Last week the Minnesota State Arts Board announced recipients of $1.2 million in arts funding. The 140 grantees include choreographer Penelope Freeh, poet Bao Phi, artist Liz Miller, and painter (and former Walker Teen Arts Council member) Luke Tromiczak.

“The irony is not lost on me,” writes photo mag editor Melissa Harris, “that I should be equally consumed by another medium, one that defies any notion of ‘capture,’ that I am seduced by dance’s very impermanence, especially in the case of Merce Cunningham.”

In Bill T. Jones’ Story/Time, the MacArthur “Genius” and Tony-winning choreographer takes inspiration from John Cage’s 1959 work Indeterminacy, sharing a series of poetic reflections, organized by chance and punctuated by dance and music. In the spirit of the performance, we offer a series of short reflections by Jones from a recent interview with performing arts curator Philip Bither.

Activist, artist, and performer Marc Bamuthi Joseph can add another title to his CV: director of performing arts at San Francisco’s Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. Bamuthi brings his red, black and GREEN: a blues to the Walker in March.

The Twin Cities’ “dance ecology unites buoyant individualism with an ardent sense of community, echoing the populist streak that runs through Minnesota’s history, from its socialist Scandinavian roots to its current multicultural profile,” writes Linda Shapiro.

For five decades, the Merce Cunningham Dance Company and the Walker have had deep ties, from commissions and residencies to a 2008 performance in a granite quarry and the Walker’s acquisition of the company décor and costumes in 2011. Fittingly, when the company performed for the last time on New Year’s weekend, Walker staff, including its director and performing arts curator, were in attendance.

The six performers onstage in Young Jean Lee’s Untitled Feminist Show could scarcely be more exposed. In a move to “de-objectify the performers,” all actors wear no clothing or makeup. But beyond that, they work without a script, without dialogue. In a recent interview, Lee discusses these choices as well as her strategy of building each show as “a trap” for audiences.

For its final performances ever, the Merce Cunningham Dance Company will dance this weekend underneath “pixel clouds” created by Daniel Arsham—a constellation of orbs showing iPhone photos he took from airplane windows while on tour with the company.

How does the Walker’s Out There series reflect or reject broader performing arts currents in the Unites States and around the globe? Walker staff writer Julie Caniglia tests the waters surrounding the quartet of theatrical freethinkers appearing at this 24th annual festival of adventurous performance.