The timeliness of this initiative became even more evident as a result of the tragedy of September 11, 2001, which added urgency to all our conversations and uncertainty to all our travels. Its aftermath has resulted in a growing fear and misunderstanding of people from other nations and a desire to ignore or reject the concerns of the rest of the world. Our government is increasingly restricting travel to America, thus limiting our access to the essential ideas and perspectives of international writers, thinkers, and artists. During the past year, the concentrated presence of visual and media artists, theater directors, composers, dancers, musicians, and filmmakers from around the world offered our audiences rare opportunities to engage in dialogues with each other and to gain new insights into other cultures. The Performing Arts Department hosted a residency with South African–born dancer/choreographer Vincent Mantsoe, who creates dazzling solo works that fuse traditional African dance forms with an inspired mix of Asian and European elements. The Walker presented two evenings of his works Phokwane; Barena; and Motswa Hole, named the “top dance performance of the year” in the local weekly newspaper City Pages, as part of his first major U.S. tour. While in residence, he held a dance workshop with Young Dance Studio students (his first ever with children), and gave a talk at St. Olaf College in Northfield, Minnesota, about his work and life in South Africa. Chinese filmmaker Wang Jian-wei, whose documentary video Living Elsewhere was screened in the Walker’s galleries as part of the exhibition How Latitudes Become Forms, met with students at Asian Media Access and the Minneapolis College of Art and Design while he was in residence. At the Walker he also created a new performance/video work titled Movable Taste, in which he prepared traditional ma-po tofu with spices he brought from China, alongside a Walker chef who made the same dish using a modernized recipe. Audiences saw the food preparation via a live video feed, then sampled both versions while watching a video of the town where the artist had been sent as a youth during the Cultural Revolution to learn how to farm the soybeans from which tofu is made.