstatic mix of orchestral and digital soundscapes as a touchstone, the all-star band’s rare live performances of Unspeakable give the acclaimed recording a fresh life of its own.
Copresented with Northrop Jazz Season and the Cedar Cultural Center.
Deja Donne
In Bella Copia
Thursday–Saturday, September 29–October 1, 8 pm
$20 ($16)
“Filled with slapping, slashing, and kicking moves, the choreography matched the acting in emotional heat, and both expressed the sense that fury lies at the core of desire.” —Los Angeles Times
In Bella Copia‘s gritty mix of sex, power, and obsession “packs a visceral and psychological wallop” (New York Times). Working with a cast of contemporary dancers from across the globe, Prague-based Deja Donne’s exhilarating dance-theater is rich with incendiary social and metaphorical political content. With an intense physicality and explosive style, the performance suggests that human relationships are a power game—our basic human impulses fueling fantasies that are seductive, ugly, and humbling all at once. Contains adult content.
The Deja Donne performances kick-off Link Vostok’s Central European Dance Exchange, which includes artists from seven Central and Eastern European countries in a two-week residency that includes performances at the Southern Theater, October 13-16, 2005.
OCTOBER
The Builders Association/dbox
SUPER VISION
World Premiere, Walker Commission
Thursday–Sunday, October 13–16, 8 pm
$25 ($20)
“The Builders Association is itself an innovator in multimedia theatre, using video, animation, sampled sounds and god-knows-what sorts of computerized gizmos to produce gorgeous illusions.” —The Village Voice
The Obie Award-winning performance company The Builders Association (Alladeen) and digital designers dbox reveal a society in which “dataveillance” goes beyond anything Orwell ever imagined. Dive into this fresh, funny, and often disturbing combination of cutting-edge computer-generated animation, new video techniques, electronic music, and live performance. SUPER VISION probes three absorbing, intertwining, and all too-close-to-home stories drawn from the datasphere that explore the dangerous minefield of lives reduced to data.
Lead Co-producer: The Wexner Center for the Arts in association with the Advanced Computing Center for the Arts and Design at The Ohio State University. Co-producers: Walker Art Center; Montclair State University: Office of Arts & Cultural Programming; Mondavi Center for the Performing Arts, UC Davis; Liverpool, European Capital of Culture 2008; New Zealand International Arts Festival; BAM Next Wave Festival. Additional residency support provided by The Kitchen and Arts at St. Ann’s.
Juana Molina
Opening with Sam Prekop and Archer Prewitt
Saturday, October 22, 8 pm
$15 ($12)
“Sounds like Stereolab’s Laetitia Sadier covering Nick Drake, whispering luminous folk tunes amid electronic thickets while acoustic guitars and pianos flicker like votive candles.” —Entertainment Weekly
Argentinian singer/songwriter Juana Molina (Domino Records) sumptuously blends tropical folk, bubbling electronica, and graceful rhythms to create the freshest sounds coming out of Buenos Aires today. A chanteuse with an edge of new Latin chill, the former TV comedienne is creating an international buzz for her disarming stage presence and beguiling vocals that float through ambient washes of harmonies and textures.
Sam Prekop and Archer Prewitt of The Sea and Cake open the evening with music from Prekop’s latest, Who’s Your New Professor? (Thrill Jockey), a beautiful, crisp bit of offbeat pop perfection. Using a variety of unconventional guitar tunings and exotic arrangements, a closer look reveals minute patterns and completely unique structures, tones, and moods.
NOVEMBER
Merce Cunningham Company
Split Sides, Native Green, Suite for Five
Friday, November 4, 8 pm
$39, $34, $30 ($33, $29, $26)
Northrop Auditorium, East Bank campus, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis
“Possibilities in dance are bound only by our imagination and our two legs.”
—Merce Cunningham
A pillar of modernism and America’s most influential living choreographer, Merce Cunningham has prized invention over convention for more than half a century. Using elements of chance in his choreographic process and its musical accompaniment, and employing computers to create an unending array of movement possibilities, Cunningham has consistently created new languages for dance. His eclectic taste for unexpected musical partnerships is evidenced in Split Sides, a collaboration with Icelandic band Sigur Ros and Britain’s Radiohead. This engagement also showcases the past and recent Cunningham creations Native Green (1985) and Suite for Five (with music by John Cage and costumes by Robert Rauschenberg) inviting us to marvel anew at the infinite inventiveness of dance as abstract movement. A free Performance Preview with company members takes place at 7:15 pm in Northrop’s Studio 4.
Copresented with Northrop Dance Season.
Mabou Mines DollHouse
Wednesday–Sunday, November 9–13, 8 pm;
Saturday, November 12, 2 pm
Wednesday–Thursday, Saturday matinee,
Sunday $25 ($20); Friday–Saturday $32 ($26)
“The whole experience is so fascinating—thrilling here, confounding there—that it must be seen.” —New York Times
Experimental theater legend Mabou Mines returns to the Walker with the Obie Award–winning DollHouse, vanguard director Lee Breuer’s beautifully radical and unpredictable adaptation of the Ibsen classic. Still shockingly relevant, this tale of a suffocating marriage and the growing 19th-century feminist consciousness is viewed through an upended prism of proportion and scale: literally manifesting the power struggles in Ibsen’s play A Doll’s House, the male actors are no taller than four feet, while the female actors tower at six feet plus. Presented with a deft touch of magical and psychological realism, this doll’s house, replete with a chorus of marionettes, is transformed from bourgeois tragedy into high comedy with a deep and poignant bite.
Choreographers’ Evening
Saturday, November 26, 7 and 9:30 pm
$16 ($13)
The ever-popular showcase of contemporary Minnesota dance talent is back, bigger and wilder than ever, for its 33rd year. Emerging, mid-career, and established choreographers from around the region unveil their latest works and passions in what is sure to be another memorable sampler of dance in all styles. For the first time, Minnesota dance artists get to spread out fully, using the full stage capabilities of the new McGuire Theater.
DECEMBER
Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker
Once
Thursday–Saturday, December 1–3, 8 pm
$25 ($20)
“A freshness, strength, and edginess that confirm her place at the forefront of innovative European dance performance.” —Dance Theatre Journal
“Action is the antidote to despair.” —Joan Baez
In 1967, famed Belgian choreographer Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker (ROSAS) was given the LP Joan Baez in Concert, Part 2. Though she didn’t understand the lyrics as a child, she was moved by the delicate melodies and haunting voice of the singer. De Keersmaeker’s tour-de-force solo Once imbues Baez’s original Vietnam-era antiwar message with new power in this time of global conflict. Set to the album in its entirety, the work juxtaposes the insurgent poetry of the lyrics with the seductive austerity of contemporary European dance. The result is a tender, lovingly choreographed clash of pure motion and emotion. This is De Keersmaeker’s first-ever solo performance, and will be seen in the United States only in Minneapolis and New York.
Joe Chvala and The Flying Foot Forum
With Special Guest Ruth MacKenzie
Between the Fire and Ice (Mjøllnir II)
World Premiere, Walker Commissio
n
Saturday–Sunday, December 10–11, 8 pm; Sunday, December 11, 2 pm; Thursday–Saturday, December 15–17, 8 pm
$22 ($18)
“Fierce, exhilarating dancemaking.” —Star Tribune
The intricately layered percussive footwork of the Flying Foot Forum, the driving industrial rhythms of music by Savage Aural Hotbed, and the unearthly vocals of Ruth MacKenzie stir up a rich and resounding theatrical brew. A reworking and expansion of the Flying Foot Forum’s 1995 signature work Mjøllnir, Between the Fire and Ice is more timely than ever. Grounded in ancient Nordic and Teutonic lore, it visits a subconscious realm where our modern world collides with pagan antiquity. This powerful explosion of mythic archetypes and darkly spectacular images addresses issues of survival, greed, and global imbalance.
Supported with funds from the William and Nadine McGuire Commissioning Fund and the Doris Duke Fund for Jazz and Dance.
JANUARY
Out There 18: Performance Meets the Moving Image
January 5–28
The Walker’s annual boundary-defying festival of alternative performance turns on the projectors with four illuminating new works that mix performance with film/video by storied artistic collectives from around the globe. Long held at the Southern Theater, this will be Out There’s first year in the Walker’s new McGuire Theater.
Entertainment by Dan Graham and Tony Oursler
With Rodney Graham and Paul McCarthy
Don’t Trust Anyone Over Thirty
Walker Commission
Thursday, January 5, 8 pm; Friday, January 6, 7 and 9:30 pm; Saturday,
January 7, 7 and 9:30 pm
$20 ($16)
“Punch and Judy meets The Who.” —New York Times
After instigating teenage riots to change the voting age to 14 and dosing Congress with LSD, 24-year-old rock singer Neil Sky is elected president. In this multimedia puppet-theater rock-opera (based on the 1968 exploitation film Wild in the Streets), which sharply satirizes the hippie generation and the end of the psychedelic era, an idealistic movement left unchecked becomes the same fascistic tidal wave its young protagonists fight against so unstintingly. Experience the McGuire stage transformed into an intimate 120-seat puppet-theater installation conceived by conceptual artist Dan Graham with videos by artist Tony Oursler. Features live music by post-punk duo Japanther and marionettes by Phillip Huber (Being John Malkovich).
Supported in part with funds from the William and Nadine McGuire Commissioning Fund. Additional support provided by the Bush Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts.
Co-commissioned by TRANS>, Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary, Vienna; Foundation 2021, New York, and Voom/LAB, New York.
Superamas
Big Episode #2 (Show/Business)
Thursday–Saturday, January 12–14, 8 pm
$20 ($16)
“Superamas lay into our corporate and consumerist world with esprit and a great sense of fun . . . a masterpiece.” —Der Standard, Germany
In this darkly comic funhouse critique of consumer culture, two men meet a pretty stewardess and begin to flirt. Scenes repeat, slightly altered each time. Perceptions slip. The wages of desire emerge as glimpses of global economics, war, and workplace politics that bubble up when least expected. Set in a dead-on re-creation of an airport terminal cosmetic counter/corporate office suite, this work by the French–Austrian cult performance collective Superamas splices and dices reality shows, soap operas, conceptual art, and Hollywood icons in a wickedly malicious examination of seduction and ideology.
Everett Dance Theatre
Home Movies
Thursday–Saturday, January 19–21, 8 pm
$20 ($16)
“An astonishingly seamless blend of words, video, set elements, and dance
. . . more tears, laughter, and poignant memory than high-tech effects.” —New York Times
The latest from Providence–based Everett Dance Theatre, the deeply resonant Home Movies explores memory and the modern American family, intertwining deft humor, compelling images, and eloquent movement. The work’s deliberately lo-fi aesthetic is a perfect complement to the beguiling humanism that guides not only the piece itself, but the company’s ethos. This multigenerational, multicultural, and multimedia piece features five dancers, four families, and a tightly woven web of stories about loss, triumph, and the poignant moments in life that define us all.
Supported in part with funds from the Bush Foundation.
Kassys
Kommer
Thursday–Saturday, January 26–28, 8 pm
$20 ($16)
“With a subtle style and an absurd touch [Kassys] makes the everyday extra ordinary. It is all brilliantly brought into vision.” —DeVolkskrant, the Netherlands
How can something be deeply, profoundly sad yet hilarious at the same time? Somehow, Dutch movement-theater collective Kassys has created a work that is just that. A tender, comic portrayal of human fragility, Kommer (grief) begins with six people at a party and ends with a cinematic exploration of the “private” loneliness of the actors we have gotten to know. Combining film (with some footage shot in the Twin Cities) and live performance in equal doses, the work is both formally daring and emotionally resonant.
FEBRUARY
Jon Langford
The Executioner’s Last Songs
Walker Commission
Friday–Saturday, February 10–11, 8 pm
$20 ($16)
“You will be sufficiently caught up in the essential absurdity of violence, any violence, to look at it in a new light.” —Chicago Sun-Times
Best known as the front man for the Mekons, Jon Langford’s mordantly beautiful performance work The Executioner’s Last Songs is a compelling collection of tales and songs on the themes he’s described as “murder, mob law, and cruel, cruel punishment.” Langford takes us on a twisting and witty autobiographical ride that takes an unflinching look at the promises of life and the penalty of death, which combines live music, spoken word, Langford’s own visual art, and recordings of American roots music. One of the most resilient pop-punk bandleaders to emerge from Britain in the 1970s, Langford has since become a leading force in alt-country music with The Waco Brothers. Here he is joined by Sally Timms (Mekons), bassist Tony Maimone (Pere Ubu), violinist Jean Cook, and drummer Dan Massey.
Co-commissioned in partnership with Alverno College and the National Performance Network Creation Fund.
Supported with funds from the Bush Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts, which believes that a great nation deserves great art. Presented in association with the National Performance Network.
Zorn x 3
Zorn and Bither in Conversation, 6 pm FREE
Electric Masada, 7 pm
John Zorn’s Music for Films, 9:30 pm
Friday, February 17
$40 ($35) for both; $25 ($20) for single events
“Take King Crimson, The Bad Plus, and Mr. Bungle, tie them all together and set them on fire, and you’ll wind up with something like John Zorn.” —The Wire
Catch three sides of an icon in this special Zorn-athon. One of the most prolific and influential composer/musician/producers in the country, John Zorn begins the evening in conversation with Walker curator Philip Bither about his career and music. Next, Zorn offers his most recent and powerful Masada unit, Electric Masada—a free-flow blend of the raw power of his Naked City, the improvisational madness of Cobra, and the fused funk of Miles Davis’ Bitches Brew era. This downtown NYC supergroup (Trevor Dunn, Kenny Wollesen, Joey Barron, Marc Ribot, Ikue Mori, Cyro Baptista) may indeed be the most exciting band Zorn has ever created. The evening concludes with Music for Films, featuring members of Electric Masada and films from the Walker’s Ruben collection chosen and scored by Zorn.
MARCH
Douglas Ewart’s Inventions Clarinet Choir
Featuring Ed Wilkerson, Jr. and Mwata Bowden
Opening with the William Parker/Hamid Drake Duo
Saturday, March 4, 8 pm
$20 ($16)
“A genre-defying band that sounds like nothing else on this planet . . . easily ranks among the more ferociously effective septets in jazz.” —Chicago Tribune
Minneapolis’ composer/inventor/multi-instrumentalist Douglas Ewart combines a rare appearance by his Clarinet Choir with some of Chicago’s finest musicians, including fellow Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM) members Ed Wilkerson, Jr. (Shadow Vignettes, 8 Bold Souls) and Mwata Bowden. On the all-star front line behind singer/poet Mankwe Ndosi is the propulsive bass of Darius Savage, the guitar virtuosity of Jeff Parker, and the swinging rhythms of drummer Vincent Davis. The concert, which opens with the knock-down, freedom-seeking rhythms of bassist William Parker and Hamid Drake, celebrates the AACM’s 40th anniversary.
Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company
Blind Date
Friday, March 10, 8 pm
$39, $34, $30 ($33, $29, $26)
Northrop Auditorium, East Bank campus, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis
“The Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company [is] one of the glories of American dance.” —San Francisco Chronicle
In the hands of choreographer Bill T. Jones, dance becomes an extraordinary tool for probing life’s big questions and journeying toward understanding. In this new evening-length work, he explores patriotism, honor, sacrifice, and service to a cause larger than oneself—values all but lost in our modern world. Jones’ technically stunning 10-member company performs in a landscape of primary colors with live musical accompaniment by Daniel Bernard Roumain. As if on a “blind date,” wisdom and eloquence meet dumbed-down fundamentalism in this explosive meditation on opposing forces and contrasting beliefs.
Copresented with Northrop Dance Season.
Carla Kihlstedt/2 Foot Yard
Opening with Carla Bozulich and Ches Smith
Saturday, March 18, 8 pm
$15 ($12)
“If he were still alive today, what would Hungarian composer Béla Bartók be writing? Fan letters to Carla Kihlstedt.” —The Wire
2 Foot Yard shatters the boundaries between art song and pop song by merging the visceral power of rock with the intimacy and warmth of chamber music. Violin, cello, voice, and drums combine to create a cacophony of harmonic (im)balance culled from an astonishing array of musical influences, from acoustic punk to the twang of old country love ballads. This trio led by Tzadik recording artist Carla Kihlstedt (Tin Hat Trio, Sleepytime Gorilla Museum) guarantees an off-kilter ride through the worlds of drama and melody.
Art/Alt rocker Carla Bozulich (Geraldine Fibbers, Scarnella), acclaimed for her recent remake of Willie Nelson’s 1975 classic The Red Headed Stranger, has been called “The missing link between Patti Smith and Marlene Dietrich” (Uncut Magazine). Here she is joined by percussionist Ches Smith.
Sekou Sundiata
The America Project (Preview Performance)
Friday–Saturday, March 31–April 1, 8 pm
$15 ($12)
“Living in the aftermath of 9/11, I feel an urgent and renewed engagement with what it means to be an American. But that engagement is a troubling one because of a longstanding estrangement between American civic ideals and American civic practice. This project is my response to this reality. I take it as a civic responsibility to think about these things out loud, in the ritualized forum of theater and public dialogue.” —Sekou Sundiata
Spoken-word/theater artist and musician Sekou Sundiata (blessing the boats, Udu) returns to the Walker with a company of a dozen musicians, singers, and spoken word artists to develop his latest work—a candid contemplation of America’s national identity and its guiding mythologies. Uniting art and civic dialogue through song cycles, poems, monologues, and moving images, The America Project ponders America’s definition of itself in an era of unprecedented global power and asks what it means to be both a citizen and an individual in our complex society. This work-in-progress performance concludes a two-week production and community residency, offering previews of the finished work just before its California premiere. The work features next generation jazz artists Graham Haynes and Marvin Sewell, as well as new music compositions by Ani DiFranco and others.
Supported in part with funds from the Bush Foundation.
APRIL
Tinariwen
Saturday, April 8, 8 pm
$26 ($22)
Cedar Cultural Center, 416 Cedar Avenue South, Minneapolis
“Songs can extend like sweeping desert landscapes. And like a nomad traversing those sands, Tinariwen’s music carries only essentials and needs nothing more.” —New York Times
Hear the new sound of desert blues from Mali—Tinariwen’s sinuous electric guitars and galloping rhythms meld with centuries-old traditional melodies, collective vocals, and punctuating handclaps. This band of Touaregs was formed in a refugee camp in Libya in the early 1980s when they traded their guns for electric guitars to create gutty, riff-driven songs of exile and rebellion. Their East-meets-West sound has kindred roots that stretch from Bob Marley to John Lee Hooker, Chuck Barry to Ali Farka Toure. Presented as standing room with limited seating.
Copresented with the Cedar Cultural Center.
Meg Stuart/Benoît Lachambre /Hahn Rowe
With Damaged Goods & par b.l.eux
FORGERIES, LOVE AND OTHER MATTERS
Thursday–Saturday, April 20–22, 8 pm
$25 ($20)
“Forgeries . . . recycles and filters the apocalyptic fantasies and clichés from movies and emo-culture. [It] is muggy and complex, defiant and humoristic and above all shameless theatre.” —De Morgen, Belgium
Are these people campers or drifters, friends or lovers, humans or animals? This intimate, tender, and, at moments, brutal dance-theater work explores the psychological landscapes traversed in the search for personal connection. Atop a monumental hill (literally re-created on the McGuire stage), three artists create a world that is part Beckett, part sci-fi, part Charles Darwin as they survey the geographies of the body, relationships, and the environment. An American expatriate powerhouse who has grown into one of the most influential choreographer of her generation in Europe, Stuart returns briefly to America (only Minneapolis and New York) to perform with Montréal dancer Lachambre and New York composer Hahn Rowe, whose stunning live music performed from the onstage mountain envelopes the audience.
MAY
Myra Melford Trio + Dawn Saito + Oguri
Knock on the Sky
Walker Commission
Friday–Saturday, May 12–13, 8 pm
$20 ($16)
“Melford [has] reconnected music to motion, leaving today’s straight-laced young men in suits—who have dominated recent jazz—in her wake.” —The Observer (UK)
Is pushing a boulder up a mountain an onerous task or a welcome meditation? This is just one of the questions pondered by the creators of Knock on the Sky, an evening–length performance piece combining primordial movement, expansive jazz, and live video within a subtly changing sonic and visual installation. Bandleader/pianist Myra Melford’s captivating blend of experimental jazz/blues, 20th–century composition, and Eastern folk tradition provides the foundation for this carefully structured improvisation. She is joined by New York City–based choreographer/dancer Dawn Saito, Los Angeles’ butoh master Oguri, bassist Stomu Takeishi, and trumpeter Cuong Vu.
Co-commissioned in partnership with the Flynn Center for the Performing Arts and the National Performance Network Creation Fund.
Supported in part with funds from the Bush Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts, which believes that a great nation deserves great art. Presented in association with the National Performance Network.
JUNE
Zeitgeist and Martin Bresnick
Pine Eyes
World Premiere, Walker Commission
Saturday, June 3, 2 and 8 pm
$15 ($12)
The Twin Cities’ own new music force, Zeitgeist, returns to the Walker stage with the world premiere of Pine Eyes, a dark and delightful evening-length multi-media work based on Carlo Collodi’s beloved The Adventures of Pinocchio. Composed and narrated by Martin Bresnick, directed by Robert Bresnick, and featuring animation by Leslie Weinberg, Pine Eyes is a rich mixture of music, words, and film that creates a compelling adventure for the imagination which is captivating for audiences of all ages.
Pine Eyes was commissioned by the Walker Art Center and the Zeitgeist Commissioning Collective.
($)= ticket prices for Walker Art Center members
