San Francisco-based dance-choreographer Joanna Haigood is an acclaimed choreographer and site artist who makes dances that inhabit natural, architectural, and cultural environments and deeply involve surrounding communities. In a tribute to the cultural life of a Minneapolis neighborhood, Picture Powderhorn was commissioned in 1998 as an investigation into the memory of spaces. Haigood and her company Zaccho Dance Theatre transformed the massive Con Agra grain silos in Southeast Minneapolis into an enormous performance stage on August 25, and 26, 2000. Suspended by specially designed rigging and harnesses, Zaccho’s aerialists performed the work at dusk, soaring off the surface of 120-foot concrete silos and interacting within the immense projections of video artist Mary Ellen Strom and the architecture itself. The experience was heightened by elaborate lighting and an original electronic soundscape. The work, two years in the making and involving extensive research by Walker staff on local Minneapolis neighborhoods and their geography, culminated Haigood’s residency at the Walker, during which she worked with area teens exploring the Powderhorn neighborhood in South Minneapolis. The teens captured the stories, pace, and sounds of the area, providing choreographic inspiration and audio-visual material used to create the performance’s stirring environment of sound and light. To Haigood, the silos are a powerful metaphor for the nourishment and vitality of inner-city neighborhoods—and Picture Powderhorn was an unforgettable celebration of one such community. In the end, more than 4000 Twin Cities residents attended the two performances. . . .

San Francisco-based dance-choreographer Joanna Haigood is an acclaimed choreographer and site artist who makes dances that inhabit natural, architectural, and cultural environments and deeply involve surrounding communities. In a tribute to the cultural life of a Minneapolis neighborhood, Picture Powderhorn was commissioned in 1998 as an investigation into the memory of spaces. Haigood and her company Zaccho Dance Theatre transformed the massive Con Agra grain silos in Southeast Minneapolis into an enormous performance stage on August 25, and 26, 2000. Suspended by specially designed rigging and harnesses, Zaccho’s aerialists performed the work at dusk, soaring off the surface of 120-foot concrete silos and interacting within the immense projections of video artist Mary Ellen Strom and the architecture itself. The experience was heightened by elaborate lighting and an original electronic soundscape. The work, two years in the making and involving extensive research by Walker staff on local Minneapolis neighborhoods and their geography, culminated Haigood’s residency at the Walker, during which she worked with area teens exploring the Powderhorn neighborhood in South Minneapolis. The teens captured the stories, pace, and sounds of the area, providing choreographic inspiration and audio-visual material used to create the performance’s stirring environment of sound and light. To Haigood, the silos are a powerful metaphor for the nourishment and vitality of inner-city neighborhoods—and Picture Powderhorn was an unforgettable celebration of one such community. In the end, more than 4000 Twin Cities residents attended the two performances. Picture Powderhorn was the most logistically and technically demanding project the Walker has ever produced, requiring close work and complex negotiations with Con Agra, the University of Minnesota, surrounding railroads, and neighborhood associations.

In addition to the enormous and technical demanding performance undertakings, there was an innovative educational and community component related to Haigood’s residency. 16 teens from Minneapolis’ Powderhorn neighborhood assisted Haigood with the research for her piece in an intensive arts-immersion after school program. The teens, under the direction of a local education coordinator and a media associate, explored the history of their neighborhood and how it relates to their own lives and families. They gathered oral histories, documented the sights and sounds of the area, and created movement vocabularies reflecting their findings, which provided choreographic inspiration for Haigood and audio-visual reference points for Strom and composer Lauren Weinger. Over the course of several months in the spring of 2000, Haigood worked with the young people in order to identify a new dance vocabulary based on local vernacular forms and the movement patterns inherent to their communities. The overall goal of the educational component was to offer youth living in the Powderhorn area a deeply engaging after-school experience that would enhance their personal development, provide a stimulus for their academic development, and encourage their involvement in art in their larger community. This aspect of the residency culminated with a performance of findings and reflections and a discussion by the teens in Powderhorn Park.

Community partners in this complex undertaking included the Powderhorn Park Neighborhood Association, ConAgra (grain elevator owner), Reichhold Chemical (land owner), the University of Minnesota, the Walker Board, the Burlington/Northern Railroad, the Minnesota State Fair, and many others. The final performances stand as a potent metaphor for the confluence of art and sustenance, tethered in urban dreams and rural goals. In the end Picture Powderhorn was a death-defying and life-affirming celebration of a vital Minneapolis community.