Choreographer Moriah Evans Transforms the Walker Art Center in Dynamic New Performance Commission

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“[Moriah Evans’s] method of framing everyday actions and amplifying them is emotional, joyful, earthy and even humorous.” —New York Times

The Walker Art Center presents a new dance commission by artist and choreographer Moriah Evans, whose work uses choreography to investigate the body as a site of political, social, and existential inquiry.

The title }[…/+^%<>€£¥$&@!!!!^^^]{ is intentionally unsayable, engaging that which cannot be uttered and instead offers dance and performance as a form to negotiate these complex times.

In }[…/+^%<>€£¥$&@!!!!^^^]{, choreography unfolds through the museum’s winding interior before spilling into a dramatically reimagined McGuire Theater. Evans includes the architecture of the Walker itself as part of the performance, immersing audiences in a cascade of incidental encounters, shifting perspectives, and physical and emotional entanglements.

Performers move through a sequence of circumstances that reference various movement patterns and methods—from pedestrian actions to the stylistic confines of rigid dance techniques to visceral and unresolved somatic activities. The scenography redistributes elements of the theater to reimagine places, angles, and structures so that the public can experience their own and other’s bodies, performance, and architecture as a maze of interdependence. Bodies, meaning, and value circulate through repetition and changing relationships.

}[…/+*^%<>€£¥$&@!!!!^^^]{ questions how bodies can and cannot be isolated from social, economic, and political urgencies. Unfolding over two hours, this unnamable dance is conceived as an environment for the conduction of empathy and contemplation. More than a choreography of movement, it is also a choreography about power, dependency, worth, and embodied ways of knowing.

Direction and Choreography: Moriah Evans with Performers: Cyril Baldy, Malcolm-x Betts, Chloë Engel, Kris Lee, Benny Olk, Sarah Beth Percival, jess pretty, João dos Santos Martins, Varinia Canto Vila, and Carlo Antonio Villanueva. Lighting: Madeline Best. Scenography: Doris Dziersk. Music: David Watson. Costumes: Strauss Bourque-LaFrance. Dramaturgy: Joshua Lubin-Levy. Studio Direction: Margaret Knowles.

Moriah Evans: }[…/+*^%<>€£¥$&@!!!!^^^]{
Friday–Saturday, October 9–10, 6:30 pm
McGuire Theater

TICKETS

Ordering tickets is easy: visit walkerart.org/tickets or call 612-375-7600. Box office is open Wednesday–Sunday and one hour before performances.

ACCESSIBILITY

For more information about accessibility, visit our accessibility page. For questions on accessibility or to request additional accommodations, call 612-375-7564 or email access@walkerart.org.

About Moriah Evans

Moriah Evans’ performances advocate for rigorous somatic and dancing pursuits as a means to understand what it means to be, have, and behold a body. Her projects propose choreography as a system to reveal the singular and collective knowledge bodies hold—so that performance, performers, and audience can work together to produce sensitivity and understanding. With each work she endeavors to: enable kinesthetic empathy, revel in what bodies can do, deconstruct default social and physical hierarchies, transform self and social perception while also reflecting the world as it is lived. Evans’ approach is research-based. Works begin as inquiries and become embodiment practices. She employs dance steps, improvisation, anti-form energetics, and perception-based scoring systems—each mode connected to art and dance history, choreographic methodologies, and critical theory. She refutes tendencies that turn bodies into façades onto which categorizations of gender, race, class and oppressive structures play out. Evans’ performances defy surface-level representations by delving deep within bodies and their circumstances: rescripting imprints of identity and personal narrative or social behaviors. Each work facilitates exchanges between interiority and exteriority, self and other, performer and audience, studio and gallery context or stage, representation of ideas and the world itself. She encourages the public to witness not just performers and the performance, but one another.

Creative Team

Cyril Baldy (dancer) studied ballet in Paris at The Conservatoire National Supérieur. As a dancer he worked with the Jeune Ballet de France, Nederland Dans Theatre II, Nederland Dans Theatre I and Frankfurt Ballet before The Forsythe Company from 2005 to 2014. Since 2014, alongside teaching internationally, he primarily choreographs, teaches and stages William Forsythe’s repertoire. 

Madeline Best (lighting) is a Lighting Designer, Performer, and Director of Operations at the Chocolate Factory Theater. Madeline’s design practice stems from an interest in how light affects space and how it feels to audience members and performers. Her lighting design subtly supports the work of collaborative artists. Recent projects have included the following artists Heather Kravas, Moriah Evans, Anna Sperber, Katy Pyle/Ballez, Ursula Eagly, Milka Djordjevich, efrian rozas, luciana achugar, Andrea Kleine, Anne-B Parson/Big Dance Theater, and more. Madeline grew up in Durham, North Carolina, studied at Bennington College, and currently lives in Long Island City, Queens.  

Malcolm-x Betts (dancer) is a New York-based visual artist and dancer who believes art is a transformative vehicle that brings people and communities together. His work investigates embodiment, liberation, Black imagination, and engages with the challenges imposed on the body. He has performed in works by Snoogybox (Andy Kobilka), Nile Harris, Moriah Evans, and Alex Romania. 

Strauss Bourque-Lafrance (costumes) is a multidisciplinary artist whose work has been exhibited throughout the US and Europe. Outside of his studio practice, Strauss collaborates with other artists to bring form and clarity to their visions. 

Doris Dziersk (scenography) is a visual artist and scenographer based in Leipzig, Germany. She designed stage sets and installations for Meg Stuart, Moriah Evans, Matthaei & Konsorten, Enrico Stolzenburg, Peter Kastenmüller, Gesine Danckwart, Doublelucky and others and received a New York Bessie Award in 2012. In addition to the performative context, she develops spatial concepts for temporary gatherings such as The New Infinity (Berliner Festspiele) and the Tanzkongress 2019. In her installations like AIRNSHARE she uses spatial, haptic and experiential approaches to the sites and materials she is working with. 

Chloë Engel (dancer) is a performer and choreographer living and working in Brooklyn, NY. They are invested in the problems and potentials of the body. Chloë has presented work at PAGEANT, Wave Hill, Abrons Arts Center, wild project, Lifeworld, AUNTS, No Theme Festival, Little Berlin. They have performed in the works of Elena Demyanenko, Beth Gill, Jo Warren, Neva Guido and Dana Reitz. 

Margaret Knowles (studio) is Moriah Evans’ Studio Director. She has worked in administrative and curatorial roles at MoMA PS1 and MoMA, as well as in operations and finance roles for small businesses and start ups whose missions involved indigenous craft preservation and the economic participation of people with disabilities. She grew up in Nashville, TN and came to New York to attend NYU, where she studied Contemporary Art at Critical Theory. In 2021, she earned her MBA from Columbia University. 

Kris Lee (dancer) is a dancer, performer and DJ who is grounded in the Black radical tradition of improvisation and aliveness. They work with dance and sound as audio-tactile-kinesthetic technologies for exercising non-performative liberation. Lee was named by Dance Magazine as one of “25 to Watch” in 2026. They participated in the creation and performance of OO-GA-LA Reimagined (The Fred Holland and Ishmael Houston-Jones 1983 Duet Danced into the 21st Century) at Danspace Project. Currently they are working with Shamel Pitts/TRIBE in Marks of Red (premiered March 2026 at The Walker Art Center), Sweat Variant, and Moriah Evans.  

Benny Olk (dancer), a Minneapolis-based dance artist, maker, and teacher, graduated with a BFA in Dance from New York University, and an MA in New Performative Practices from Stockholm University of the Arts. He has performed in works by Lucinda Childs, Merce Cunningham, Moriah Evans, Anthea Hamilton, Emily Gastineau, and Carlo Antonio Villanueva and is currently a guest artist with ARENA Dance. His work has been shown at B100, Stockholm University of the Arts, and Red Eye Theater and his collaborations with Tristan Koepke have been presented in Minneapolis, Portland, and Atlanta. 

Sarah Beth Percival (dancer) is a dance artist, mother, and Pilates instructor currently residing in the high desert of New Mexico. She received her BFA from North Carolina School of the Arts, then attended P.A.R.T.S. in Brussels, and was an Impulstanz DanceWEB Europe scholarship recipient. Sarah has danced with choreographers Moriah Evans, Heather Kravas, Maria Hassabi, Milka Djordjevich, Kota Yamazaki, and Malin Elgan. 

jess pretty (dancer) has a practice that includes movement, writing, education, curation, singing, and cooking. she is the steward of AUNTS, an artist-led platform supporting experimental performance through festivals, workshops, and community gatherings, and an assistant professor of dance at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities. pretty has shown work at La MaMa, New York Live Arts, Gibney, and the Chocolate Factory Theater, and has been an artist in residence at Kent State and the Center for Performance Research, as well as a Queer|Art Fellow. she has collaborated with Will Rawls, Claudia Rankine, Kevin Beasley, Okwui Okpokwasili, David Thomson, Niall Jones, Jennifer Monson, Cynthia Oliver, Leslie Cuyjet, and Dianne McIntyre. 

João dos Santos Martins (dancer) is an artist whose work encompasses dance, exploring formats such as choreography, exhibition, and publishing. His practice articulates collaborative ways of working that focus on issues of transmission, language and labor. Together with Ana Bigotte Vieira, they created a platform for mapping genealogies of dance history in Portugal (Para Uma Timeline a Haver). He founded a biannual journal — Coreia — dedicated to artists’ writings in 2019. João performed in works by Ana Rita Teodoro, Xavier Le Roy, Eszter Salamon, Boris Charmatz, Marcelo Evelin, Jérôme Bel, Rui Horta, among others. Occasionally he writes and curates. In 2014, he co-founded Parasita, an artists’ association based in Lisbon. 

Carlo Antonio Villanueva (dancer) is a Minneapolis-based performer, choreographer, and educator whose work explores collective authorship, improvisation, and the social possibilities of dancing together. As a performer, he tours internationally with Faye Driscoll’s Weathering, whose ensemble was nominated for a 2024 New York Dance and Performance “Bessie” Award. His work and research have been supported by the University of Minnesota’s Grant-in-Aid of Research, Artistry, and Scholarship, the City of Minneapolis Bridge Fund for Dance, the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts’ Dance Research Fellowship, and Red Eye Theater’s OMNIVERS program. He was previously a member of the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company, and is currently an Assistant Professor of Dance at the University of Minnesota. MFA: University of Maryland; BFA: Rutgers University. 

Varinia Canto Vila (dancer) is a dancer, choreographer, and researcher based in Santiago since 2019. In the beginning of her career as a maker, she has explored dance medium-based themes. Recently, she has shifted focus to the intersection of art and politics, employing extended choreography to examine movement within the social body. She created the performance piece Maneras de Salir (Ways to Exit), which explores the notions of distances and proximities between people and their socio-economic and political realities. In 2024, she created MUNDOS (Worlds), which revolves around the concept of a fragmented society. She has shown her work in Belgium, Poland, Germany, Argentina and Chile. 

David Watson (music) is an experimental musician primarily known for his work with highland bagpipes. An early release “Throats” for Thurston Moore’s Ecstatic Peace, was described as “brain rearranging massive walls of constantly shifting drone.” He has collaborated with many choreographers, notably Moriah Evans, Jennifer Monson, Yves Musard and Jamar Roberts.  He has had long-term relationships making music with many extraordinary artists, like Christian Marclay, Sean Meehan, Ikue Mori, Bill Nace, Phill Niblock, Lee Ranaldo amongst others. He also organizes concerts of new and improvised music, having presented hundreds of concerts in New York and internationally. 

About the Walker Art Center

The Walker Art Center is a renowned multidisciplinary arts institution that presents, collects, and supports the creation of groundbreaking work across the visual and performing arts, moving image, and design. Guided by the belief that art has the power to bring joy and solace and the ability to unite people through dialogue and shared experiences, the Walker engages communities through a dynamic array of exhibitions, performances, events, and initiatives. Its multiacre campus includes 65,000 sq. ft. of exhibition space, the state-of-the-art McGuire Theater and Walker Cinema, and ample green space that connects with the adjoining Minneapolis Sculpture Garden. The Garden, a partnership with the Minneapolis Park & Recreation Board, is one of the first urban sculpture parks of its kind in the United States and home to the beloved Twin Cities landmark Spoonbridge and Cherry by Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen. Recognized for its ambitious program and growing collection of more than 16,000 works, the Walker embraces emerging art forms and amplifies the work of artists from the Twin Cities and from across the country and the globe. Its broad spectrum of offerings makes it a lively and welcoming hub for artistic expression, creative innovation, and community connection.