Who’s a good audience? You are! Yes, you are!
Laurie Anderson with Lolabelle
Multimedia artist Laurie Anderson was speaking to cellist Yo-Yo Ma one day when they discovered they had a shared fantasy — they sometimes imagine their audiences are made up entirely of dogs.
Anderson set out to make that a reality. Beginning with a performance at the Sydney Opera House in 2010, she began staging Concerts for Dogs (and their human owners). She initially thought only a handful would show up … but the canine crowd was in the thousands.
“My favorites were the droolers in the front row,” Anderson says. “Drool coming out of their mouths, their mouths hanging open, ‘What am I doing here?’”
It’s not the only time that Anderson has featured dogs prominently in her work. In 2015 she directed the film “Heart of a Dog” as an elegy to her late rat terrier Lolabelle.
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