Kaneza Schaal, KLII. Photo: Christopher Myers.
The Walker’s Winter/Spring 2022 Performing Arts Season brings us together in real time to collectively experience the ideas and artistry found in a carefully selected spectrum of live contemporary dance, music, and performance. With seven new Walker commissions and three world premieres, the lineup represents one of the Walker’s most ambitious concentrations of new performance work in recent times, responding to the gaping need caused by the rupture of COVID-19 shutdowns. Rooted in active dialogue with artists over years, the season offers works that imagine new worlds in a time of pandemic, political upheaval, environmental crises, and overdue racial reckoning. The program reflects a broadened commitment to diversity, alliance, and equity, not only between artists and institutions but also between collaborating arts organizations and communities across the Twin Cities, sharing inspiration and colleagueship through creative work at a critical moment.
With new experimental theatrical forms, Out There 2022 kicks things off with irreverence and ambition through the incomparable works of three female American theater visionaries—Kaneza Schaal, Annie Dorsen, and Annie-B Parson (Big Dance Theater).
The season’s rich spectrum of new global sounds includes Walker-commissioned compositions by Iraqi American composer Amir ElSaffar for his 17-piece global big band; legendary Black electronic composer George Lewis working with Minnesota’s own new music stalwarts Zeitgeist; and an ambitious world premiere of a multimedia song-cycle by Grammy-winning jazz vocalist and visual artist Cécile McLorin Salvant. Other highlights include the return of the famed Kronos Quartet with two programs of contemporary global works; the Walker debut of Third Coast Percussion with an ingenious score by Black music innovators Jlin and Tyondai Braxton and minimalist master Philip Glass (for a new hip-hop dance work by Lil Buck and Jon Boogz); and next generation innovators Pakistani American vocalist Arooj Aftab and hip-hop/jazz creator Kassa Overall in their Minnesota debuts. Big Dance Theater and Seattle-based choreographer Heather Kravas each offer large-scaled interdisciplinary dance/performance works featuring new scores by pop/experimental sound artist Holly Herndon (Big Dance) and harpist/composer Zeena Parkins (Kravas).
Outside of music, a renewed commitment to international exchange is seen in new commissioned performance works by Rwandan American director/actor Kaneza Schaal and Moroccan/Belgian Imazighen creator Radouan Mriziga (featuring British Rwandan performer Dorothée Munyaneza).
With fearlessness and joy, the artist-centered Winter/Spring 2022 Performing Arts program aims to undergird the work of contemporary dance, music, and performance makers while simultaneously offering Walker audiences and communities transformational opportunities based in trust, empathy, diversity, and local/national leadership. We hope the expanding audiences and communities we serve will draw sustenance from the power and unique visions of these live, artistic experiences reflecting the freedom and innovation offered by the artists of our time.
Staying Out There for 33 Years: Out There 2022
New performance and radical theater return to the Walker with three boundary defying productions for Out There 2022. Featuring works by leading American female visionaries—Kaneza Schaal, Annie Dorsen, and Annie-B Parson—this year’s annual Out There series is spread across five weeks in January and February. Opening with a world premiere and featuring two new Walker commissions, the program reflects a heightened commitment to supporting artists at this historically challenging moment. While the works examine complex and urgent issues of our time, they also reimagine new worlds with ingenuity, virtuosity, and distinctive spirit.
The featured works include an intensely theatrical solo that addresses the impacts of brutal colonialism in Central Africa (and its residue in our everyday lives); a musical meditation on indeterminacy and living in the moment; and a modern-day Chekhovian rumination on privilege, mass denial, and societal divisions in the United States.
Out There 2022: An Alternative Performance Series
Kaneza Schaal, KLII
Wednesday–Saturday, January 12–15, 8 pm
$28.50 ($22.50 Walker members)
McGuire Theater
World Premiere, Walker Commission
“Everything that happens in the space Schaal has carved out for us always feels beautifully, powerfully sacred.” —Artforum
KLII exorcises the ghost of Belgium’s King Leopold II through a mytho-biographical performance by theater-maker Kaneza Schaal. Designed and codirected by Christopher Myers, KLII draws on Mark Twain’s King Leopold’s Soliloquy (1905), a fictional monologue written after Twain’s visit to the Congo Free State, and Patrice Lumumba’s 1960 independence speech in the Congo. Increasingly our demons are invisible—long-hidden racism and misogyny, misinformation, even the virus. How do we handle these threats, which are as central to our everyday life as they are hidden? Schaal and Myers propose an exorcism in theater, starring one of the villains of the 19th century whose actions resonate through the present day.
Intimate onstage seating with limited capacity.
This program is a National Performance Network (NPN) Creation and Development Fund Project co-commissioned by the Walker Art Center with funds from the National Endowment for the Arts, in partnership with Contemporary Art Center, Cincinnati, and REDCAT. Program support provided by Producers’ Council members Leni and David Moore, Jr./The David & Leni Moore Family Foundation.
Out There 2022: An Alternative Performance Series
Annie Dorsen
Yesterday Tomorrow
Thursday–Saturday, January 27–29, 8 pm
$28.50 ($22.50 Walker members)
McGuire Theater
Copresented with the Great Northern.
“Haunting and strangely beautiful … as simple in its emotional appeal as it is complex in its conception and execution.” —New York Times
Algorithmic-theater inventor and MacArthur “Genius” Award–winner Annie Dorsen presents a remarkable performance that celebrates the potential transcendence of living in the moment in our environmentally and politically anxious times. Beginning with the Beatles’ “Yesterday” and ending with the song “Tomorrow” from the musical Annie, Dorsen’s algorithms create new scores in real time each night for three vocalists, deconstructing and reassembling these beloved pop songs. Yesterday Tomorrow offers a meditation on the relationships between humanity, computers, and creativity, with a Zen-like embrace of the present at its core. The work’s use of chance and artificial intelligence “unexpectedly creates a funny, joyous, and twisting journey … surprisingly, for such an intellectual exercise, human pleasure is the overwhelming result” (Exeunt).
This performance was originally scheduled for March 2020.
Program support provided by Producers’ Council members King’s Fountain/Barbara Watson Pillsbury and Leni and David Moore, Jr./The David & Leni Moore Family Foundation.
Out There 2022: An Alternative Performance Series
Big Dance Theater
The Mood Room
Thursday–Saturday, February 10–12, 8 pm
$28.50 ($22.50 Walker members)
McGuire Theater
Walker Commission
“It’s hard to do justice to the freewheeling brilliance of Big Dance Theater.” —New York Times
A family reunion, 1970s Los Angeles, five sisters. An ingenious, theatrical jewel box crafted by Big Dance Theater’s director Annie-B Parson, The Mood Room is a play written by ’70s conceptual artist Guy de Cointet that collages text from Shelly, Baudelaire, Chekhov, advertisements, and soap operas. As the story unfolds, the performance heightens our perception of class, privilege, and the growing self-involvement of the new “me” generation. Through a dazzling blend of film, movement, music, ennui, puzzles, and dry wit, the piece critiques how class and wealth have changed our relationship to self and participation in the citizen body. Featuring a recomposed score by pop-electronic sound artist Holly Herndon. The Walker’s third Big Dance Theater commission honors the company’s 30-year anniversary.
Commissioned by the Walker Art Center with support provided by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Program support provided by Producers’ Council members Leni and David Moore, Jr./The David & Leni Moore Family Foundation.
Cécile McLorin Salvant
Ogresse: Envisioned
Friday–Saturday, February 25–26, 8 pm
$45 ($36 Walker members)
McGuire Theater
World Premiere, Walker Commission
“A story at once epic and intimate … virtually everything about it is staggeringly original.” —Wall Street Journal
Ogresse: Envisioned is a sumptuous journey of myth and song by multiple Grammy Award–winning jazz vocalist, composer, and visual artist Cécile McLorin Salvant. Playful yet poignant, this darkly humorous fairy tale explores themes of power, gender, race, body diversity, and love. The new multimedia work is driven by an enthralling, genre-defying score composed by Salvant and performed by a 13-piece chamber orchestra arranged and conducted by Darcy James Argue. The Ogresse and her forest home are conjured with striking, large-scale projected imagery, co-created by Belgian animator Lia Bertels and Salvant, in this not-to-be-missed world premiere performance.
The presentation of Ogresse: Envisioned was commissioned by the Walker Art Center with support provided by the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. Program support provided by Producers’ Council members Nor Hall and Roger Hale and Leni and David Moore, Jr./The David & Leni Moore Family Foundation. The original Ogresse song-cycle was co-commissioned by Metropolitan Museum of Art, New Jersey Performing Arts Center, and the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.
Kronos Quartet
Fifty for the Future
Program A: New Global Voices: Saturday, March 19, 7:30 pm
Program B: Old Friends: Sunday, March 20, 7:30 pm
Single tickets $48, $39 ($39, $32 Walker and MPR members); ticket packages available
The Fitzgerald Theater, 10 East Exchange Street, St. Paul
Copresented by Schubert Club Mix and Your Classical Minnesota Public Radio.
“The most far-ranging ensemble geographically, nationally and stylistically the world has known.” —Los Angeles Times
For more than 45 years, San Francisco’s Kronos Quartet has pursued a singular artistic vision, combining a spirit of fearless exploration with a commitment to continually reimagine the string quartet experience. Kronos now returns to the Twin Cities after an 11-year hiatus with two distinct programs drawn from the diverse and dazzling array of Kronos’s Fifty for the Future project, an ambitious five-year commissioning and educational initiative comprised of 50 new works.
On Saturday night, New Global Voices (Program A) features compelling scores by international composers new to Minnesota audiences, such as Aruna Narayan (India/Canada), Peni Candra Rini (Indonesia), and Soo Yeon Lyuh (South Korea). On Sunday, Old Friends (Program B) spotlights a diverse array of composers known here through their past Walker and other Twin Cities performances, including Terry Riley, Tanya Tagaq, and Missy Mazzoli.
Purchase tickets through the First Avenue box office. Buy both nights and save! Each night is a different program. Select ticket package when purchasing to buy both shows and receive a discount.
Ticket Prices & Packages
Single tickets: $48, $39 ($39, $32 Walker and MPR members).
Join the special VIP postshow meet and greet for an additional $50 per ticket (available both nights, limited; ticketed online only).
Two-show ticket package: $70 ($56 Walker and MPR members).
Two-show VIP package with postshow meet and greet: $100 (available both nights, limited; ticketed online only).
Ticket prices listed do not include fees.
Radouan Mriziga
Akal
Wednesday–Saturday, March 30–April 2, 8 pm
$28.50 ($22.50 Walker members)
McGuire Theater
Walker Co-commission
“Uniting structure with sentiment, Mr. Mriziga is creating striking patterns of his own.” —New York Times
International performance returns to the Walker stage. Presented in an intimate, onstage setting and incorporating songs, rituals, traditional dances, storytelling, poems, and collective memories, Akal is inspired by the ancient Mediterranean mythologies of the Indigenous Imazighen people of North Africa. Moroccan-born, Brussels-based choreographer Radouan Mriziga’s conception is beautifully realized by Rwandan dancer/singer Dorothée Munyaneza in a solo performance that brings to life the goddess Neith, one of the oldest and most powerful deities of ancient Egypt. Akal (the Tamazight word for Earth), offers a fresh look at a suppressed past that makes us dream of a more inclusive future.
Intimate onstage seating with limited capacity.
Co-commissioned by the Walker Art Center with support provided by Producers’ Council member King’s Fountain/Barbara Watson Pillsbury. Akal is a production of A7LA5 (Brussels – BE) in collaboration with Something Great (Berlin – DE), and co-produced by the Walker (Minneapolis – US), DeSingel (Antwerp – BE), Kaaitheater (Brussels – BE), Tanzquartier Wien (Vienna – AT), PACT Zollverein (Essen – DE), Festival de Marseille (Marseille – FR), Wexner Center for the Arts (Columbus – US), Contemporary Arts Center (Cincinnati – US), and C-mine (Genk – BE).
Arooj Aftab
Sunday, April 10, 7 pm
$50 VIP; $35 Preferred; $25 Advance general admission ($40, $28, $20 Walker members)
The Parkway, 4814 Chicago Ave, Minneapolis
Copresented with Liquid Music.
“[Aftab] calls forth the poetry and euphoria of Pakistani Qawwali and Sufi styles, swirled into modern, interpretive riffs from rock, hip-hop, classical and jazz.” —NPR Music
Pakistan-born, Brooklyn-based composer and vocalist Arooj Aftab’s liminal sound conjures classical minimalism, Sufi devotional poetry, and electronic trance into pure states of being. The composer’s remarkable voice and signature songwriting style transports listeners to worlds once known, backed by a quartet of virtuoso musicians, including master multi-instrumentalist Shahzad Ismaily. Aftab is quickly becoming an in-demand musical figure with her celebrated recent release Vulture Prince, “a heartbreaking, exquisite document of the journey from grief to acceptance … an incandescent love letter to the light” (Pitchfork).
Amir ElSaffar’s Rivers of Sound Orchestra
Thursday, April 21, 8 pm
$28.50 ($22.50 Walker members)
McGuire Theater
Walker Commission
“The music has a liquid quality: It’s full of momentum, but not in the way of a single moving thing. Instead, it seems to flow and spill across bounds.” —New York Times
In 2016 Iraqi American composer/multi-instrumentalist Amir ElSaffar brought his global big band the Rivers of Sound Orchestra to the McGuire Theater for one of the most masterful, ecstatic concerts in the theater’s history. Five years and a pandemic later, ElSaffar returns with his sonically diverse 17-member ensemble—a mix of traditional instruments from across North Africa, the Middle East, and South Asia as well as Western jazz and classical instrumentation. Featuring remarkable players from around the world, the music builds from composed melodies and rhythms drawing from historic Iraqi Maqam musical forms in improvisational fashion.
Commissioned by the Walker Art Center with support provided by the National Endowment for the Arts. Program support provided by Producers’ Council members Leni and David Moore, Jr./The David & Leni Moore Family Foundation.
Third Coast Percussion with Movement Art Is
Metamorphosis
Saturday, April 30, 7:30 pm
$51, $41, $31 ($37, $29, $20 Walker members)
Northrop, 84 Church St SE, Minneapolis
Copresented with Northrop.
“Movement Art Is advocates for social change while expressing how vital dance can be.” —The Atlantic
“[Third Coast Percussion] play as if they’re a single, eight-armed organism.” —New York Times
For their first Walker appearance, Chicago’s Third Coast Percussion join forces with the groundbreaking choreography of Movement Art Is (cofounded by hip-hop dance stars Lil Buck and Jon Boogz) for an intimate, evening-length program that explores the duality of human nature. At once intensely personal and fiercely virtuosic, two disparate styles of street dance blend seamlessly with new music by pioneering Black electronic composers Jlin and Tyondai Braxton (seen at the Walker in 2011) as well as Third Coast’s critically acclaimed arrangements of Philip Glass’s Aguas da Amazonia.
Kassa Overall
Friday, May 6, 8 pm
Advance: $28.50 ($22.50 Walker members); Day of show: $30 ($24 Walker members)
The Cedar, 416 Cedar Ave S, Minneapolis
Copresented with the Cedar.
“It’s one of the few genuine-sounding, full-scope amalgams of contemporary hip-hop and jazz to surface in recent years.”
—New York Times
Heralded as a harbinger of change, Kassa Overall is a musician, singer, producer, drummer, and a revered product of New York’s jazz scene who melds avant-garde experimentation with hip-hop production techniques to explore unmapped musical directions. Overall’s panoramic musical background, from West Coast G-Funk to the sounds of the New York underground, is rigorously investigative but always in the tradition of his mentors, the late Elvin Jones and Billy Hart. Catch the Twin Cities debut of “one of modern jazz music’s most audacious futurists” (Pitchfork).
Pictured: Aretha Aoki, Talya Epstein, Cecilia Eliceche, John Hoobyar, Joey Kipp (standing), and Jennifer Kjos. Photo: V. Haven.
Heather Kravas and Victoria Haven: solid objects
Thursday–Saturday, May 12–14
solid objects/SANDWICH
Thursday, May 12, 5–9 pm; Saturday, May 14, 1–5 pm
Free; come and go as you like
Cargill Lounge
solid objects/VOIDS
Friday–Saturday, May 13–14, 8 pm
$28.50 ($22.50 Walker members)
McGuire Theater
World Premiere, Walker Commission
“[Kravas’s] creative ingenuity, conceptual depth, and social consciousness … [is] characterized by a palpable passion.”
—Culturebot
Honoring individual and communal practice, solid objects is a multiyear collaborative project between Seattle-based choreographer Heather Kravas and visual artist Victoria Haven that unites the forces of dance and drawing. Each brings a range of influences: with roots in feminist and punk aesthetics, Kravas generates ecstatic and meticulous physical states; Haven activates space through architectural interventions for the performers to embody. For this Walker premiere, they offer complementary presentations created for the stage and public spaces. Viewed independently or as a whole, solid objects illuminates each physical space and audience as its own transitory and charged universe.
The onstage performance solid objects/VOIDS proposes necessary expressions of radical intimacy and devotion with architecture, light, bodies, and objects.
Offering new possibilities for how people might draw nearer to one another, solid objects/SANDWICH—created in situ for the Cargill Lounge—questions what is and lies within the frame as a sprawling, playful B-side to the composed intensity of solid objects/VOIDS.
Both works include a new electro-acoustic score and sound installation by composer Zeena Parkins, costumes by womxns rites, and feature Kravas and company members Cecilia Eliceche, Joey Kipp, and Symone Sanz in collaboration with three of Minnesota’s most distinctive dancer/choreographers: José A. Luis, Judith Holo Shuǐ Xiān, and Chris Schlichting.
The free presentation of solid objects: SANDWICH is a four-hour durational performance; come and go as you like.
Commissioned by the Walker Art Center with support provided by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. Program support provided by Producers’ Council members Leni and David Moore, Jr./The David & Leni Moore Family Foundation.
Zeitgeist and Friends with special guest George Lewis
The Music of George Lewis
Saturday, May 21, 8 pm
$28.50 ($22.50 Walker members)
McGuire Theater
Walker Commission
St. Paul–based contemporary chamber ensemble Zeitgeist returns to the Walker to celebrate an eclectic range of works by New York-based experimental composer, trombonist, scholar, and computer music innovator George Lewis. Zeitgeist and Lewis will be joined by Douglas Ewart, Michelle Kinney, and other local improvisers and musicians. The evening features a newly co-commissioned work by Lewis for Zeitgeist, with the composer himself on trombone and electronics. Also included is one of Lewis’s signature works, Voyager (1987–present), which uses a computer-driven, interactive, nonhierarchical “virtual improvising orchestra.”
Commissioned by the Walker Art Center with support provided by the National Endowment for the Arts. Program support provided by Producers’ Council members Therese Sexe and David Hage.
Attendance Requirements
Our highest priority is the health and wellness of all visitors to the Walker. We’re preparing to welcome you back responsibly with a seamless and improved experience. To find out more about important COVID-19 vaccination, testing, and mask requirements related to this event, visit our COVID-19 guidelines page.
Please be aware that attendance requirements may be different between the McGuire Theater at the Walker and at our presenting partners the Cedar, the Fitzgerald Theater, Northrop, and the Parkway. Those individual requirements are outlined on our website.
Ways to Save
Members Save 20%
Become a Walker member and enjoy a 20% discount on performance tickets, unlimited free gallery admission, special events, and more. Join at walkerart.org/membership or call 612-375-7655.