Program Notes for MEG STUART & DOUG WEISS: All the Way Around
Walker Art Center presents
Meg Stuart & Doug Weiss
with Mariana Carvalho
All the Way Around
Friday–Saturday, April 3–4, 2026
7:30 pm
McGuire Theater
All the Way Around
Concept
MEG STUART & DOUG WEISS
Choreography and Dance
MEG STUART
Music
DOUG WEISS (bass) and MARIANA CARVALHO (piano)
Light Design
EMESE CSORNAI
Outside Eye
MOR DEMER
Production
DAMAGED GOODS
Tonight’s performance runs approximately 60 minutes with no intermission.
A Q&A with the artists will follow Friday’s performance.
Program Notes
In an intimate concert setting, choreographer and dancer Meg Stuart meets jazz bassist Doug Weiss and pianist Mariana Carvalho. Together, they go on an uncharted journey into movement and sound. The light design by Emese Csornai becomes a fourth player, adapting to unpredictable elements in each new venue. All the Way Around starts with the ballad, a song of longing and defiance, and breaks it down into small but meaningful gestures. Tracing and unfurling spirals of memory, All the Way Around takes a deep dive into what was, riding the waves between the almost-remembered and the unknown.
All the Way Around premiered on 17 July 2022 at Bolzano Danza Festival (Italy).
Learn More
Interview with Doug Weiss about All the Way Around
All the way around is an intimate concert that you perform in different contexts and settings. One could also look at it as a dance performance. Why did you decide to frame it as a concert?
Originally, this work was created for a gallery space that primarily featured concerts. I was offered an evening by the curators, and the musicians I asked were all busy. So I decided to ask Meg if she might be interested in trying something. Of course, they were thrilled at the idea, because it was something new for them as well. And Meg’s reputation had preceded her! Since I am a jazz musician, I primarily deal in song forms, in the context of a set of music. My knowledge of and experience in Avant-Garde Theatre and Contemporary Dance was limited at that point to being an audience member. We both felt strongly that the Dance would not exist solely to support the Music and vice versa. In other words, we wanted to meet as equals. We settled on the idea of investigating songs, how they are played, and what they would stimulate in Meg’s imagination. We had some false starts and moments where we did not understand what the other was doing, but we also had trust, and were dedicated to investing time into the pieces so that we could create a cohesive set.
How did you work on this journey together?
We began by going to the studio and rolling out our Yoga mats. The bass was also there. We would warm up, and then I would eventually pick up the bass and start bowing long, slow notes just to warm up on the instrument. Meg would also start moving around the space. Somehow the first piece began, with Meg tapping into her archive and me just trying to be present with the notes and aware of her movement. It was very organic, really. The first ‘song’ had a beginning, some development, and an ending. From there we tried other things, some having to do with the sound of extended techniques on the bass, and others more concretely rooting in actual songs like “I’ll Remember April” and “Lonely Woman”. Once we had a dozen workable ideas we then tried different orders, to try to get a good flow of the overall work happening. We didn’t want too much ‘sameness’, rather we looked for a variety of intensities. I also realized that it would not do for me to simply stand there and play the bass; I eventually found my legs (or back) as a dancer.
In the announcement text, you write about memory. How is memory translated, written into the composition of music and movement, and both together? Could you elaborate on this?
Meg has spoken at length about bodily memory. Trauma, Joy, Fear, Exultation, Privation, Success and et cetera are not only experienced; They are also passed down from prior generations on a cellular level. Acknowledging these energies within us seems to be a starting point. Meg creates her movement language through many trials of improvisation, and then ‘sets’ it at a certain point. Still, within that set point, there is some wiggle room. The way the room feels, the audience, and of course the collaborators (in this case me) also affect each performance. We are not robots after all.
My early training in Jazz involved years of apprenticeship with Master Musicians who were sometimes 20 or 30 years my senior, as well as African Americans; I learned that to get the chance to play with them, I needed to gain their trust. In order to do that I had to speak the language of music in a way that they would be able to relate to. Then we could meet each other. My mentors also gained the advantage of playing with a younger musician and were therefore able to continue broadening their own spectrum of musical choices. We would meet in song forms, where there are certain unwritten rules of engagement. These ‘rules’, or formulas, have evolved over time and allowed musicians from around the world to gather and improvise together. They are the basis for Jazz Improvisation.
So, when Meg and I ‘play’ together, I am very much beginning in a place of memory, even including nostalgia, with the ultimate goal being to get to that place where the piece is just flowing within and out of and around us. In a way, we are erasing memory and nostalgia with new experiences. Or we transmute bodily and musical memories into the present, giving birth to a fresh dialogue between dance and music. To be able to experience this in this context is really quite special for both of us.
Interview by Kerstin Schroth for the Moving in November Festival (Helsinki)
Artist Bios
MEG STUART (US/DE/BE) is a choreographer, director and dancer who lives and works in Berlin and Brussels. Her work is driven by experimentation and artistic cross-pollination, challenging the limits of the body and expanding our perception of reality. With her company Damaged Goods, founded in 1994, she has created over thirty productions, ranging from solos and duets to large-scale choreographies, videoworks, site-specific creations and improvisation projects. Recent creations include steal you for a moment (2024) and GLITCH WITCH (2024). Stuart’s practice moves fluidly between dance, theatre and visual arts, sustained by long-term collaborations with artists from different disciplines. Through fictions and shifting narrative layers, she explores dance as a source of healing and a means to transform the social fabric. Improvisation plays a central role in her work, functioning as a strategy to move through physical and emotional states and the memory of them. Alongside her stage work, Stuart directs and choreographs video projects, often exploring the presence of the body in relation to space and landscape. She regularly shares her knowledge through workshops and master classes, and in 2025 initiated Mystery School, an experimental studies programme for performing artists. Her work has been widely recognised, including the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement (Biennale di Venezia, 2018) and a Guggenheim Fellowship (2023).
www.damagedgoods.be
Pronouns: she/her
IG: @megstuart33
Based in Berlin and New York, acoustic bassist DOUG WEISS (US/DE) has held it down and helped it swing for 30 years. From 1996 until 2020 he was bassist and musical director of The Al Foster quartet. He is a member of Brian Blade’s “Lifecycles”, the Peter Bernstein Quartet, and the Seamus Blake group. His band “The Berlin Quartet” features Weiss as a composer, arranger, and bandleader, and has just released its debut album “Drawn From Life”. Weiss is an active educator, having taught at the New School, SUNY Purchase College, and the Jazz Institut Berlin. He is currently on Faculty at the Conservatorium Maastricht.
Pronouns: he/him
IG @dougweiss_bass
MARIANA CARVALHO (BR/DE) is a performer, sound artist, improviser and musician, working with body, voices, listening, relation, inner sounds and prepared piano. She is part of Sonora – músicas e feminismos and GEXLAT. She is currently doing her masters at Sound Studies and Sonic Arts, UdK Berlin and is a tutor at the Soundscape Project at TU Berlin. She has a piano bachelor ‘s degree at the University of São Paulo, where she was part of NuSom – Research Center on Sonology of USP and Orquestra Errante.
Pronouns: she/her
IG @mariana.t.carvalho
EMESE CSORNAI (HU) studied architecture at the Technical University of Budapest (2002-2004) and fine arts at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie in Amsterdam (BA 2009). Her research in fine arts led her to lighting design, which two principles keep informing each other in her work as a practicing lighting designer, occasionally engaging in installative and fine arts projects and set design. Her main research interest is colors and the physiology of their perception. Her study in instant composition has driven her to research dynamic use of spaces.
www.emesecsornai.com
Pronouns: she/her
Living Land Acknowledgment
The McGuire Theater and Walker Art Center are located on the contemporary, traditional, and ancestral homelands of the Dakota people. Situated near Bde Maka Ska and Wíta Tópa Bde, or Lake of the Isles, on what was once an expanse of marshland and meadow, this site holds meaning for Dakota, Ojibwe, and Indigenous people from other Native nations, who still live in the community today.
We acknowledge the discrimination and violence inflicted on Indigenous peoples in Minnesota and the Americas, including forced removal from ancestral lands, the deliberate destruction of communities and culture, deceptive treaties, war, and genocide. We recognize that, as a museum in the United States, we have a colonial history and are beneficiaries of this land and its resources. We acknowledge the history of Native displacement that allowed for the founding of the Walker. By remembering this dark past, we recognize its continuing harm in the present and resolve to work toward reconciliation, systemic change, and healing in support of Dakota people and the land itself.
We honor Native people and their relatives, past, present, and future. As a cultural organization, the Walker works toward building relationships with Native communities through artistic and educational programs, curatorial and community partnerships, and the presentation of new work.
Acknowledgments
Program support provided by AJT Fund and the David and Leni Moore Family Foundation.
The Walker Art Center’s Performing Arts programs and commissions are made possible by donors and Producers’ Council members: AJT Fund; Bridge Fund for Dance program through the City of Minneapolis Arts & Cultural Affairs Department; Christina Evans and Weston Hoard; Nor Hall and Roger Hale; Judith Brin Ingber and Jerome Ingber; Neal Jahren; the Jerome Foundation; King’s Fountain/Barbara Watson Pillsbury; Knox Foundation: Susanne Lilly Hutcheson, Zenas Hutcheson IV, Henry Hutcheson, and Perrin Hutcheson; Sarah Lutman; Emily Maltz; the David and Leni Moore Family Foundation; National Endowment for the Arts; National Performance Network; Rebecca Rand; Lois and John Rogers; the Serendipitous Leverage Fund; Therese Sexe and David Hage; Elizabeth and Mike Sweeney; John L. Thomson; Villa Albertine and Albertine Foundation; Sue and Jim Westerman; and Frances and Frank* Wilkinson. Media partner MPR News, The Current, and YourClassical MPR.
*deceased
This activity is made possible by the voters of Minnesota through Minnesota State Arts Board Operating Support grant, thanks to a legislative appropriation from the arts and cultural heritage fund.
Thank you, Walker members, for your generous support.
To learn more about upcoming performances, visit 2025/26 Walker Performing Arts Season.