"Family-friendly performance art" might sound like an oxymoron, but Walker Art Center has seemingly realized that with a few shows in its just-announced 2015-16 performing arts season.
"We didn't set out to program shows that families from young to old can enjoy together — it just happened," said senior performing arts curator Philip Bither.
Those include "The Object Lesson," a comic one-man show by Geoff Sobelle in which audience members will seat themselves amid a pile of junk on the Walker stage (Nov. 4-8); "Nufonia Must Fall," a playful work by DJ/producer Kid Koala, who adapted his own graphic novel into a live movie that will be staged via GoPro video with a cast of puppets (April 1-2, 2016), and "Aging Magician," a music-theater work featuring the Brooklyn Youth Chorus (March 5-6).
The latter piece, by alt-classical composer Paola Prestini, Improbable Theatre director/designer Julian Crouch and writer/performer Rinde Eckert, is one of four newly commissioned works on the schedule. The season begins Sept. 24-27 with the first of these: "Tournamento," by choreographer Sarah Michelson, who was inspired by the world of competitive athletics.
Other commissions include "Spiritual America," a set of art songs that join composer William Brittelle with indie-rock duo Wye Oak and violinist Michi Wiancko (Oct. 14 at Aria), and "The Ghost of Montpellier Meets the Samurai," in which inventive New York choreographer Trajal Harrell imagines a meeting between Butoh dance founder Tatsumi Hijikata, French dance innovator Dominique Bagouet and experimental theater pioneer Ellen Stewart (March 11-13).
Walker also will co-present two performance-art icons: Laurie Anderson will perform "The Language of the Future" March 19 at the Fitzgerald Theater, and singer/dancer/choreographer Meredith Monk will celebrate her 50th year as an artist with a concert April 15 at the O'Shaughnessy.
Other concerts include contemporary Irish-folk-inspired supergroup the Gloaming (Oct. 9); Inuit throat singer Tanya Tagaq, performing a live score to the 1922 film "Nanook of the North" (Nov. 19-20); Japanese female noise-pop band OOIOO (Dec. 3); Mauritanian singer Noura Mint Seymali (Feb. 19 at Cedar Cultural Center); jazz guitarist Rez Abbasi with Rudresh Mahanthappa's Indo-Pak Coalition (Feb. 25), and young jazz saxophonist Steve Lehman (May 7).
Twin Cities dancer/choreographer Justin Jones will curate the annual Choreographers' Evening of local talent (Nov. 28), while New York choreographer Faye Driscoll will stage "Thank You for Coming: Attendance" (Feb. 17–21), the first part of a trilogy that will unfold over three years.
