Year: 2005

We have to admit that we came rather late to the Francine Prose bandwagon. Maybe it was her name, which somehow suggested to us cat mysteries or droll little English parlor comedies. We are, however, big enough to admit when we’ve made a mistake. Prose’s Blue Angel, a dark comedy that mined the fatuous culture of university writing programs and sexual shenanigans in academia, got us hooked, and landed a National Book Award nomination to boot. In delving further into Prose’s backlist–which dates back thirty years–we were pleased to discover that many of her books were even better. She’s that rare writer who can pull off biting satires about mores and morons while maintaining a genuine affection for her characters, however confused, misguided, or tangled in their delusions they may be. Her latest novel, A Changed Man, is the story of an erstwhile skinhead who volunteers his services to a nonprofit run by a Holocaust survivor, ostensibly, he says, “to save guys like me from becoming guys like me.” It’s a classic Prose premise, and we certainly wouldn’t expect much in the way of deadly earnestness.

A seven-film celebration of the ancient tradition of making a living by entertaining others. In The Magical Life of Long Tack Sam, director Ann Marie Fleming embarks on a trip around the world to learn about the acrobat, magician, comic, and linguist who was also her great-grandfather. The documentary Kings of the Sky follows a circus troupe of tightrope walkers from Tajikistan through China, and in the German film Artists Under The Big Top: Perplexed, Leni Peickert dreams about a new kind of circus, in which animals are treated more humanely and the art of the show is adapted for a modern world. The stunning Latcho Drom follows the gypsy people from India and through the Middle East to Eastern and Central Europe. Along the way, they absorb the music, dance, and costumes of various cultures, creating their own traditions. Traveling Sideshow: Shocked & Amazed offers an intimate view of the Lizard Man, Zamora the Torture King, George the Giant, and other freak legends. 10 Church St., Minneapolis, 612-331-3134; http://mnfilmarts.org/bell

God blessed the Baldwin sisters with outstanding voices. He also fixed them into separate vocal ranges, so while they might look alike (when directors aren’t lopping off or bleaching their coffee-colored locks), they sound completely different. Jennifer is the soprano ingenue. Christina is the sultry mezzo-soprano. This prevents them from competing over operatic roles, since sopranos get all the girly parts and mezzos play seductresses and adolescent boys. But in making a foray into other performance genres, the sisters have occasionally found themselves face to face at auditions. Thanks to their shared blood, however, they have evolved into a novelty act of sorts (“a freak show, the Coney Island of sisters,” says Christina). They often find themselves sharing the stage, especially when the script calls for sisters, as it did in Great American History Theatre’s Sisters of Swing and Theatre de la Jeune Lune’s Cosi fan Tutte. At present, the Baldwins can be seen as a package deal in an obscure but sexy tango opera, Maria de Buenos Aires, at Theatre de la Jeune Lune. The Rake caught up with the pair to chat about the show, sisterly love, and the hard-knock life of professional theater and opera.

THE RAKE: When did you embark on your singing careers? Was there a bit of big-sister copycatting going on?

JENNIFER: I don’t think either of us wanted to be singers. I wanted to be a ballerina and Christina wanted to be a fashion designer.

CHRISTINA: We both had different diversions and interests, but we both decided at the same time to pursue music. I was in my first year of college and Jen was transferring out of microbiology into music.

Have you ever competed for the same part?

J: We both went up for a part, any part–God, just give me a part–in She Loves Me at the Guthrie. I think they had us both singing for the role of Amalia. Christina made it into the ensemble, but I wasn’t offered a role.

C: It made Jen and me think about competition, because we hadn’t been thinking about it much before. We talked about it, and we both said, “I want you to get it and I want me to get it, too.”

You both made it into Maria de Buenos Aires at Theatre de la Jeune Lune. In fact, you’re both playing Maria. How does that work?

J: We’re kind of the different sides of Maria. She’s kind of mythologized, so sheÕs a person, but she’s also every woman. She’s a little larger than life. I start out as the playful Maria.

C: I’m the lugubrious Maria. Serious. Tough.

J: But she wears down completely. She’s so lonely that her heart breaks and she dies. For a brief moment, I become the ghost of Maria. But Christina plays the Maria who dies.

Any sibling rivalry on the set?

J: It’s hard not to be sisters when the moment calls for us to be colleagues. It’s caused us to renegotiate the way our relationship works, because you can’t really take the sister part out. And we want to remain colleagues, so we really have to negotiate.

C: Luckily, both of us are talkers. We have such history. We have our shared upbringing and life in general. Often there’ll be a childhood memory, and we’ll say, “No, that happened to me! Quit stealing my memories!”

What happens when you have it out?

C: Jen’s not afraid of conflict. If something’s not quite right with someone, she is very good about telling them in a very direct but workable manner. I tend to get quiet and removed, whereas Jen will name the elephant in the room.

J: I might be direct in conflict situations, but I think Christina uses humor more effectively than I do. That’s her way of working through relationships. She disarms people.

C: I grab them and throw them down to the ground and then I take their weapons away.

Maria de Buenos Aires runs through March 26 at Theatre de la Jeune Lune, 612-333-6200; www.jeunelune.org

Not every cyclist on Nicollet Mall is a kamikaze messenger. Look, there’s Minnesota Orchestra principal flutist Adam Kuenzel, zipping between buses, flute strapped to his back! Kuenzel bikes to work in fair weather and foul, and even waved off the official tour bus during the orchestra’s 2003 centennial tour of Minnesota, choosing instead to follow on his bike. With his movie-star gaze and technical virtuosity, Kuenzel has become a popular figure with audiences here and on the road. For those fools who dismiss the flute as the instrument of choice for preteen girls, just listen to challenging works like the Nielsen Flute Concerto, which Kuenzel blows apart like a wily March wind moving through an ice-coated pine. And then look at how this flutist spends his free time: cross-country skiing, kayaking, living life with true muscle. It takes a lot of lung power to play a wind instrument, even the lithe and silvery flute. So really, all that biking is just part of his practice routine. With his penchant for adventure, we thought Kuenzel would do pretty well stranded on a desert island.

1. My flute so I can practice, in case someday I’m rescued and I want my job back. If I give up hope, I could use it as a tent pole.

2. My recordings of Cecilia Bartoli. I’m sure I could rig up a primitive CD player from material found on the island, a la the professor on Gilligan’s Island. Listening to her would give me the illusion of having female companionship.

3. My book of Robert Service poems. This is poetry for men, about men, clinging to life in the Yukon. I’d be reminded that I’m not in such a bad situation after all.

4. I’d like to continue to receive the Atlantic Monthly, to stay abreast of world events and give me something fresh to read while I sway among the palms in my hammock.

5. Last of all, I’d have a voice-activated tape recorder small enough to hang from a string around my neck. I’d end up talking to myself a lot, and would want to review occasionally to see if I’d had any brilliant thoughts.

During this month’s Twin Cities Mozart Marathon, Kuenzel helps the Minnesota Orchestra recreate a Vienna Akademie concert from 1783. 612-371-5656; www.minnesotaorchestra.org

Here or there? That’s the eternal conundrum of the immigrant, and it’s conveyed in a number of ways in this exhibit of young Arab-American artists. There–be it Egypt, Iraq, Palestine, Morocco, or Jordan–has beauty, tradition, and the resounding rightness of home. Here, in the United States, offers religious and creative freedom, for men and women. “My work questions what is unjust in my tradition,” says Saudi Arabian artist Hend Al-Mansour, whose hennaed cloth panels hang from the ceiling to create a private room within the gallery. In photographs of mosques and children, paintings of faceless draped women, and calligraphic figures from the Qur’an, homesickness collides with criticism. The most emphatic piece here is Jumana Al Hashal’s silkscreen of a plane dropping bombs labeled “WMD” onto the map of Iraq. 4137 Bloomington Ave. S., Minneapolis; 612-728-5728

A crank and a recluse, a seeker and an obsessive, Biederman was the kind of artist who made art simply because he couldn’t not do it! He was from a whole different era than the graduates turned out by today’s BFA and MFA programs, but he might as well have been a whole different species. As a quintessential modernist, Biederman was forward-looking, using fluorescent tubes in his work in 1940, decades before Dan Flavin (whose work is currently sought after by the kind of art-world “phonies and hypocrites” that Biederman loved to hate), but he also reached back. In a sense he was our last long link with early moderns like Cezanne, his first love. Don’t pass up the opportunity to rediscover a true American original. As Biederman himself proved, a restless eye does not go unrewarded. 333 E. River Rd., Minneapolis; 612-625-9494; www.weisman.umn.edu

Mail doubles as works of art (postcard, painting, sculpture), in this exhibition. Each artwork, while it is stamped and addressed to the gallery, and bears a postmark tattoo, seems to have very little road wear. Sure, it would be pretty hard to damage the block of wood carved ironically to resemble a package, but it’s clear that the cork collage and the soft doll, who floated unprotected through the system wearing her address label like a piece of jewelry, got kid-glove treatment. Which is maybe not so surprising–wouldn’t doll-mail be a bright spot in the otherwise monotonous day of a postal worker? 1111 Mainstreet, Hopkins; 952-979-1100; www.hopkinsmn.com/_hca

B.B. King is coming to town, and the man is turning eighty this year, so don’t put off today what you might not be able to hear tomorrow. Not that the reigning King of the Blues is slowing down any. With a world tour and a new album (The Ultimate Collection, twenty-one of King’s greatest hits, is available March 15), the man is in fine form, and sounds as good as ever. His music really should be heard in a venue that serves some good fried food (seats that spin are ideal, too), but King has earned a measure of comfort after so many decades of hard work, and his smoky, low-down voice should rumble the cubes at Orchestra Hall just fine. 612-371-5656; www.minnesotaorchestra.org

Not every folksinger offers paeans to cornfields and chicken coops. Lucy Kaplansky is a purely urban soul, and her New York City songs tell stories with subway trains below and skyscrapers above. Nor do her curly hair, modern love songs, and psychology degree fit with your average folkie image, but she cuts to the heart of things with a sweet and yearning voice. Her latest recording, The Red Thread, crosses oceans to China, where Kaplansky and her husband recently traveled to adopt a baby daughter. The title refers to an invisible thread, which, according to Chinese lore, links newborn babies to every person they will meet throughout their lives. It’s a good reminder of the fragile connectivity of life, which in itself is a key to happy urban living. 416 Cedar Ave S., Minneapolis; 612-338-2674; www.thecedar.org