The late Merce Cunningham will have a major presence at Walker Art Center next season. One-third of the Walker's 2016-17 dance, theater and music lineup is tied directly, or by inspiration, to the groundbreaking dancer and choreographer, who had a 40-plus-year relationship with the museum before he died in 2009.
"We've centralized a focus around Merce and we've assembled works drawn from all over," said senior performing arts curator Philip Bither. "People will be surprised at how appealing and exquisite these works are."
Performances around the exhibit "Merce Cunningham: Common Time," which opens Feb. 8, will dominate the spring, including gallery performances by Cunningham dancers (Feb. 8-9 and March 30-April 9). Three of an unprecedented nine Walker commissions next season are tied to the exhibit: "Staging" by choreographer Maria Hassabi (Feb. 8-19); "Tesseract," by former Cunningham stars Rashaun Mitchell and Silas Riener and media artist Charles Atlas (March 16-18), and an untitled new work by Beth Gill (May 5-6). Also, French company CCN-Ballet de Lorraine will perform two Cunningham works (Feb. 16).
The season, announced Thursday, also includes a mini-fest dedicated to provocative Parisian choreographer/philosopher Jérôme Bel, including his show "Gala," which celebrates diverse bodies; a conversation with Bither, and film screenings (Nov. 1-4).
The dance and performance-art card kicks off Sept. 23-24 with a juggling show by Italian dance maker Alessandro Sciarroni. Bessie Award-winning choreographer Pavel Zuštiak will present "Custodians of Beauty" (Oct. 20-22). Twin Cities dance leader Rosy Simas will curate this year's choreographers' evening (Nov. 26). Minneapolis dancer/choreographer Karen Sherman, a Walker favorite, will premiere "Soft Goods" (Dec. 8-10).
Walker's annual Out There series includes Andrew Schneider's "Youarenowhere," described as "a rapid-fire, high-tech existential meditation" that ends in sensory overload (Jan. 4-7); the premiere of choreographer Faye Driscoll's "Thank You for Coming: Play," the second work in a trilogy (Jan. 12-14); Okwui Okpokwasili's "Poor People's TV Room," a new piece about women's struggles in Nigeria from Ralph Lemon's longtime, Bessie Award-winning collaborator (Jan. 19-21), and Philippe Quesne's "La Mélancolie des Dragons," in which six metalheads build a Disneyesque theme park as a protest against consumerism (Jan. 26-28).
Walker also will co-present the return of Israel's Batsheva Dance Company (Jan. 24 at Northrop Auditorium)
On the music side, the offerings include saxophonist Colin Stetson's re-imagining of Górecki's Symphony No. 3 (Sept. 30); Iraqi-American jazz trumpeter Amir ElSaffar's "Rivers of Sound," performed by a 17-member pan-Arabic/ American ensemble (Oct. 15); a new work by Pulitzer Prize winner David Lang, co-founder of Bang on a Can (Dec. 3), and Congolese sensation Mbongwana Star (March 3).
The season will conclude with two musical events: New York saxophonist Steve Coleman's all-star octet Natal Eclipse (May 12) and the world premiere of "A Warm Weather Ghost," a multimedia story by TV on the Radio's Tunde Adebimpe, co-commissioned by Liquid Music (May 18-20).
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