Walker Art Center Press Room

Walker Art Center Presents Choreographers' Evening Curated by the BodyCartography Project :

Fri, 6 Nov 2009 18:00:00 GMT

A smorgasbord of emerging and mature talent from across the dance spectrum. MinnPost

For almost 40 years, the Walker Art Centers Choreographers Evening has served as the major gathering for our thriving local dance community. Dedicated to serving up quality and quantity, this evening of short works brings a host of bodies, movement styles, and innovations to the William and Nadine McGuire stage on Saturday, November 28, at 7 and 9:30 pm, celebrating the remarkably diverse range of local dance. Curating this years program are the globetrotting duo Olive Bieringa and Otto Ramstad, whose award-winning BodyCartography Project is geared toward improvisation, inclusion, and innovative responses to their environment.

Bieringa and Ramstads unique perspective yielded a carefully calibrated mix of performers ranging from established choreographers to emerging talent. We both have a passion for experiencing different kinds of physical investigation in performance, says Bieringa. We were drawn to work that generated this kinesthetic excitement, surprised us, and challenged our ideas. We love choreography that dances the mind and body.

Kenna Sarge leads off the evening with a celebratory preshow performance in the Hennepin Lobby featuring live drumming and a host of young dancers (arrive 15 minutes early to see Sarges piece). The proceedings move to the stage with Chris Holmans gestural lecture with cello accompaniment by Michelle Kinney; a conceptual dance from Mad King Thomas; and a brand-new solo from Justin Jones. Following are Cara Ann Krippners trio à la Isadorables, a flying piece inspired by her days as a gymnast; a musical tap duet from Buckets and Tap Shoes; a physical theater duet by Charles Campbell, performed with his son Arthur; and a pantomime crossed with modern dance, then infused with the intrigue of film noir, from Emily King and Ryan Underbakke. The Interact Theater Companys performance combines lip sync with disco, and Taja Will and Penelope Freeh offer contemporary and modern ballet solos, respectively, followed by Chris Yon and Taryn Griggs Flashback: (The Very Unlikeliness) Im Going to Kill You. The evening culminates with sensational newcomers Tina Flewellyn and her Hype Dance Troupe, a company of six hip-hop dancers and a live DJ.

Tickets to Choreographers Evening are $20 ($16 Walker members) and are available at walkerart.org/tickets or by calling 612.375.7600.

Related Events

Pre-Performance Tour: Choreographers Evening and Event Horizon
Saturday, November 28, 6 and 8:30 pm, Free with event ticket

Before the performance celebrating Minnesotas most vibrant choreographers, tour the new exhibition Event Horizon, which features work by Trisha Brown, Merce Cunningham, and others who nimbly navigate both dance and visual art.

Tour: Dan Graham: Beyond
Thursday, December 3, 7 pm
Meet in the Bazinet Lobby

Join choreographers Olive Bieringa and Otto Ramstad for a movement-based tour of the work of Dan Graham, whose art shares a similar sensibility.

Walker Art Center Presents the 2009 British Television Advertising Awards : Ads Starring Snoop Dogg, Rob Lowe, and Anjelica Huston Round Out Diverse Offerings from Cheeky Brits :

Fri, 6 Nov 2009 18:00:00 GMT

The British Television Advertising Awards program returns for another smashing run of screenings at the Walker Art Center, December 4January 2, where over 20,000 people saw the 2008 award-winning spots. Awards Administrator Peter Bigg will reprise his annual role as host of the opening-night screenings on Friday, December 4, at 7 and 9:30 pm. Remaining programs include both evening and matinee screenings. To complement this popular December tradition, Wolfgang Puck offers an array of hearty fare at the Walker Pub in the Bazinet Garden Lobby and in 20.21 Restaurant & Bar, as well as evening pre-show drinks in the Hennepin Lobby.

Brimming with creativity and chosen by top advertising executives and producers across the globe, the sly, sexy, hilarious, and thought-provoking British spots have been a Walker highlight for 21 years. The program this year includes dancing marionettes, monkeys, and nudists as well as American celebrities Snoop Dogg, Rob Lowe, and Anjelica Huston hawking products to UK audiences. Also featured are an 80s flashback for Virgin Airlines, a scandalous piece for Guess apparel, and highlights from the history of 20th-century Britain condensed into 120 seconds for a bread commercial. Among the standouts this year is a spectacular skydiving stunt for Honda that was broadcast live. Not to be missed. 2009, video, 80 minutes.

Since the early 1980s, BTAA has exhibited its annual showreel at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, where the award-winning spots subsequently enter the museums permanent collection. When the screenings began, they offered an American audience exposure to the originality, wit, and creativity of British advertising as well as a showcase for the early work of film directors such as Ridley Scott, Tony Scott, Hugh Hudson, and Alan Parker as they were becoming established Hollywood directors. Since then, the showreel screenings have developed an influential reputation in the U.S. for creative excellence. Public and professional interest have spawned further screenings across the country. Besides the Walker, the 2009 awards will be shown in venues around the country, including the Detroit Institute of Arts; the Cleveland Museum of Art; Cleveland Cinemateque; Northwest Film Center, Portland; the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston; the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; and Honolulu Academy.

Tickets for the British Television Advertising Awards screenings, which sell out quickly, are $10 ($8 Walker members) and can be purchased by calling the Walker box office at 612.375.7600 or online at walkerart.org/tickets. ($3 service fee per order applies to phone and online orders.) Become a new Walker member and receive two free tickets for joining. Special rates for groups of 10 or more; call 612.375.7569 or e-mail groups@walkerart.org.

Screening Schedule

Friday, December 4
7 and 9:30 pm, Walker Cinema
Introduced by Awards Administrator Peter Bigg

Saturday, December 5
4, 7, and 9 pm, Walker Cinema

Sunday, December 6
3 pm, Walker Cinema

Thursday, December 10
7 and 9 pm, Walker Cinema
8 pm, McGuire Theater

Friday, December 11
3, 7, and 9 pm, Walker Cinema
8 pm, McGuire Theater

Saturday, December 12
3, 7, and 9 pm, Walker Cinema
2, 6, and 8 pm, McGuire Theater

Sunday, December 13
2 and 4 pm, Walker Cinema
3 pm, McGuire Theater

Thursday, December 17
3, 7, and 9 pm, Walker Cinema
8 pm, McGuire Theater

Friday, December 18
3, 7, and 9 pm, Walker Cinema
8 pm, McGuire Theater

Saturday, December 19
3, 7, and 9 pm, Walker Cinema
2, 6, and 8 pm, McGuire Theater

Sunday, December 20
2 and 4 pm, Walker Cinema
3 pm, McGuire Theater

Saturday, December 26
3, 7, and 9 pm, Walker Cinema
2, 6, and 8 pm, McGuire Theater

Sunday, December 27
2 and 4 pm, Walker Cinema
3 pm, McGuire Theater

MondayWednesday, December 2830
2, 6, and 8 pm, Walker Cinema
3 and 7 pm, McGuire Theater

Saturday, January 2
7 and 9 pm, Walker Cinema
8 pm, McGuire Theater

Prescreening Gallery Tours: British Television Advertising Awards and Event Horizon
December 11, 17, and 30, 2 pm
Free with event ticket
Meet in the Bazinet Garden Lobby
Whether theyre peddling soda pop or pushing a more personal vision, advertisers and artists of all kinds draw from pop culture and spectacle. Before catching the awards show, learn a bit about artists who work along this spectrum.

Tours allow plenty of time to grab a pint before heading to the Cinema. Tour the Walkers exhibitions before or after the show. Your ticket includes complimentary gallery admission on the day of the screening. Free public gallery tours are offered ThursdaysSundays at 2 pm, departing from the Bazinet Garden Lobby near the Cinema.

Hold Forth at the Walker Pub
Before or after the screenings, gather with friends and enjoy hearty fare: Scotch eggs, cranberry bread pudding, sweet shrimp cocktail, or a Beef Wellington sandwich, along with classic British libations such as Bucks Fizz, Pimms Cup, or Ginger Tonic.

Indulge Your Inner Anglophile
Tuck into a four-course dinner from the 2009 Brits Tasting Menu, including chicken samosas, tandoori Arctic char, and grilled lamb chops. An excellent value at $50 per person. Reservations: 612.253.3410 or walkerart.org/2021.

Local Electro Duo Lookbook Highlights Walker After Hours Party to Celebrate Opening of Event Horizon and Benches & Binoculars Exhibitions :

Fri, 30 Oct 2009 17:00:00 GMT

The infectious sound and sonic presence of local electro duo Lookbook highlight a Walker Art Center After Hours Preview Party from 9 pm12 midnight on Friday, November 20. Celebrating the opening of Event Horizon and Benches & Binoculars, two exhibitions reflecting the Walkers unique range of artistic disciplines, the evening, sponsored by Target, also features cameo appearances by Afro-Cuban percussionist Dafnis Prieto and Trisha Brown dancer Judith Sanchez Ruiz; tunes by DJ Scott Stulen; screenings of the Kenneth Anger film Scorpio Rising; an art-making activity where visitors become the curators; cash bars; Wolfgang Puck appetizers; and Party People Pictures to immortalize the evening. Tickets are $35 ($25 Walker members), and are available at walkerart.org or by calling 612.375.7600 (includes one complimentary drink). Tickets are limited; advance purchase recommended.

Event Horizon showcases the Walkers cross-disciplinary programming and holdings, uniting painting, sculpture, and photography with film, performance, and video in a changing presentation that will unfold over a nearly three-year period. Benches & Binoculars offers a lively and purposely overwhelming chronicle of recent art historyfrom local discoveries to renowned masterpiecesraising questions about changing tastes over time and what it means to be contemporary.

Walker After Hours/Preview Party

Friday, November 20, 9 pm12 midnight
$35 ($25 Walker members)
Tickets: 612.375.7600 or visit walkerart.org
New members may choose one free ticket for joining, while tickets remain.

Exhibition Preview:
Event Horizon and Benches & Binoculars>
Galleries 1, 2, 3; Linda and Lawrence Perlman Gallery
Event Horizon showcases the Walkers remarkable holdings of postwar art in the context of the events that produced them. With a bit of serendipity, a touch of aesthetic friction, and a profusion of paintings, Benches & Binoculars features unpredictable juxtapositions and side-by-side pairings of more than 120 works.

Art Activity
Youre the Curator
Star Tribune Foundation Art Lab, 9:1511:30 pm
Actively curate your own collection of Walker Art Center art and plan for the installation.

Screening: Scorpio Rising (1963)
Directed by Kenneth Anger
Lecture Room, 9:30 and 10:30 pm
Angers salacious classic film pairs pop songs from the early 60s with clips from discarded films layered over candy colored hep-cat rebel bikers gathering for a wild blowout party. The result is s cacophony of chaos and lurid characters from avant-garde cinemas notorious master. 1963, 16mm, 29 minutes.

DJ Scott Stulen
Cargill Lounge, 9:1511:30 pm

Performance: Lookbook
Gallery 8, 1011:45 pm
From a recent Pitchfork review: A Minneapolis-based electro duo, Lookbook make songs that recall sparkly neon nights, heavy blue eye shadow, and electric-shock perms. But despite indulging in the superficial trappings of the era, neither vocalist Maggie Morrison nor multi-instrumentalist Grant Cutler seems content with exclusivity.

Performance: Dafnis Prieto and Judith Sanchez Ruiz
Burnet Gallery, 10 and 11 pm
Stop by the Burnet Gallery and catch an improvisational duet by renowned Afro-Cuban drummer/composer Dafnis Prieto and (Trisha Brown) dancer Judith Sanchez Ruiz. These brief, alternately propulsive and meditative pieces investigate the dynamic interplay of dance and music.

Party People Pictures
Cargill Lounge, 9 pm12 midnight
Stop by the Party People Photo Booth to document your experience, then find your face on the wall. View all photos at www.flickr.com/groups/walkerafterhours.

Walker Art Center and Northrop Music at the University of Minnesota Present International Jazz Sensation/Cuban Jazz Virtuoso Dafnis Prieto's Sextet :

Fri, 30 Oct 2009 17:00:00 GMT

[Prieto] has transformed Afro-Cuban rhythms. . . . These pieces are emotionally charged and stylistically diverse, carried along not just by rhythm but also through lovely harmonized passages, horn fanfares, and powerfully conjured moods. Wall Street Journal

Born and trained in Cuba, Dafnis Prieto is a drum virtuoso, a masterful composer, and a rising star on the international jazz scene. His driving, mesmerizing music, which twists folk motifs into next-generation Latin jazz, is widely respected for its sophistication, its structural and harmonic complexity, and its polyrhythmic punch. Walker Art Center and Northrop Music at the University of Minnesota present the Dafnis Prieto Sextet on Saturday, November 21, at 8 pm in the Walkers William and Nadine McGuire Theater. Prietos accomplished sextet includes Peter Apfelbaum (sax), Ralph Alessi (trumpet), Felipe Lamoglia (sax), Manuel Valera (piano), and Charles Flores (bass). As a special component to the concert, Trisha Brown Dance Company member Judith Sanchez Ruiz will perform a short dance/percussion duet with Prieto.

Within a short period of time Prieto's revolutionary drumming techniques have had a powerful impact on both the Latin and jazz music scenes. Having studied at the school of Fine Arts in Santa Clara as a youngster and later at the National School of Music in Havana, he obtained a thorough classical education while broadening his knowledge of Afro-Cuban music, jazz and world music outside of the academy. He first toured Europe with pianists Carlos Maza and Ramon Valle and the groundbreaking group Columna B. A resident of New York since 1999, Prieto has already played in bands led by Henry Threadgill, Steve Coleman, Eddie Palmieri, Chico and Arturo O'Farrill, Dave Samuels & The Caribbean Jazz Project, Jane Bunnett, D.D. Jackson, Edward Simon, Michel Camilo, Chucho Valdez, Claudia Acuña, Roy Hargrove, Don Byron, and Andrew Hill, among others.

As a composer, Prieto has created music for dance, film, chamber ensembles, and most notably for his own bands, ranging from duets to his Small Big Band and including the distinctively different groups featured on his three acclaimed recordingsAbout the Monks, Absolute Quintet, and Taking the Soul for a Walk. He has received commissions for new works, grants, and fellowships from Chamber Music America, Jazz at Lincoln Center, East Carolina University, and Meet the Composer. Various awards include Up & Coming Musician of the Year by the Jazz Journalists Association in 2006, a Grammy Award nomination for Absolute Quintet as Best Latin Jazz Album, and a Latin Grammy Nomination for Best New Artist in 2007. He composed the title track for the Grammy-winning album Song for Chico by Arturo O'Farril and the Afro Latin Jazz Orchestra in 2008. A gifted educator, Prieto has conducted numerous master classes, clinics, and workshops. Since 2005, he has been a member of the NYU Music Faculty.

Tickets to Dafnis Prieto are: $29 ($25 Walker and Northrop members) and are available at walkerart.org/tickets or by calling 612.375.7600. The Balcony Bar will be open at 7 pm and after the performance.

Walker Art Center Presents Family Workshop MyNet: Google SketchUp : Parents and Kids Ages 10-14 Can Learn Design and Modeling with Free Google Software Program :

Fri, 23 Oct 2009 17:00:00 GMT
Everyone can be an architect or designer with the help of Google SketchUp, a free software program for creating 3-D forms. In this workshop, presented by the Walker Art Center Saturday, November 14, 10am5 pm, in the University of Minnesotas Rapson Hall, 89 Church Street SE, Minneapolis, kids ages 1014 and parents or caregivers will work together to learn basic modeling skills and undertake a project that answers the question, Whats your ideal hangout? Computers are provided. Led by designer Adam Jarvi.

Tickets to the workshop are $10 per family ($5 Walker members). To purchase tickets or for more information, call 612.375.7600. Space is limited; early registration is encouraged.

Salon-Style Exhibition Benches & Binoculars Showcases Walker Art Center's Paintings Collection : Packed Walls Feature Old Favorites by Chuck Close, Edward Hopper, Georgia O'Keeffe, and Franz Marc Hanging Side-by-Side with a Number of Surprises :

Fri, 23 Oct 2009 17:00:00 GMT

A sweeping look at the Walker Art Centers paintings collection, displayed floor to ceiling in a salon style inspired by the 1920s galleries of museum founder Thomas Barlow Walker, will be presented in Benches & Binoculars, on view November 21, 2009August 15, 2010. In a large-scale and densely hung installation, organized by chief curator Darsie Alexander and curator Elizabeth Carpenter, visitors will encounter unpredictable juxtapositions and side-by-side pairings of more than 120 works mirroring the twists and eccentricities found in T.B. Walkers personal collection as well as the serendipity and uncanny coincidences that emerge in the present-day storage areas housing the collection. Many works have not been seen for decades, and a number of surprises (as well as a few old friends) make their 21st-century debut here. Some have served as centerpieces of key monographic exhibitions, and are locally as well as internationally renowned. Others are more modest in appearance, subject to the tides of changing taste and practice. All were, at least once, contemporary.

Highlighting the exhibition is the return of Franz Marcs Die grossen blauen Pferde (The Large Blue Horses) (1911), long considered a masterpiece of the Walkers collection, and Edward Hoppers mysterious Office at Night (1940), one of the artists best-known works. Included among the many works exhibited will be Jim Dines My Studio # One: The Vagaries of Painting "These are sadder pictures" (1978); Chuck Closes Big Self-Portrait (19671968); Georgia OKeeffes Lake George Barns (1926); Eleanore de Laittres Squares (1946); Louis Eilshemius Hymn to Nature (1919); Lyonel Feiningers Barfüsserkirche II (Church of the Minorites II) (1926); Saul Fletchers Untitled (painting II) (2005); Sherrie Levines Untitled (after Egon Schiele) (1984); Alice Neels Charlotte Willard (1967); Charles Sheelers Midwest (1954); Andy Warhols Self-Portrait (1978); and Carl L. Boeckmans Portrait of Thomas Barlow Walker (circa 1915).

Displaying artworks salon style is markedly different from the minimalist aesthetic that defines the look of todays contemporary and modern museums. This is a style the Walker has also at times adopted, but just as frequently contradicted or subverted. Recent solo exhibitions like The Quick and the Dead and Tetsumi Kudo: Garden of Metamorphosis, for example, revealed strategies that turned the galleries into immersive environments for both artworks and ideas.

Choosing salon style as a mode of exhibition is something of an homage to the nature of the institution itselfone of a few places where autonomous works and programs, with different audiences and disparate histories, coexist and frequently overlap. The Walkers mix of live performing arts events, film and video screenings, and gallery exhibitions, in addition to various educational programs, sets up a plethora of opportunities that keeps the offerings fresh and unpredictable. Benches & Binoculars seeks to create a similarly divergent platform for discovering new relationships between works in the collection. Over the course of the exhibition, programs and activities will offer opportunities to investigate ideas at play within the exhibition, delving into the ways in which personal impressions assign kinships and distinctions among works on view. The gallery space of the exhibition will feature platform seating and viewing binoculars as well as an interactive touch-screen map where visitors can select works from a digital version of the installation to access more information.

As an extension of the concurrently running cross-disciplinary collections exhibition Event Horizon, whose content will rotate during its three-year run, Benches & Binoculars will also change over time. As new works appear and others return to the vaults, return visits are importantand probably necessary. And yet even with a single visit, browsing provides its own kind of pleasure and freedom, as well as a distinctive view of the Walkers historyas it no doubt did in T.B. Walkers own day.

RELATED EVENTS

Opening Weekend

Walker After Hours Preview Party
Event Horizon and Benches & Binoculars
Friday, November 20, 9 pm12 midnight
$35 ($25 Walker members)
Tickets: walkerart.org/tickets or 612.375.7600.

Celebrate the opening of two exhibitions showcasing the Walker collections. Preview the shows and enjoy cocktails, complimentary Wolfgang Puck appetizers, a cameo appearance by percussionist Dafnis Prieto and dancer Judith Sanchez Ruiz, music by Lookbook and DJ Scott Stulen, a curatorial art lab activity, screenings of Kenneth Angers Scorpio Rising, and Party People Pictures.

New members receive one free party ticket (or other premium) for joining, while supplies last.

Walker After Hours sponsored by Target.

Target Free Thursday Nights

Thursday, December 10

Tour
Event Horizon and Benches & Binoculars with Darsie Alexander, 7 pm
Chief curator Darsie Alexander leads visitors through the newest collection exhibitions.

Thursday, January 7

The Inquisition: Art is Fun: Quiz Party Proves It, 7 pm
Perlman Gallery
Free tickets available at the Bazinet Garden Lobby desk from 6 pm
Space is limited.

In 1940, the Walker hosted the Inquisition, A Quiz Forum on the Arts that tested contestants on their range of art-historical knowledge and expertise. Letters, photographs, and articles from the archives create a picture of an event that was a lighthearted approach to the heavyweight challenges of modern art. Join us for this spirited revival in which Walker curators and special guests will be challenged on their knowledge of art, the institution, and a motley range of cultural topics in between. With help from the audience, we will uncover surprising secrets from the Walker vaults, demand on-the-spot interpretations, proffer elusive facts, and discuss moot issues in an attempt to turn art expertise on its head. All are encouraged to submit questions, facts, and topics in advance at walkerart.org/inquisition/. Prizes will be awarded and egos will be bruised.

Thursday, February 11

The Inquisition: Art is Fun: Quiz Party Proves It, 7 pm
Perlman Gallery

See January 7.

Thursday, March 4

The Inquisition: Art is Fun: Quiz Party Proves It, 7 pm
Perlman Gallery

See January 7.

Target Free Thursday Nights sponsored by Target.

Open House

WalltoWall Walker: A 10-Hour Open House
Saturday, December 5, 10 am8 pm, Free

Join us for a daylong celebration of all things Walker: music, film, performance, and an array of artworks from the new collection exhibitions Event Horizon and Benches & Binoculars. Come early for family fun; stay late with friends and enjoy gallery tours, cocktails, dinner, film in the Cinema, or a performance in the McGuire Theater.

Gallery Tours
37 pm on the hour, Free

Join Walker tour guides for special mini-tours of Event Horizon and Benches & Binoculars.

Free First Saturdays Are for Families!
The Big Event
Saturday, December 5, 10 am3 pm, Free

Celebrate art, music, film, performance, and much more at this all-day (and into the night!) open-house extravaganza.

Performance: Erik Friedlander, 1 pm
Jazz cellist Friedlander combines inventive music with travel stories and images created by his renowned photographer father.

Free First Saturday is sponsored by Ameriprise Financial. Program support by Medtronic Foundation. As part of the Walker Art Center's Raising Creative Kids Initiative, additional support is made possible by a grant from the U.S. Institute of Museum and Library Services.

Gallery Tours

Sunday, December 6, 2 pm
Saturday, December 12, 2 pm
Thursday, December 17, 2 pm
Friday, December 18, 2 pm
Sunday, December 20, 2 pm
Sunday, December 27, 2 pm
Sunday, January 3, 2 pm
Saturday, January 9, 2 pm
Friday, January 15, 2 pm
Thursday, January 21, 2 pm
Thursday, January 28, 2 pm
Sunday, January 31, 2 pm
Thursday, February 4, 2 pm
Thursday, February 11, 2 pm
Saturday, February 13, 2 pm
Thursday, February 18, 2 pm
Saturday, February 20, 2 pm
Sunday, February 21, 2 pm
Friday, February 26, 2 pm

Gallery Hours and Admission

$10 adults; $8 seniors (65+); $6 students/teens (with ID)
Free to Walker members and children ages 12 and under.
Free with a paid ticket to a same-day Walker event.
Free to all every Thursday evening (59 pm) and on the first Saturday of each month (10 am5 pm).

Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday 11 am5 pm
Thursday 11 am9 pm
Closed Mondays

Dynamic Collections Exhibition, Event Horizon, Draws Upon Walker Art Center's Rich Cross-Disciplinary Programming and Holdings : Visitors Will Encounter Fresh Discoveries and New Experiences Throughout the Exhibition's Three-Year Run :

Fri, 23 Oct 2009 17:00:00 GMT

A cross-disciplinary blend of film, video, performance, painting, sculpture, and photography drawn from the Walker Art Centers rich, multidisciplinary holdings is presented in Event Horizon, an exhibition opening November 21, 2009. Unfolding over a nearly three-year period, the exhibition features a range of subplots and visual contrasts by both established and lesser-known artists represented in the Walkers collections. In galleries animated with installations that change over time, Event Horizon offers a new context in which to view and experience connections to real-life events as well as artistic moments. Organized by a team of curators and realized in its final form by chief curator Darsie Alexander and curator Elizabeth Carpenter, the exhibition features some 90 pieces ranging from avant-garde film of the 1960s to live performances to newly created environmental works. Active zones of rotating works and dialogues serve as sites for screenings, performances, and public conversations. Event Horizon runs through August 5, 2012.

The theme of event operates on many levels at once, tapping into the deep strata of collections and programs here at the Walker. From film and video to visual and performing arts, this concept enables us to consider the major events of art and life that have shaped culture since the 1960s, Alexander says.

Inspired by the idea of the event horizon, a term used in astronomy to describe the edge of observable space as well as the outer limits of darkness and light, the exhibition presents works that reflect the many voices, perspectives, and programs advanced by the Walkerexpanding its boundaries as an art center and its role as a collecting as well as presenting institution. Reversing the traditional precedence of the object over the event of its creation, artists such as Raymond Hains, Kara Walker, and Andy Warhol have used the very images of culture as material for exploration and critique. Appropriating mass media images, French artist Hains transformed the mundane into art with his collages created from torn posters found on the streets of Paris. Warhols melancholy black, blue, and white Sixteen Jackies (1964) quotes from the incessant television coverage of President John F. Kennedys assassination in 1963, after which footage of the event was repeated for weeks. Kara Walker depicts her own version of the past using the antebellum South, one of Americas darker historical locations, as backdrop. In her screenprint Harpers Pictorial History of the Civil War (Annotated) (2005), her signature silhouettes are paired with rephotographed Civil War lithographs of battle and strife.

While some galleries will be quiet and contemplative, others will be animated with performances, screenings, and conversation, demonstrating the Walkers unique multidisciplinary platform. Changing selections of moving images from the Ruben/Bentson Film and Video Study Collection will be screened in a designated space, beginning with Bruce Conners poetic and mesmerizing film CROSSROADS (1976), which combines multiple camera shots of the first underwater atomic bomb test into a 36-minute meditation on the image of the resulting mushroom-shaped cloud. Films by Hollis Frampton, Derek Jarman, and Chris Markerothers whose work has captured events that have shaped our historyalso will be featured during the exhibitions run. Video monitors in each gallery will showcase the Walkers 40-year performing arts history with landmark performances that have defined the program by such artists as Mikhail Baryshnikov, Trisha Brown, Romeo Castellucci, Merce Cunningham, Bill T. Jones, Ralph Lemon, and Elizabeth Streb. Also on view will be Cao Feis video installation i.Mirror by China Tracy (AKA Cao Fei) (2007), depicting a simulated romance between avatars in the artists 3D virtual world Second Life, which blends documentary and magical realism.

In addition to performances captured on video, renowned Japanese American dance creators Eiko & Koma will be in residence throughout the month of November 2010 to perform Naked, a new living installation, six hours a day, six days a week. Commissioned by the Walker to celebrate its 30-year relationship with the artists, the piece features the duos characteristic glacially paced movement amidst sound, light, video, and organic set elements of their own design.

Frequent participatory momentsfrom handling the sculptural Three Adaptives (1997) of Franz West to seeing ones reflection in the mirror of Olafur Eliassons Convex/Concave (19952000)enable a variety of experiential encounters to occur in Event Horizon, which will take shape and change during the run of the exhibition. According to Carpenter, gallery-to-gallery opportunities to reflect as well as act will unfold as the visitor moves through space.

Event Horizon reflects the Walkers collecting practice, which in recent years has tended to focus around the edges of the obvious, resulting in collections distinguished by the embrace of hybrid or otherwise unclassifiable works that might fall between the cracks in more traditional institutions.

Art on Call Audio Guide
Load up your MP3 player or use your cell phone to hear about some of the works on view. To hear more, call 612.374.8200 in the galleries, or download Art on Call to your iPod before visiting newmedia.walkerart.org/aoc.

Collectible Cards
As part of Event Horizon, the Walker will launch an evolving series of "collectible" cards on exhibition topics, themes, artworks, and artists. Visitors can collect the cards, which will be introduced several times a year for the duration of the show.

RELATED EVENTS

Opening Weekend

Walker After Hours Preview Party
Event Horizon and Benches & Binoculars
Friday, November 20, 9 pm12 midnight
$35 ($25 Walker members)
Tickets: walkerart.org/tickets or 612.375.7600.

Celebrate the opening of two exhibitions showcasing the Walker collections. Preview the shows and enjoy cocktails, complimentary Wolfgang Puck appetizers, a cameo appearance by percussionist Dafnis Prieto and dancer Judith Sanchez Ruiz, music by Lookbook and DJ Scott Stulen, a curatorial art lab activity, screenings of Kenneth Angers Scorpio Rising, and Party People Pictures.

New members receive one free party ticket (or other premium) for joining, while supplies last.

Walker After Hours sponsored by Target.

Opening-Day Tour
Saturday, November 21, 2 pm, Free with gallery admission

From the screening of Bruce Conners CROSSROADS to Andy Warhols painting Sixteen Jackies, Event Horizon surveys political and socioeconomic shifts in our culture and the ways in which artists have responded. Visual arts curator Elizabeth Carpenter and film/video curator Sheryl Mousley lead a tour that highlights the depth and breadth of the Walkers collections as well as the collaborative process that produced the current installation.

Target Free Thursday Nights

Thursday, December 10

Tour with Darsie Alexander
Event Horizon and Benches & Binoculars, 7 pm

Chief curator Darsie Alexander leads visitors through the newest collection exhibitions.

Target Free Thursday Nights sponsored by Target.

Pre-Performance Gallery Tour

Pre-Performance Tour: Choreographers Evening and Event Horizon
Saturday, November 28, 6 and 8:30 pm, Free with event ticket
Meet in the Bazinet Garden Lobby

Before the performance celebrating Minnesotas most vibrant choreographers, tour Event Horizon, which features work by Trisha Brown, Merce Cunningham, and others who have nimbly navigated both dance and visual art.

Note: Tours are limited to 25 people. Please register in advance by calling 612.375.7600.

Pre-Screening Gallery Tour

Pre-Screening Tour: British Television Advertising Awards and Event Horizon
Saturday, December 11
Friday, December 17
Thursday, December 30
2 pm, Free with event ticket
Meet in the Bazinet Garden Lobby

Whether theyre peddling soda or pushing a more personal vision, advertisers and artists of all kinds draw from pop culture and spectacle. Before the awards show, learn a bit about artists who work along this spectrumfrom legends to contemporary figures.

Note: Tours are limited to 25 people. Please register in advance by calling 612.375.7600.

Open House

WalltoWall Walker: A 10-Hour Open House
Saturday, December 5, 10 am8 pm, Free

Join us for a daylong celebration of all things Walker: music, film, performance, and an array of artworks from the new collection exhibitions Event Horizon and Benches & Binoculars. Come early for family fun; stay late with friends and enjoy gallery tours, cocktails, dinner, film in the Cinema, or a performance in the McGuire Theater.

Gallery Tours
37 pm on the hour, Free

Join Walker tour guides for special mini-tours of Event Horizon and Benches & Binoculars.

Free First Saturdays Are for Families!
The Big Event
Saturday, December 5, 10 am3 pm, Free

Celebrate art, music, film, performance, and much more at this all-day (and into the night!) open-house extravaganza.

Performance: Erik Friedlander, 1 pm
Jazz cellist Friedlander combines inventive music with travel stories and images created by his renowned photographer father.

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Walker Art Center Presents World Premiere of Walker-Commissioned Reggie Wilson and Andreya Ouamba's The Good Dance: Dakar/Brooklyn :

Fri, 23 Oct 2009 17:00:00 GMT

Two continents, two great rivers, and two of contemporary dances biggest talents: The Good Dance: Dakar/Brooklyn is the culmination of a landmark three-year collaboration between American dance/theater-maker Reggie Wilson and Congolese contemporary dance creator Andréya Ouamba. As a new commission receiving its world premiere at the Walker Art Center, the piece will be polished during a two-week residency that includes rehearsals and production work as well as community gatherings, workshops, and a master class. The world premiere of The Good Dance: Dakar/Brooklyn will be performed on Thursday-Saturday, November 1214, at 8 pm in the William and Nadine McGuire Theater.

Our priorities have shifted and crystallized over time, says Wilson, who met Ouamba on his first trip to Senegal in 2002. Delving into the vocal sounds, movement, and visual and emotional landscapes of African American and African culture, The Good Dance unearths deep connections between the Mississippi River delta in the United States and Central Africas Congo River basin. It also brings forth the personal experiences of each choreographer, tying them into the concept of bodies and movement carrying moral traditions.

Wilson continues: I saw a movie in which one character was repeatedly referring to the Good Book. It really resonated for me, how in Western traditions, people go to textsthe Torah, the Koran, the Biblefor guidance and laws. But in African religions, theres no text. Theyre centered around oral traditions, but also around how the body is organized in space: through rituals and ceremonies, through gesture, the way in which you carry yourself. Thats where your information is, and you read other peoples bodies for their information. That moral guidepost is in the human body, so you dont have a good book, you have a good dance.

Andréya and I began talking about how that idea of the good dance connects with movement artists in how they carry their work in their bodies, and it has become a primary concern in our piece. It involves looking through the lens of Andréyas and my experiences, asking questions about who we are, and sharing where weve come from. We hope it wont stop there. By being specific about who we are, if we treat these things respectfully, it resonates into other places, other times, other people and their own traditions. We want to get at the big stuff without trying to be bigbut instead look at the details and minutiae of the physical experience of our lives.

Reggie Wilson/Fist & Heel Performance Group is a Brooklyn based dance company which blends contemporary dance with African traditions. The company makes brilliant new performance from the spiritual traditions of the African Diaspora. Wilson draws on the movement idioms of blues, slave, and worship cultures to create what he calls "Post-African Neo Hoodoo Modern dance.

Accompanied by their own driving rhythmsbody percussion, aspirated breath, singing, and shouts, Fist & Heel blends deep ritual into potent, beautiful and energizing contemporary dance.

Wilsons research on the secular and religious aspects of life in the African American communities of the Delta and the central African countries of Cameroon, Gabon, and Congo (Brazzaville), as well as a multiyear exchange and collaboration between Reggie Wilson/Fist and Heel Performance Group and Ouamba and his Company, 1er Temps based in Dakar, Senegal, will be contextualized into the The Good Dance. The piece has been awarded a National Dance Project production and touring grant.

Previous works include The Tale: Npinpee Nckutchie and the Tail of the Golden Dek (The Tale), an examination of the human search for coupling and uncoupling; a new group work using tugging, push and pulling, hidden, subtle, aloof partner manipulation, and detached gazes of the social dance form stepping. It integrates African forms with the intricate partnering and movement dialogues of hand dancing idioms bopping and lindy hop as well as the black folk tradition that produced the big apple, the black bottom, the electric slide, etc. The Tale premiered to critical acclaim last February in New York City at Dance Theater Workshop. The New York Times wrote The Tale cultivates a concise gem of a world, where music and movement are sewn together by a social dance form called stepping. The work was commissioned by Dance Theater Workshop, NY; On the Boards, WA; Helena Presents, MT; MCA Chicago, IL; and the NPN Creation Fund. It was also awarded a National Dance Project grant for the 20062007 season and was performed in 12 venues throughout the U.S.

Born in Congo, based in Senegal, Andréya Ouamba is one of the major emerging choreographers in West Africa. He won first prize at the prestigious competition Danse LAfrique Danse 2007 with the duet Improvisé 2, which has since toured globally.

Ouamba was invited by Festival Avignon to commission a solo for himself from Kenyan artist Opiyo Okach, which toured internationally, including Theater der Welt in Germany in summer 2008.

Ouamba is a catalyst of dance development in Dakar. He is artistic director and organizer of AEx Corps, a workshop and experimental program for West African dancers.

Tickets to The Good Dance: Dakar/Brooklyn are: Thursday, $18 ($15 Walker members); Friday (post-show Q&A) and Saturday, $25 ($21) and are available at walkerart.org/tickets or by calling 612.375.7600. The McGuire Theaters Balcony Bar will be open at 7 pm and after the performances.

Related Events

Open Rehearsal with Reggie Wilson and Andréya Ouamba
Thursday, November 5, 7 pm, Free
William and Nadine McGuire Theater

Catch a preview of The Good Dance at this public rehearsal.

Master Class with Reggie Wilson and Andréya Ouamba
Saturday, November 14, 11 am
$10 ($8 Walker members)
William and Nadine McGuire Theater

Join the artists for a modern dance class that explores phrases from the performance and improvisational structures. Limited to 30 intermediate to advanced/professional-level dancers only. Reservations recommended.