Category: So Little Time

For 35 years, the Tricia Brown Dance Company has been pushing the boundaries of contemporary dance, offering bold and exciting work and choreography. This month, they bring three such works to the Twin Cities: Present Tense, Foray Forêt, and I love my robots. The first and last are newer pieces. Present Tense is set to the avant-garde music of John Cage (who worked extensively with Merce Cunningham before passing away in the early ’90s). And I love my robots is one of Brown’s latest, set to the music of another great experimental musician (and performance artist), Laurie Anderson. Foray Forêt, on the other hand, is an older piece — now one of the company’s signature works — actually commissioned by the Walker back in 1991. It’ll be good to have it back in Minnesota.

Off-Leash Area brings us yet another inventive physical-theater production — this time told through the voices of the Sonoran Desert. Two-time Ivey Award honorees Jennifer Ilse and Paul Herwig team up to direct Border Crossing, written by Jerome Fellow and Anishinaabe playwright Marcie Rendon, with an original score by Ben Siems. Rendon’s story follows a young girl as she traces her immigrant parents’ footsteps across the Arizona/Mexico border, crossing the Sonoran Desert along the way. True to Off-Leash Area’s visual style, the production fuses dance, ritual, and puppetry to illustrate the much-traveled journey to a better life. With a cast of 17, portraying the desert air, creatures, and migrants, Border Crossing brings to light the complexity of the current political debate.

It’s April. Is your favorite Major League Baseball team already out of contention for the Pennant? Relax. Peter Schilling’s novel The End of Baseball may be entertainment for those fanatics with a long summer ahead.

The End of Baseball covers the complete season of the 1944 Philadelphia Athletics in the race for the pennant. But Schilling’s novel is much more important than following a baseball race; it’s about equality for the human race. The story’s exposition follows the eccentric Bill Veeck as he purchases the worst franchise in the Majors and tries to make contenders out of them. Veeck’s plan to accomplish this lies in replacing his Caucasian players with some of the greatest Negro League players — this, of course, in the segregated professional baseball era.

If you’re interested in following a maverick owner and a team for the ages, The End of Baseball may score a base hit, but it’s the way Schilling treats humility in this story that scores a grand slam.

Being
a mother may not be the easiest of jobs, but being the most influential person in most women’s lives
has its rewards. In Kathryn Kysar’s journal Riding Shotgun: Women Write about Their Mothers, various authors, teachers, scholars, and mothers tell the
heartwarming and powerful stories about the mothers who have loved and
raised them. A true Midwesterner, Kathryn Kysar has won numerous
awards for her poetry and received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Minnesota State Arts Board.
Kysar, along with several other writers in the collection, will be doing a
selection of readings from Riding Shotgun: Women Write About Their
Mothers in various locations throughout the Twin Cities in celebration of Mother’s Day.

7 p.m., Minneapolis Central Library, 612-630-6174.

After four years, Brenda Weiler
is finally at it again with her new album End The Rain. Weiler’s sultry
voice and melodious guitar work come together in this collection to form songs that sing
right to the heart — perhaps a result of the recent loss of her sister. During the last four years, Weiler has focused on healing, using her writing
and music as therapy. When she finally got into the studio, she turned out her album in one week, and it’s
no surprise she’s recieving rave reviews. Joining her for her 400 Bar show this month are David Huckfelt (the Pines) and Michael Rossetto (S/Mother Banjo).

Friday April 18th, 2008, 9pm 400 Bar, 400 Cedar Avenue, Minneapolis, 612-332-2903

Kimya Dawson is just the cheer
we need for these economic doldrums. The tattooed fairy godmother visits
the Cedar Cultural Center on April 16, riding high on the indie box office
smashery of Juno and the soundtrack that serves as a collection
of her hits. Dawson performs folk stripped down to its bare essence.
Her soft-spoken brilliance touches on the subjects real life: finding
and losing love, war, shysters, size 13 basketball shoes, and how "All
girls feel too big sometimes regardless of their size." She found
fame with alt folk favorites The Moldy Peaches, and her solo career
continues to soar. Scratchy voice and afro included.

7:30 p.m., The Cedar, 416 Cedar Ave. S., Minneapolis; 612-388-2674; $12; SOLD OUT.

Listening to Feel Good Ghosts
is a visceral event with images flooding from vocalist Craig Minowa’s
decadent lyrics. Take this snippet from "When Water Comes To Life":
"And underneath your ribs/ they’ll find a heart-shaped locket/ an
old photograph of you in daddy’s arms/ then they’ll sew you closed."
In one moment it sounds painfully fragile, as if being fastened together
by a teary-eyed romantic. The next moment its musical bravado blossoms
around their insecurities. Cloud Cult is a mix between indie-tastic
emotional crooners like Bright Eyes and The Shins and a genre of its
own creation. The band fuses elegant strings with crunchy guitars all
while speckling cheerful ba-da-das in the background of Minowa’s warbly
tenor. Feel Good Ghosts is a sonic wonderland that folds out into
a third dimension as Cloud Cult incorporates two visual artists into
its live shows. Catch its multi-media extravaganza at the band’s CD
release party April 8 at the Electric Fetus or at First Avenue April
26.

After the wretched transformation of Beowulf to film, the time is ripe for a modern-day monster tale we can all read and imagine (rather than ruin with trite images). And try as I might to disassociate Toby Barlow’s debut novel from this timeless classic, Beowulf keeps coming to mind. Clearly, the title, Sharp Teeth, could have something to do with this. As could the subject matter: werewolves in Los Angeles. But beyond that, Sharp Teeth is written entirely in blank verse — an odd choice perhaps, but Barlow masters it so effortlessly that we hardly notice, except to feel its commanding flow hastening us forward through the multiple plotlines. Granted, Sharp Teeth offers no mead, but if you’ve read John Gardner’s Grendel — a rather nihilist monster-POV rendition of Beowulf — you’ll recognize the strangely non-heroic approach to an epic tale. As in Grendel, Barlow’s tale has no true heroes. There is no clear sense of right and wrong; there is only the gray in between, and how you choose to navigate it.

7 p.m., BirchBark Books and Native Arts, 2115 West 21st St., Minneapolis; 612-374-4023.

While it’s all too possible you may not know Bo Ramsey’s name, you’re sure to have been touched by him somehow — whether as a musician or a producer of something wonderful you’ve heard. For whatever reason, Ramsey has drawn more attention from musicians than from the general public. Perhaps he’s simply not a limelight man, a fact confirmed by his many performances in the dingy, din-filled corners of The Deadwood, in Iowa City during the ’90s. But despite his understated fame, Ramsey has played a tremendous role in shaping the midwest blues-rock scene. He’s one of the original Iowa City blues-rock boys, along with Greg Brown, David Zollo, David Moore. In fact, Ramsey’s guitar work can be heard on their albums, many of which he has even produced. But Ramsey’s biggest call to the spotlight probably came from Lucinda Williams, who contacted him immediately after hearing Down To Bastrop in the early ’90s. So impressed was Williams with his inimitable guitar work that she invited him to play on her Grammy-winning Car Wheels On A Gravel Road, after which he joined her on tour — twice, as he went on to produce and play on her follow-up album, Essence. With his new CD, Fragile, due for release on April 8th, Ramsey is on a solo tour this time, and gracing us with his music.

8 p.m., The Cedar, 416 Cedar Ave. S., Minneapolis; 612-388-2674; $18.