Director's Note 7/1/12

After our successful collaboration with Alverno Presents for the Eiko + Koma performance last summer, we went right back to the table to consider ways we could extend the partnership and bring more performance to Lynden, surely one of Milwaukee’s most unique venues. David Ravel of Alverno Presents and I have been hosting a series of artists this month to plan future dance projects (such exciting projects!) but for the next two weeks, all of our attention is focused on Coming (and Going) Attractions, an afternoon of art and performance here at Lynden on Sunday, July 15, 2012 from 3 pm to 6 pm.

This celebration of ephemerality marks the opening of Alverno Presents’s 53rd season, and it invites viewers to take in a series of outdoor performances--excerpts and previews of upcoming Alverno Presents offerings--at sites across the sculpture garden’s grounds: Dance by Lingo Dancetheater, Stephen Foster music with a twist by Juniper Tar, and highlights of a new composition by Jon Mueller performed in the little house by the bridge. Over at the Little Lake, we will unveil a new, temporary, site-specific sculpture by Roy Staab. Roy, who is an artist-in-residence at Lynden this summer, will be making the work over the next two weeks (occasionally with the help of our campers). He will be on hand to talk about his work throughout the afternoon.

For Alverno Presents, both the beauty and the puzzle of live performance is its impermanence. At Lynden, we continually explore the relationship between the changing natural landscape and the permanent collection of sculpture; on occasion, we work with artists whose work is intentionally ephemeral. Like performance, it comes, filling us with sensation, and goes, leaving us changed in its wake. Coming (and Going) Attractions is a celebration of comings and goings, arrayed across space of the garden and the hours of a leisurely afternoon.