You have to appreciate the forthrightness of a sculptor like the Belgrade-born Mojsilov, who joked with a reporter a few years ago that his art is mainly about “turning rocks into expensive rocks.” To be sure, this show, which includes works from recent years along with maquettes and photos of large-scale public commissions, demonstrates that … Read more
Cooper has been the plucky executive director of the Minnesota Fringe Festival for the past five years, bringing the beloved assemblage of offbeat theater back from the brink of financial despair and growing it into the largest non-juried performing arts festival in the country. (There are now fourteen of them nationwide, and about fifty-three Fringe … Read more
While school’s out, young trapezists around the Cities can finally get about the business of putting on a proper circus. Showcasing the acrobatic prowess of Circus Juventas’ most advanced performers, Pazzanni, a production based on the famed carnivales of sixteenth-century Venice, promises to be a locally grown Cirque du Soleil-style spectacle—one whose tickets are far … Read more
There’s no telling what might be on the table at this tête-à-tête hosted by the splashy new Central Library, but a lively, rambling conversation is all but guaranteed. University of Minnesota Professor Charles Baxter has written a batch of widely acclaimed books of poetry as well as prose (including The Feast of Love, a National … Read more
One must be awful careful these days when bringing up H. L. Mencken. The “Bard of Baltimore” was an inspiration to a generation of plain-talking columnists long before Molly Ivins or Maureen Dowd were even born—or before anyone in journalism worried about hurting people’s feelings. Mencken’s specialty was puncturing the pomposity and pointing out the … Read more
The current Minneapolis epicenter of prostitution, at least if you ask the neighbors, centers on the residential streets around Hiawatha Avenue and Lake Street East. The area is so active that an all-volunteer, amateur “John Patrol” has sprung up in order to keep an eye on things. The foot patrollers have been known to rat … Read more
Much more informative than browsing at antique stores or Design Within Reach, this show is a must for design aficionados—even though, alas, you’re not allowed to park your tush on any of these models. The show includes works from the nineteenth century, but focuses on the twentieth century’s greatest names: There’s Marcel Breuer’s Wassily chair, … Read more
Further proof of the vitality of the local dance scene, Carl Flink, the director of the University of Minnesota’s dance program, debuts a new company whose name refers to the no-nonsense ethic conveyed by 70s-era generic food packaging. As such, one of the company’s goals is to take down walls between dancers and non-dancers—and between … Read more
Another collaboration from Kevin Kling and Michael Sommers, Old Four Eyes is partly a treatise on the engineering (or “taming”) of the Mississippi River, and partly an appreciation of John Banvard, the nineteenth-century panoramist who famously painted the river valley on huge canvases. Kling’s goofy script and a colorful spectacle of puppets, projections, and flamboyant … Read more
Through five previous Cork O’Connor novels, Krueger has put his beleaguered hero through the wringer and then some. As Copper River, the sixth installment in the popular series, gets under way, O’Connor is on the run from hired killers who have already deposited a slug in his leg. This after the poor bastard spent much … Read more