Announcing the 2026 Red Eye Festival (!!!)
Red Eye presents the 2026 edition of the Red Eye Festival, formerly known as the New Works 4 Weeks Festival: an annual gathering for live performance works that respond to the current moment and imagine collective transformation. Each year, artist cohorts engage in peer exchange, mutual support, and dialogue around creative process that culminates in this public sharing. Over nearly four decades, this incubator of new work has become a cornerstone of the Twin Cities performance landscape.
The 2026 artists bring varied approaches to performance processes—calling on dance, installation, sound, storytelling, textile, devising, satire, meditation, personal narratives and more—with a shared commitment to questioning artistic form and challenging dominant culture. Their works traverse themes including community distress and bodily peace, global conflict, grounding, absurdity, grief, desire, threads and uprising. They explore these themes through dance, sound, assemblage, multimedia installation, celebration and satire.
Read more about the artist cohort here!
Photo credits left to right, top to bottom: Edna Hand, Gaya, Jarek Pastor, Río Saúl, Kat Purcell, DejaJoelle, Kenna-Camara Cottman, Leila Awadallah
WIP 15 | May 21-23, 2026
Edna Hand
Dear Mom My Gut is Your Gut
Gaya Sani
~ planet of disruption
Jarek Pastor
1) Grow Up 2) Get Real
Río Saúl
trans soils, borderless bodies
WIP 30 | May 28-30, 2026
Kat Purcell
brutal, body it
DejaJoelle
Fast
WIP 60 | June 4-6, 2026
Kenna-Camara Cottman
"my so-called Legacy"
an immersive creative experience curated by practices informed by Black American Music and Movement
WIP 60 | June 11-13, 2026
Leila Awadallah
an experiment in wielding ripples of vibration | INTIFADA INCANTATION
A group of Palestinian performers are joined by a self-playing instrument that drones and shifts based on the vibrations in the floor and air. A series of experiments and incantations will take place; attuning to the ripples and attempting to wield them towards the shapes of intifada.** انتفاضة - to shake off, tremor, uprising
Red Eye is an artist-led organization where we—artists, staff, and community—form a relational collective, stewarding our shared resources, relationships, and creative potential.
