Performing Arts

BOMB Magazine has posted a web-preview of Meg Stuart and Catharine Sullivan’s conversation which will be printed in full in their Summer ‘08 edition. I can’t wait to read it in its entirety - such a smart pairing of artists investigating cross-disciplinary art practices.

I love when Meg says “What about bodies in crisis? Bodies that are not in control? What about complex physical and emotional states? Is it possible to give these irrational bodies a platform to address contemporary issues while embracing a theatrical context?” It was clear that she was investigating these questions in her brown shag-carpet fantasy world of Forgeries, Love, and Other Matters (possibly my favorite show from the 05-06 season)

If you’re having a hard time remembering Forgeries, check out the Performing Arts department’s submission to the annual pumpkin carving contest.

Excerpt from Catherine Sullivan on Art21

Bon Iver who will be featured in Walker’s sold out Rock the Garden 2008 recently stopped by The Current Studio for a Minnesota Public Radio/ KCMP live session.

You can download from Live Indie Sessions here.

Japanther had a show last night at Europa, a rock venue in Greenpoint, Brooklyn - a heavily Polish neighborhood reminiscent of Minneapolis’ Northeast (home to the ultimate Nye’s Polonaise). I’ve seen Japanther several times before, once at the Walker as they performed in Don’t Trust Anyone Over Thirty, a collaboration with Dan Graham and Tony Oursler. The performance was an interpretation of the cult-classic 1968 film Wild in the Streets, starring the late-great Shelley Winters. The puppet/rock show/installation/video piece was visually stunning, and a big to-do as Walker re-configured the Cinema to fit the needs of the Out There 18 performance.

Maybe it was the age-centric material I’ve previously seen them in, but last night all I could think was “Don’t Trust Anyone Under Twenty.” I stood in the back, occasionally sitting down (my back was hurting), I wore a bike helmet on my ride over, and I snickered to myself that the kids are still body-surfing. Long story short: I felt old and tired. And sadly, Japanther’s set kinda did too. This was the same show they’ve been playing for years. Loop a line from a vintage stoner-flick and mouth the words, sing distorted vocals into pay-phones receivers, have technical problems and stop mid-song. I’m all for a rough-and-tumble, but if Cat Power learned to pull herself together for a live show and I think it’s high time these guys do the same. It doesn’t take long for quirky to morph into gimicky.

I don’t want to be a total hater, though. There were shimmering moments that did remind me of the importance of releasing adult inhibitions. They opened the set by drumming along to Bel Biv Devoe’s Poison. The slam-dancers wearing gorilla and wrestling masks were going CRAZY. And the high-schooler yelling along to every word lost his mind, like, at least three times. All those crazy kids seemed like they were having a good time, even though it was past midnight on a school night. Inspired, I went helmet-less on the ride home - wild in the streets.

To launch 2008’s National Dance Week, an email to many in Minnesota’s dance community went out to invite all members to participate in a group photo shoot. The turn out was great! We luckily had a beautiful sunshine-filled afternoon as 24 people made it out to the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden.

First annual Twin Cities National Dance Week photo includes:
Patrick Scully (artist), Judith Brin Ingber (dancer), Alanna Morris (dancer), Sarah LaRose-Holland (dancer), Bryan Gerber (dancer, teacher, choreographer), Chris Holman (dance enthusiast), Laurie Van Wieren (dance maker), Sher Demeter (dancer, acupuncturist), Paula Mann (choreographer), Matthew S. Smith (composer), Karen Sherman (dance artist), Sarah Petersen (artist), Chris Schlichting (dance artist), Morgan Thorson (choreographer), April Sellers (choreographer), John Munger (choreographer, teacher, researcher), Lisa Conlin (choreographer, dancer), Cathy Wright (choreographer), Christopher Watson (choreographer), Dylan Skybrook (choreographer), Jennifer Johanneson (dance enthusiast), Rebecca Frost (artist), Michèle Steinwald (arts manager), Philip Bither (curator), and behind the camera, Cameron Wittig (photographer). Also present in paper form on the grass: Megan Mayer (dance artist), and Anna Marie Shogren (dance maker).

Next year, we hope to double the turn out and for even more the following years until EVERYONE is represented! Stay in touch with next year’s schedule and photo shoot date online at mnartists.org/danceweek.

As the 2008 NDW wraps up and after participating in a full week plus of activities, I find myself still running around the cities and seeing local dance performances almost every night. It is proof that we have a vibrant, lively, and rich dance community in Minnesota!

See you at the shows!

“The Sound and the Fury (April Seventh, 1928)” at New York Theater Workshop features, in foreground, Susie Sokol and Vin Knight. Photo by: Sara Krulwich/The New York Times

I was so pleased to wake up this morning and read Chief New York Times Theater Critic Ben Brantley's rave review of our friends Elevator Repair Service's production of William Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury (April 7, 1928). The Walker has long been in ERS's corner, ever since I first saw their deliciously ridiculous Cab Legs at PS122 in 1998. On their first Minneapolis visit, we presented their odd-ball, ecstatic Total Fictional Lie as part of Walker’s 2000 Out There series. They returned with Room Tone (2003 Out There) and, most recently, we co-commissioned their audacious, every-word-of-the-novel marathon production of The Great Gatsby (GATZ) ,which received its U.S. debut here in September 2006.

Rights issues with the Fitzgerald estate have tragically not allowed the brilliant GATZ to yet be seen in New York City, but a year after the Walker introduced the work to the U.S., it did successfully tour to cities like Portland OR (at PICA's TBA Festival), Philadelphia (at the Philly Live Art Fest.) and Seattle (On The Boards). So, it's a bit irritating that both Brantley and Justin Bergman (who wrote an ERS preview last Sunday in the Times) seem oblivious to the fact that GATZ ever came to the U.S. at all ("the famously venturesome Elevator Repair Service" wrote Brantley "...toured Europe with a seven-hour rendering of F. Scott Fitzgerald's "Great Gatsby" ...).

While Brantley and Bergman maintained the Times' long-standing New York parochialism (assuming nothing of cultural interest takes place West of the Hudson), Brantley did do a nice job of articulating the steep challenge that director John Collins and ERS set up for themselves in taking on the notoriously dense and, at first read, confusing, first section of The Sound and Fury, which is told from the point of view Benjy Compson, a 33-year old mentally disabled man. "Trying to translate this perspective from the page to the stage would seem to be an act of folly and hubris," wrote Brantley... "Benjy's nonlinear, noninterpretive point of view has been the bane of uninitiated English students for decades. But reading this account of a Mississippi family's decline is like looking at an impressionistic painting that at first seems to lack discernible forms, but stare long enough, and details emerge so precisely that it's finally sharper than any photograph....". In the end, the company's rigor and ingenuity wins over Brantley completely - "(ERS) brings a sanity, humility and theatrical ingenuity to their interpretation that, like the novel, illuminates the clarity within apparent chaos."

Congratulations again to director John Collins all our friends at ERS. I can't wait to catch up with the production (and all of our ERS pals) on my next trip to New York in mid-May.

Click here for the NY Times article on ERS Faulkner's Haunted Family, Moving in and Out of Time April 30, 2008.