Mark your weekend calendar with a fantastic slate of new shows and programming coming up in the Twin Cities this week, including a cross between sculpture, music and filmmaking in Pao Houa Her’s new presentation at Bockley Gallery. Red Eye Theater continues its New Works 4 Weeks festival with solo shows by Benny Olk and Masanari Kawahara, and Kim Gordon heads to the Fine Line. The Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra tops off its 2023-2024 season with Beethoven’s “Eroica” Symphony, MacPhail Center for Music highlights Native composers, and BRKFST Dance Company premieres a new piece.
Red Eye Theater’s New Works | 4 Weeks: Benny Olk | Masanari Kawahara
The last time I saw the fruits of Masanari Kawahara and Sho Nikaido’s collaboration was back in the fall of 2020 outside the damaged Third Precinct. Barebones had canceled its annual Halloween extravaganza and instead created a series of pop-up performances that were filmed along Lake Street geared toward healing and justice following the murder of George Floyd. With his face painted white, Kawahara performed his solo piece “8’46” (movement for healing),” set to Nikaido’s minimalist electronic score.
Trained in Butoh and with a background in theater, puppetry, Kawahara has an incredibly absorbing presence as a mover and performer. I think it’s because as he’s engaged in his practice, he’s giving to the audience fully from his inner life. I’m excited to see what the two artists have got cooking this week in Kawahara’s new piece, “doro doro.” The description of the work on the Red Eye Theater’s website seems to reference the Buddhist tenet of becoming an empty vessel, and hints at moving through ancestral and personal traumas through love.
“doro doro” will perform with another solo work called “A SCHEMA” by Benny Olk, who uses mathematical patterns as an element in dance making. Both works are Red Eye “Isolated Acts,” part of the New Works 4 Weeks Festival, taking place this weekend Thursday, June 6 through Saturday, June 8 at 7 p.m. at the Red Eye ($15-50). The festival continues the following week with new work by Dameun Strange and Marcela Michelle. More information here.
Kim Gordon
The ever versatile and chameleonic Kim Gordon visits the Fine Line as part of a national tour after releasing the “The Collective” back in March. Since parting ways with Sonic Youth in 2011, singer, multi-instrumentalist, visual artist and writer has brought distinctly different projects to the Twin Cities, including a throbbing industrial set at the Uptown VFW in 2017 and a loop pedal synth dance dream collaboration at the American Swedish Institute with choreographer Dimitri Chamblas in 2019..
In “The Collective,” loosely inspired by Jennifer Egan’s futuristic “The Candy House,” Gordon joins forces with producer Justin Raisen for an edgy, darkly sardonic album. Opening for Gordon is the Detroit-based Infinite River. Friday, June 7 at 8 p.m. at the Fine Line ($35-50) More information here.
Pao Houa Her: Nim ye
There are five different video channels in artist Pao Houa Her’s installation at Bockley Gallery, called “Nim ye,” but you wouldn’t necessarily know it if you were just listening to the sound rather than seeing the videos play out on the different Cathode ray tube TVs. Each of the channels feature a singing form from Hmong culture called kwv txhiaj, played intermittently and sourced from different time periods (some of the videos are several decades old, and there’s one that was commissioned recently). When you hear them all together— despite the large expanses of time and space between when the videos were recorded— they sound in harmony.
Read more about the installation here.
“Pao Houa Her: Nim ye” is on view through June 22 at Bockley Gallery, which is open Tuesdays through Saturdays, noon to 5 p.m. (free). More information here.
Beethoven’s Eroica Symphony with Gábor Takács-Nagy
Hungarian violinist and conductor Gábor Takács-Nagy joins the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra for its season finale, closing out the season with Ludwig van Beethoven’s groundbreaking masterwork, Symphony No. 3, “Eroica.” Before that, the orchestra performs Alban Berg’s Violin Concerto, a modernist piece that carries with it a sense of heart (Berg composed in honor of the 18-year-old daughter of his two friends, who died of polio.) Concertmaster Steven Copes will take on the solo for the concerto.
Friday, June 7 at 11 a.m., Saturday, June 8 at 7 p.m., Sunday, June 9 at 2 p.m. at Ordway Concert Hall ($12-$55). More information here.
BRKFST Dance Company
BRKFST Dance Company celebrates 10 years as a company with performances closing out Northrop’s 2023-2024 season, premiering a new co-commission by the now-closed Cowles Center and Northrop. (The concert was originally supposed to premiere at the Cowles, and was moved to The Walker Art Center when the Cowles shut its doors at the end of March). Titled “STORMCLUTTERStormclutter,” the new piece features a score by Renée Copeland, a longtime dancer with Ananya Dance Theatre who has in recent years gained attention for her music making. Besides the world premiere, BRKFST will also reprise its celebrated “Dancers, Dreamers, and Presidents,” set to Daniel Bernard Roumain’s tone poem.
Saturday, June 8 at 7:30 p.m., Sunday, June 9 at 2 p.m. at McGuire Theater at the Walker Art Center ($32). More information here.
Native Spirits Sing
Three Native composers come under the spotlight at a free concert at MacPhail, curated by faculty member Pinar Başgöze. Among the composers whose work will be performed is Louis Wayne Ballard, or Honga-no-zhe. A member of the Quapaw nation, Ballard was instrumental in bridginge Native and Western classical music in the latter part of the 20th century. Notably, he was commissioned by the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra to write “Incident at the Wounded Knee” in the 1970s.
Also on the bill are a piece by Chickasaw classical composer and pianist Jerod Impichchaachaaha’ Tate and Brent Michael Davids, a composer and flutist and member of the Stockbridge- Munsee Community. Guest Sequoia Hauck will give a pre-concert talk, sharing their experience of creating a film about musician, educator and political activist Zitkála-Sá.
Sunday, June 9 at 6:30 p.m. (pre-concert talk at 6 p.m.) at MacPhail (free). More information here.
Sheila Regan
Sheila Regan is a Twin Cities-based arts journalist. She writes MinnPost’s twice-weekly Artscape column. She can be reached at [email protected].