Archive Articles
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Articles
Internal Revolution
Philip Bither
Jan 2012
Given the tumult in the Middle East, it’s no surprise that Lebanese theater-maker and visual artist Rabih Mroué is interested in revolution. But he doesn’t see his work as activism. Eschewing the term “political theater,” he says, “If there’s a revolution, it’s revolution against myself, to provoke myself.”
PA
Articles
Last Dance
Paul Schmelzer
Jan 2012
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.
VA
Articles
Tombstone for Phùng Vo
Bartholomew Ryan
Jan 2012
“Here lies one whose name was writ in water.” So reads the inscription on a black stone with gold-leaf engraving that will be installed in the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden next spring. A work by Danh Vo, it will reside here until the death of the artist’s father, when it will travel to Copenhagen to mark Phùng Vo’s final resting place.
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Articles
Naked
Jesse Leaneagh
Jan 2012
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.
PA
Articles
Out There 2012
Julie Caniglia
Dec 2011
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.
VA
Articles
The Oculus Inhabited
Paul Schmelzer
Dec 2011
Like some alien organism deep in the core of the machine it controls, Elizabeth Simonson’s biomorphic, bead-based sculptural installation is recessed into the aluminum-clad ceiling just inside the Walker’s Hennepin Avenue entrance. Commissioned for the space, which was dubbed the “oculus” by architects Herzog & de Meuron, the complex and intricate work is intended to suggest biological forms.
FV
Articles
Nathalie Djurberg’s The Parade
Eric Crosby and Dean Otto
Dec 2011
Primal and chaotic, Nathalie Djurberg’s art “doesn’t look like anything else out there,” says Eric Crosby, co-curator of the artist’s first major US museum show. In an interview, he and the Walker’s Dean Otto discuss how Djurberg’s claymation and sculptures fall outside conventions of both the film and contemporary art worlds, while channeling a “universality of experience that speaks to us all.”