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Featured Performance
Vanessa Voskuil; Sachiko Nishiuchi
July 16, 7:30 pm, July 17, 8:00 pm, July 18, 8:00 pm Vanessa Voskuil: en masse Performed by a cast of 80, en masse grapples with the collective animal power of the masses working in perpetual conflict against itself toward an elusive, undiscovered... read more » |
Featured Article
New World Dance: New York
Three Powerful Performances Packed into One Evening May 2009 “Tony,” a child-size puppet with a cherubic doll’s face, a turtle-shell potbelly, and an otherwise spindly body made from odds and ends, is the surprising protagonist in Nami Yamamoto’s a howling flower. Four human performers maneuver around him, their sense of... read more » |
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Walker Channel
 Young Jean Lee and Philip Bither in Conversation Friday, January 30, 2009  Join theater innovator Young Jean Lee for a candid discussion about her upbringing, her perspective on theater today, the process of writing/producing her work, and the creation of both CHURCH and her newest work, The Shipment. Walker... read more » Artist-in-Residence
 Artist-in-Residence May-November 2007 Faustin Linyekula, dancer and choreographer, lives and works in Kinshasa. In 2001, after eight years of self-imposed exile, Linyekula returned to his native Congo with a renewed desire to create art there. He quickly established a company and art center, Les Studios Kabako, which is the only space... read more » Department Information As a leading national force since its founding, the Walker Art Center’s Performing Arts Department has been built successfully on a foundation laid by five visionary directors and a level of institutional commitment rare for a contemporary arts center.
The Walker began presenting local dance,... read more » |
Blog
Blog the Garden- Backstage tired (part 4)Pearl Rea Wed, 01 Jul 2009 An interesting side effect of working so many hours in just 2 days to get a show up and down is that after working 21 hours straight you get a little loopy! For what it’s worth, I took this picture at 3:30am after the show was struck, everything was put away, and the crew was enjoying a quiet moment in the air conditioning of the building:
 3:30am (after the strike) Title: Meat and Beer The only thing I remember about taking this picture is that I thought it was hilarious (go ahead and judge me, I can take it!) and had announced to anyone awake enough to listen that this HAD to go onto the backstage blog. It made complete sense at the time! : )  The Decemberists- 9pm on Saturday Rewind 7.5 hours earlier to 8pm on Saturday night…the EMP crew is changing over into the headliner and almost everyone gets a quick break during The Decemberists set to recharge and get ready for strike. Its been a good, but long day…and even though everything has gone smoothly, the crew is starting to get a little antsy about starting the strike. We have a whole new group off crew folks arriving at 10pm, right as the show is ending, to help us take the whole thing down. The goal is to get the staging, power, cable, cable ramps and everything clear from the street as quickly and safely as possible! Backline folks pack up the guitars, amps, keyboards and mics. Audio engineers are packing away the monitor desks, front of house control board and audio snakes.  Strike- 10:45pm Saturday night after the show MPR and some crew are packing away the gear for the live feed and the recording. We discover at the start of strike that the rented forklift has a propane leak and we are out of fuel. Hearts stop. But luckily Tony is there with his Bobcat to get things started and the head of our department finds a vendor in Golden Valley (on 11pm on a Saturday night!!!) with another propane tank! 45 minutes and a quick ride in the Walker van to Golden Valley later, we are forking on all cylinders! As soon as we can cut a path through the exiting crowd, we move the Decemberists truck into position and start loading cases and strapping them in. The bands slowly vacate the air-conditioned band trailers backstage (who wouldn’t want to leave such a fun event!?) so we can clean them out one-by-one. First to leave: Calexico. Last to leave: The Decemberists EMP takes the left over beer (not much left over this year!) and sends the stuff left behind by the bands. Left behind this year: one pair of silver shoes and a pair of ipod headphones. It takes us a while to clean one of the trailers, though…one of the bands had a real “rock star behavior” day! The trailers move out of the way so the staging can get broken down and motors bring in the roof. The RV driving crew (David is back driving “Big Mama”) take a trip down to Shakopee to return clean, empty trailers.
 The RV crew in front of "Big Mama", The Decemberists trailer- 1:15am on Sunday morning By the time we get back, the roof is down and the staging vendor is loading up the truck with all their gear. The vendors are mostly gone and the cable ramps and cable is stacked and ready to be picked up on Monday. Rental radios are returned to master planner, Ashley (minus one antenna, sorry Ashley…we really looked for it!) The only real casualty of the day was my clipboard. At some point during the day, it was lost. And then run over by a couple of trucks. And found at some point on Monday by some kind woman who found it in the street and returned it to the front desk! Commissions
 the break/s Marc Bamuthi Joseph April 10-12, 2008 Discipline: Verse/Dance/Film Marc Bamuthi Joseph upends the phrase "think globally, act locally," striving to inject core community values into his work as an international hip-hop artist. "I'm not a stereotypical emblem for what hip-hop culture is or how it gets broadcast around the planet," he says. "Hip-hop is definitely in... read more » In The Shop
Bits & Pieces Put Together to Present a Semblance of a Whole: Walker Art Center CollectionsA primer on contemporary art, the Walker’s new catalogue captures the institution’s multidisciplinary history and reflects many of its commissions and extensive collections of paintings, sculptures, prints, photography, design, film/video, new media, and performing arts. The 616-page volume includes some 350 artist entries coauthored by the Walker’s curators and alumni as well as contributions from a select group of novelists, poets, and critics. $45 ($40.50 Walker members). read more » Related Performing Arts Links
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