The Rake Magazine

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  • The Renegade

    Billy X. Curmano, performance artist and provocateur, doesn’t care much for the conventional wisdom that says artists must live in a large city. He may have grown up in Milwaukee and spent time in the East Village and other urban centers of art, but ultimately he decided to make his base of operations a picturesque corner of rural southeastern Minnesota. From there, he plans extravagant performance pieces and publishes wry, pun-filled newsletters, all of which dare the audience to face a fundamental question: “What the hell is art, anyway?”

    Curmano’s work also challenges the idea that grand adventure is the exclusive right of those who can afford it. Billionaires might be traveling around the world in balloons and paying to get towed up Mount Everest, but they’ve got nothing on Billy Curmano. He decided it’d be an eye-opening performance project to swim the Mississippi River from Lake Itasca to New Orleans, an undertaking he accomplished over eleven summers, landing in the Big Easy on “Billy X. Curmano Day,” 1997, thus culminating Swimmin’ the River, his best-known and most grandly scaled performance.

    “I like the idea of getting out to different audiences and doing work that intrigues them, whether they understand it as art or not. I like tweaking them,” Curmano says on the phone. When we talk, he’s in the midst of a massive move from his studio space in Rushford, which suffered extensive damage during the Winona-area floods last summer. “I think about it the way I think about homosexuality—if someone’s secure in their sexuality, they aren’t homophobic. I feel secure enough about my work that I like to get a response from the audience, but if it’s not the right response, I don’t mind. If you’re doing work just to please other people, you’re not getting at the root of your soul as an artist.”

    An overview of Curmano’s career indicates that, for all of his wide-ranging work, he has indeed stayed true to his roots. The twin poles of his work have always been to raise perceptions and have a little fun. These aims are evident from his early anti-Vietnam war installations at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, where he trained as a sculptor; his forty-day “performance fast” in the Mojave during the Y2K freak-out; and his Buried Alive project, in which he spent three days entombed near Winona in an effort to bring art to the dead. For that matter, his Swimmin’ the River project managed to make an environmentalist statement, an individualist argument, and a decade of entertaining summers all at once.

    “The Coast Guard came after me just past St. Louis,” he recalls, thinking about one of the most intense days of the swim. “It was a really tough run through a major shipping center, about one-hundred miles with coastline and barges. I yelled at them, ‘I’m okay, fellas, thanks for checking.’ Through the megaphones, they yelled back, ‘It doesn’t work like that.’”

    Despite losing his studio to the floods, the move has provided Curmano with new opportunities (including the offer of a dehumidifier from FEMA). His new space is a complex that includes a personal studio; a home for his New X Art Ensemble, which features a rotating cast of musicians; and performance and gallery space that can serve as an alternative to destinations in the Cities. The Ensemble performs frequently both at home and in the Twin Cities, and Curmano is also working on other projects like an annual “Anti-Shakespeare Festival” to run in conjunction with Winona’s Shakespeare Festival; the first, two years ago, ended with Curmano having to canoe around an island looking for campers that had spent the night. And he continues to shoot videos, craft sculptures, and design sets for his performance work. Overall, his tendency to mix the ephemeral with the lasting allows him to shift freely between performance and visual art. For a guy dedicated to flouting art-world “rules,” Curmano is serious about his dedication to leaving something of himself behind through his work. “As I began working … the term ‘traditional artist’ doesn’t really apply, but I made objects,” Curmano recalls. “The sculpture department at my college didn’t take real kindly to performance art. It wasn’t heavy enough. But one professor I had, he once told me, ‘Billy, we were always proud of you, because you didn’t lose sight of the object.’ And I haven’t.”

    A portrait of the artist on the last day of a forty-day performance fast in the Mojave desert

     

     


    Two pieces related to Curmano’s magnum opus, Swimmin’ the River: Aqua/Terra, from 1993 (bottom); and from 1994, Still Swimmin’, a lithograph with a vial of water from Lake Itasca (top)

  • Zoom In: Usry Alleyne

    As we talk in his loft above the Midtown Global Exchange in South Minneapolis, Usry Alleyne mentions that he was caught a bit off-guard by mnartists.org’s request for an interview. That’s likely because he is better known as a teacher or a photographer of arts events than as an artist. “Most of the time, I document other people’s work—tons of dance and theater performances around town, little documentaries for theaters and all kinds of things,” he says. “Sometimes people are surprised when you say you do your own stuff, too.” His work spans a variety of media—video art, sound art, photography—and it is unconcerned with the audience. “As an artist, I work for myself. Left alone, I go around observing, creating, reflecting, making, and [doing] very little talking.”

    A short survey of Alleyne’s work makes his preference for graphic simplicity clear. Not Signs of Culture, a series exploring death, consists of lovely, vibrant photos of the disgusting. Some subjects are more readily identifiable than others, but none is an abstraction. A dead rat. Maybe some kind of food. Maybe a wound. Regarding pain and ugliness, he says, “We try to ignore it, to put it aside and pursue our lives. But I can’t. There’s a need to acknowledge that it happens.” If he could, Alleyne would “give the audience the experience of the process, along with the work that they see. When I’m painting, making video, listening to sound—there’s this process that happens that’s extremely wonderful, even if it’s looking at something disgusting.”

     

     

    Originally published in issue 22.1 of access+ENGAGE. Subscribe to this free arts e-magazine at mnartists.org/accessengage.

  • Theater in Motion

    In accordance with standards for staging cosmic spectacles, (however low-budget), the cast of A Gift for Planet BX63 (above photo) appeared in glittering, metallic costume. But Off-Leash Area, an inventive, burgeoning troupe based in Minneapolis, had injected its intergalactic show—think The Little Prince—with another, rather unexpected feature: zero gravity. Rendered as a six-foot cube, simply constructed from plywood, mirrors, and Plexiglas, this tiny onstage world was a place in which the performer, Jennifer Ilse, could wall-dance. By balancing on her hands and kicking off the cube’s various surfaces—even its ceiling—Ilse created the illusion of floating in space.

    Her performance mixed dance, mime, and traditional text-based theater, not to mention gymnastics and contortionism. In all, it was an extraordinary demonstration of “movement theater,” a performance genre increasingly popular in the Twin Cities. It is, in essence, an approach that requires a heightened use of gesture and body language, as well as an awareness of the spatial relationships among the actors, the audience, and the performance space. In simple terms, it’s theater that has been choreographed. And as a matter of fact, there’s a permeable boundary between “movement theater” (or “physical theater,” as it’s often called) and “dance theater.” Both communicate with motion more than words. The difference between them lies in the varying measure of each ingredient.

    When it comes to distinguishing theater from other entertainments, especially film, immediacy and common experience are, perhaps, its supreme virtues. Theater is unique in the way it unfolds in real time at a common point shared between artists and audience, thus imbuing the live performances with a sense of connectedness that film and literature simply cannot possess. But there’s another distinction less often discussed: A theater audience observes the action through a window more sweeping and panoramic in scope than that offered by film.

    Exposure to cinema has caused many theatergoers, including this one, to tire of dialogue-heavy theatrical realism. Filmmakers have the luxury of using close-up shots when they wish to emulate the intimacy of real life, person-to-person conversation. In a playhouse (or for that matter, an ancient amphitheater) it’s difficult for the audience to see the teardrop streaking an actor’s cheek—that tear is simply too remote. Theater must provide something altogether different. Since the scale is so much larger, a performer’s broad, gestural movements will register far better than, say, the nuance of his facial expressions, especially in larger venues. The performer better communicates with thrashes and wails—and, come to think of it, the Greek chorus often functioned in this style, too.

    Theatre de la Jeune Lune’s Tartuffe

     

    In short, with movement theater, character is rendered physically, not emotionally. Locally, well-known examples include Steven Epp’s portrayal of Tartuffe in Theatre de la Jeune Lune’s now-classic production of Molière’s play: Epp crouched in the shadows as would a predator, before leaping forth to center stage. He didn’t walk so much as slither. On the other hand, in Or The White Whale, last spring’s adaptation of Moby Dick, director Jon Ferguson called for a lack of movement—stillness in an otherwise kinetic universe—to illustrate the alienation of Ishmael. In both instances, actors and directors worked to distill from complex characters their most basic, core elements. But, in translating those elements into evocative physical presences onstage, they offered more powerful understandings of these characters.

    What’s more, movement theater tends not to be burdened by the formalities some folks perceive in much of the performing arts. Chalk it up to the pervasive influence of clowning and circus arts, but movement theater practitioners, to their credit, do not shy away from silliness, even if their subject matter is solemn, be it war (Please Don’t Blow Up Mr. Boban, Live Action Set, 2005), the great American novel (Or The White Whale), or feigned piety (Tartuffe). That may be, in part, because the practice of such intense, often athletic physicality requires of the actors a certain youthful vigor. The resulting aesthetic is light and playful; it has a hand-made quality; it’s full of action, and a pleasure to behold.

    Live Action Set’s Please Don’t Blow Up Mr. Boban

    Many of the Twin Cities’ current crop of movement theater practitioners are linked, in some way, to Theatre de la Jeune Lune. It was this company that, in 1979, imported a European style of theatrical clowning to our city. These were the very methods that the founding artistic directors—Barbra Berlovitz, Vincent Gracieux, Robert Rosen, and Dominique Serrand—learned from their Parisian teacher, the legendary Jacques Lecoq. (The most famous graduates of the École internationale de théâtre Jacques Lecoq are the founders of the enormously popular Cirque du Soleil.) The curriculum includes work in miming, masks, improvisation, studying the dynamics between performer and stage, and something called “finding your inner clown.”

    Lecoq’s teaching also emphasized a collaborative approach to creating new theatrical works, a tradition still deeply rooted in the movement theater community. This is, perhaps, the most important factor in the recent explosion of the form. From the very start, a student or apprentice of movement theater functions as an integral part of his or her ensemble. At the time of graduation, the student has already helped write, choreograph, and perform several original works. In other words, this newly minted performer is no stranger to the entire artistic process, and is therefore better prepared to strike out on his own, and, along the way, to pass these traditions along to other collaborators.

    In 1985, Theatre de la Jeune Lune settled permanently in Minneapolis. As the company grew, so, too, did an inner circle of artists who studied and subscribed to this form of theater. Local clown Luverne Seifert was a company member between 1994 and ’99. (These days, Seifert regularly appears with Ten Thousand Things and Frank Theaters.) Joel Sass, the Jungle Theater’s associate artistic director, was a Jeune Lune company member during the early ’90s. Puppeteer Michael Sommers (who founded Open Eye Figure Theatre in 2000) has been a frequent collaborator. Emerging performers like
    Lisa Rafaela Clair (who studied clowning with the esteemed Pierre Byland at the Burlesk Center in Switzerland) and Katie Kauffman (a graduate of the California-based Dell’Arte International School of Physical Theatre) came to Minneapolis to study and intern with Jeune Lune. Capping off this by no means exhaustive list is freelance director Jon Ferguson—in my opinion, the most exciting movement theater artist in town. And he has said he was drawn to Minneapolis, at least in part, because of the mood set by Jeune Lune. (Full disclosure: I worked for several years at Jeune Lune in an administrative capacity.)

    Over the years, other movement theater companies have sprung up. Outstanding midsized companies like Ten Thousand Things and Frank Theaters frequently incorporate movement theater. Bedlam Theatre, founded in 1993, practices its own homegrown approach to creating playful, collaboratively created spectacles, relying heavily on the tenets of movement theater. Paul Herwig, who is the co-artistic director of the nine-year-old Off-Leash Area, is also a graduate of Lecoq’s school; his wife and co-director, the aforementioned Jennifer Ilse, is a veteran of ballet and contemporary dance. Like Off-Leash, the delightful Live Action Set, founded in 2003, is peopled by both dancers and movement theater artists. And with any luck, a tiny troupe called 3 Sticks will soon rise to prominence as well. Founded in 2005 by students from the London International School of Performing Arts (a two-year program based on the teachings of Lecoq), 3 Sticks already has two outstanding Minnesota Fringe shows to its credit (2005’s Mythed and 2006’s Borderlines). Artistic director Jason Bohon recently announced a slate of upcoming shows; look for their take on Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds later this year. And, of course, as these artists continue to practice their craft, thereby hooking a new generation of performers, the list of must-see movement theater will continue to grow.

  • Claude Wampler: What Just Happened?

    There’s some interesting discussion over at the Walker blogs concerning the
    performance career ender that was staged, just this past weekend, by
    Claude Wampler. I saw the show on Friday but, sadly, didn’t stick around for
    the Q&A, which sounds to have been very tense. Truth be told, my date was
    so angry as to be agitated; after the show, he wanted a drink in his hands, stat!
    So did I, of course, except I found myself more amused by the thing … But I’d been lucky
    enough to notice, as we waited for the house to open, that there were likely "plants"
    among the audience members. How and why? Because there were too many folks with
    asymmetrical haircuts, and too many wearing shiny fabrics–that’s why. The "real"
    audience members were swathed in wool and down parkas. (It was freakin’ cold
    outside.)

    According to some of the folks posting at the Walker
    blogs, Wampler made a [condescending?] statement at the Q&A regarding the
    difference between NYC and Minneapolis
    audiences. Well, we’re quieter, for one. But we probably don’t dress as
    often in metallics, either. By show’s end, some of the plants were up and
    dancing in the aisles. Others were tossing light-up toys onstage. My suspicions
    were confirmed.

    In case you missed it, Wampler basically staged a band
    practice. From beginning to end, the frontman had to communicate his vision for a
    song to his bandmates. But a visual trick was employed: images of the trio were projected onstage. The lead singer’s image fell onto a screen, so his remained crisp. But in the cases of the keyboardist
    and drummer, smoke was occasionally pumped into the vicinities of their
    instruments–and so, their ghost-like images would materialize, every now and
    again, on the canvas of that haze.

    But, going back to my original point: the real story is that the audience was "seeded," or full of planted performers. These folks
    hooted and, in some cases, heckled and behaved all-around badly, which inspired
    imitative behaviors from others. For example, when the lead-singer character
    made a funny comment about how the band must "finesse" its way out of his song (presumably by playing fancily),
    my date shouted (seemingly with glee): "Sure do!"

    And that, friends, made the whole thing worth it–the fact
    that my well-behaved friend felt compelled to act in such a dramatic way, and the
    fact that he felt SAFE enough to do so. In other words, Wampler tinkered with
    the audience/performer dynamic to great success. Sure, her show was repetitive,
    perhaps even boring (although I must admit to being amused by the rock-n-roll clichés). But I appreciated being jolted out of my expectations
    and, for once, at a theater, having absolutely no fucking idea what was going
    on. Sweet chaos. As I exited the theater that night, I turned to an usher
    and asked (also with glee): "What just happened?" Then I went to the bar with my friend and
    enjoyed one of the most spirited conversations I’ve had about art in a long, long while.

     

  • The Royal Robes (A Retake)

     

    The above outfit is worn by the title character in the
    just-opened play, God Save Gertrude, a punk rock-meets-theater riff that was
    penned by a local ‘wright and is, in fact, loosely inspired by Hamlet’s mother (cuz
    Ophelia is played out, donchyaknow). I suspect the character, a singer, has
    something in common with Patti Smith, too, although that’s just an educated
    guess based off the press release. I haven’t yet seen the play, but plan to
    next weekend.

     

    In any case, Laura Fulk, a local fashion designer with, what
    I would call, an avant-and/or-punk rock aesthetic, designed the getup. Now, because
    we have this so-called thriving theater scene, the Twin Cities are full of great
    professional costume designers. (For example: Sonya Berlovitz, whom I used to
    know at Theatre de la Jeune Lune, is just scary brilliant.) But I, for one,
    appreciate that, in this instance, the playwright, Deborah Stein, reached out
    to a fashion designer. I like to see artists venturing from their silos. And
    this play–a fashion meets theater meets punk rock mash-up–seems to spread across many forms.

  • Dinner and a Show? – Valentines Dining

    Do you have any favorites places that offer live
    entertainment — preferably cheap or free — along with food? I am starting to compile a list, and so far I have:

    Bluegrass and old-time music at Dulono’s Pizza
    Occasional concerts at Kramarczuk’s (like the Tamburitze
    Orchestra)

    Karaoke at Pancho Villa

    Jazz and more, weekends at Café Maude

    Rhonda Laurie and her trio, Wednesdays at Cave Vin

    Friday night jazz at Crave in Edina

    Speaking of cheap dates, the Valentine’s Day, here are a
    couple of options that won’t break the bank:

    From Valentine’s Day through Sunday, February 17, Joe’s Garage is offering "Valentine for the common
    man (and woman)" : platters for two that range from wild rice meatloaf or
    buttermilk fried chicken with mashed potatoes and gravy (both $20) to walleye
    or barbecued ribs for $25, or a grilled beef sirloin with sundried tomato
    butter, sauteed mushrooms and fries for $30. And you can add a bottle of Red
    Truck Red or White Truck White for $15.

    Bryant Lake Bowl, famous for its
    Monday night Cheap Date Night dinners for two that includes two entrees, a bottle of wine or
    a couple of beers, and a game of bowling for $28, is going (slightly) upscale for
    Valentines Day with a Not so Cheap Date Night: they are adding soup or salad, and raising the price to $38. And if you want to make it a really memorable evening, you can enjoy your dinner in the adjacent BLB theater, where Joseph Scrimshaw will be performing an all-new version of his interactive romantic comedy, Adventures in Mating. Shows are at 7 and 10 p.m., and the doors open an hour earlier – tickets are $12, or $10 with a Fringe Festival button.

     

  • The Three Pointer: A "W" With Character

    Copyright 2008 NBAE (Photo by David Sherman/NBAE via Getty Images)

    Game #43, Home Game #20: New Jersey 95, Minnesota 98

    Season record: 8-35

    1. Carried By Jefferson

    For three quarters tonight, the Timberwolves were more of a one-man team than in any competitive game they have played this season. Al Jefferson had 33 points, more than half of the Wolves’ team total of 64. Rashad McCants was the only other Timberwolf in double figures, with 13, Jefferson had 13 rebounds, nearly half the team’s 27, with Ryan Gomes second with 4. Jefferson had gone to the free throw line a dozen times, making 9. No one else on the team had visited the charity stripe.

    Yet heading into that fourth quarter, Minnesota was down by double-digits, 74-64. Jefferson was obviously dominant; just as obviously, productive complements were hard to come by.

    In that final, game-changing period, however, the Wolves’ reared up and outscored New Jersey 34-21 to steal this game. What’s more, the theft was legit–this was the fifth straight quality game for Randy Wittman’s ballclub, and the Nets came into the Target Center already having lost eight in a row. Minnesota claimed this W the "right" way: With grit and ingenuity, and confidence, the ingredients of character and resilience. A new dynamic took hold: Jefferson scored only 7 of those 34 points, and made only 1 of the 8 field goals of that period. After scoring 31 points in the game’s first 36 minutes, the non-Jeffersons racked up 27 in the final 12.

    We’ll get to those vital contributions in a moment. This first point appropriately belongs to Jefferson. Five times tonight Big Al muscled the ball through the hoop while being fouled in the paint. Every single time he nailed the free throw to complete the three-point play. Only four of his 13 baskets were jumpers; two were tip-ins and 7 were lay-ups. A whopping 19 of his career high (and Wolves’ season high) 40 points were a direct result of his 8 offensive rebounds. In other words, on his on, Jefferson registered five treys and 19 second-chance points.

    True to form, he started badly on defense. His failure to box out led to an easy Richard Jefferson putback, then good-looking rookie Sean Williams slammed home a pair of dunks in which Big Al was a step slow. Teammate Rashad McCants picked up his second foul and went to the bench just 2:37 into the game covering up what appeared to be another blown Jefferson assignment.

    But even here, Jefferson’s game showed steady improvement. It helped that Williams, while incredibly talented, is still raw; that Josh Boone boasts the skills of a certified journeyman; and that Jason Collins doesn’t look to shoot. Nevertheless, Jefferson became increasingly active as the game went along, both is bodying up his man down low, rotating over in the paint, and deterring penetration (his pick and roll defense is still suspect). Throw in a couple of blocks, a steal and three big assists, and you’ve got an all-star caliber performance. They haven’t been as frequent as Wolves’ boosters claim, which is all the more reason to celebrate the ones that do occur.

    2. Anatomy Of A Comeback

    One of the key turning points in this game actually occurred just four minutes into the second half. Tired of watching McCants get roasted by New Jersey’s Richard Jefferson, Wittman used the occasion of Marko Jaric’s fourth foul to go with a larger lineup, subbing in Craig Smith for Jaric, a move that slid Ryan Gomes down to small forward to guard Jefferson and McCants down to shooting guard to cover Vince Carter. At the time, Richard Jefferson had 27 points in 18 minutes of action, including 10-14 FG. He scored just a single point (0-3FG, 1-2FT) the rest of the third quarter. Gomes’s entire third quarter line looks like this: one foul in 10:28. And yet he was plus +4, devoting himself to shutting down New Jersey’s biggest threat. The ability of the Wolves to negate one Jefferson while the Nets couldn’t negate another Jefferson played a centra role in this comeback.

    Meanwhile, freed of getting schooled by Jefferson and with Vince Carter now guarding him, McCants immediately erupted for 7 points in the first 1:27 after Wittman changed the lineup. The Wolves hacked a double-digit deficit down to 2 with 4:30 left to go in the third before Jason Kidd temporarily filled the void left by Richard Jefferson being shut down, nailing three treys in the next 2:44 (nearly the entire amount of his 11 point game) to boost the lead back to ten heading into the final quarter.

    No matter: The tone had been set. Jefferson went 1-8 FG for the game after Wittman went big. And on offense, the kamikaze 34 point final period was sparked by a pair of differently-styled swingmen, Corey Brewer and Gerald Green. I have ripped on the latter more than a little, but with the possible exception of the Indiana game, this is the best he’s looked in terms of his all-around contribution to a victory thus far this year. You expect two treys every now and then from the offensively volatile GG. The bonus here was a pair of steals from someone who has been a perpetually befuddled defender, not to mention some tenacious on-ball coverage of both Jefferson and Carter. Wittman often goes to a zone to protect against Green’s lapses on D. But when Gomes came in for GG with 5:04 to play, Green’s performance at both ends of the court had helped whittle a 13-point deficit down to 6 in less than six minutes’ time.

    Brewer likewise had something to do with that surge, while delivering his second impressive game in a row–especially in the 4th quarter. The comparison to last year’s top draft pick–"4th quarter Foye"–is apt in that, even in light of his disastrous 5-second out of bounds violation against Boston, Brewer is not rattled by crunchtime pressure. On the contrary: Like Foye, playing in a tight game down the homestretch seems to trigger confident memories of his successful college program, and his leadership role in it. Playing against a squad renowned for a lightning-quick trio now past their primes–Jefferson-Kidd-Carter–Brewer simply outhustled everyone on the floor; snatching offensive rebounds and twice flying down the court in transition fast enough that New Jersey had no choice but to foul him. On a night when Vince Carter frequently burned him on high pick-and-roll jumpers, it was Brewer’s offense that redeemed him, specifically three offensive rebounds and 6-6 FT that gave him a team-high 8 points in the final period. He also led the way in terms of raw passion, thrusting his fist out in triumph after getting fouled or when rugged scrums he helped initiate enabled the Wolves to secure another possession on the ball going out of bounds.

    Yet despite the heroics of Green and Brewer, the Wolves were still down 7 with 1:19 to play. *This* is where the character showed, where a callow team finally gelling after nearly three solid months of embarrassing ineptitude snatched the game from a group of desultory vets who weren’t very determined to halt their long losing streak.

    McCants hit his 4th trey of the game from the left side of the arc, making it 95-91 with 1:15 to go. Then something remarkable happened: Jason Kidd made a stupid decision. After Richard Jefferson had cooled off, the Nets’ bread-and-butter offense in the second half had been the high pick and roll with Kidd, dishing to Carter who would work the play with a big man. Needing just another bucket to likely seal the win, the Nets logically looked to be setting up the same play as Kidd dribbled to his right. But suddenly Kidd reversed field away from the pick and roll confluence and zipped a pass beneath the hoop to the relatively open center Jason Collins. But Collins wasn’t so open that he couldn’t be fouled by Al Jefferson, which is exactly what happened. And coming into the game, Collins had converted just
    10 of 30 free throws–he was the Wolves’ equivalent of Mad Dog Madsen. Not too surprisingly, he bricked both free throws with 56 seconds left to play.

    On the ensuring play, Sebastian Telfair kept his cool, refused to pick up his dribble against pressure, and found an open Gomes standing in the corner. Gomes, who had shot a putrid 9-41 from outside the arc over his past 16 games, let it fly….swish. It was now 95-94 with 40 seconds to go. Vince Carter then clanks a too-long jumper on a stilted possession for New Jersey and the Wolves rebound with 21 seconds to go. Witt calls timeout and inserts McCants in for Brewer as part of the offensive-defensive platoon he’s running between the two as much as circumstances permit. Shaddy decides he’ll be the man, but his jumper is a tad long time–only to be corralled off the carom by Al Jefferson–remember him?–he gets fouled before he has a chance to go back up. In the classic crunchtime free throw situation–down 1, two shots, 11 seconds to play–Jefferson doesn’t flinch, sinking his 18th and 19th second chance points of the game to put the Wolves in the lead for the first time since the first 90 seconds of the game.

    Last gasp for New Jersey. Richard Jefferson gets position but his six-foot jumper on the baseline hits the front iron and doesn’t creep over. Al Jefferson grabs his 19th rebound of the game, the Nets foul and Al cinches it with two more free throws to register his first-ever 40 point game.

    3. Cause For Optimism

    Foye and Ratliff are on the mend. Brewer, Jefferson and Telfair are all playing with enormous confidence. After a home-and-home with the underachieving Bulls (I’ll do my next trey on both of them together on Thursday), the Wolves play nine of the next ten games at home.

  • Noir or Kora?

    First things first: Our February issue hits the stands today, so be sure to pick up a copy or stop by our website to check out our latest features. Learn about Dakota founder and co-owner Lowell Pickett. Discover the Truth Project. And read about fine-dining options that aren’t getting the buzz they deserve.

    Are you a Santana fan? Don’t miss his April 21st show at the Xcel Center. Tickets go on sale today at Ticketmaster.

    FILM
    Underworld U.S.A.

    It’s noir Monday at the Parkway! Today they’re serving up a dose of crime, violence, and revenge in the dark 1960s film Underworld U.S.A. In this film noir we meet fourteen-year-old Tolly Devlin, who sees four mobsters beat his father to death. As Tolly plans his revenge, the killers rise to the top of the crime syndicate. It’s a story of love and loss, cold hard revenge and humanity. The tough-as-nails actors make Underworld U.S.A. a thrilling watch. The Parkway is also the perfect, laid-back venue for this event. Enjoy a beer (seriously, you can), and enjoy the show. —Kate Leibfried

    7 p.m., Parkway Theater, 4814 Chicago Ave. S., Minneapolis;
    612-822-3030; $5.

    WINE & DINE
    Café Levain

    Wait! Before you add Noir Night to your planner, consider setting aside a little extra time to satisfy your hunger. Café Levain is right down the street and ready to serve up some tasty food to enjoy before a delectable night of film. Enjoy a wide selection of delicacies that are easier on the pocket book than the former (and much bigger) Restaurant Levain. All entrées are priced under $20, including a choice of side dish. Choose from items such as duck pâté, blue mussels, roast chicken, and potato gnocchi. There is even a small wine bar and a tantalizing dessert menu. To read more about this relatively new "restaurant-gone-café," check out our restaurant review from earlier this year. —Kate Leibfried

    Café Levain, 48th St. & Chicago Ave. S., Minneapolis; 612-823-7111.

    MUSIC
    Toumani Diabate & the Symmetric Orchestra

    He has been called the world’s finest kora player. He has gained international acclaim. He has performed all around the world. He’s here. Toumani Diabate will be playing at the Dakota tonight, and all this time you have probably been thinking, "What the hell is a kora?" Fear not. You are not alone in your ignorance. A kora is a popular instrument in Guinea, Senegal, The Gambia, and Mali (where Diabate hails from), but it is none too common in the good ol’ U.S. of A. It looks like an upright lute, but is made from a large calabash cut in half and covered with cow skin, and it usually has 21 strings. The sound of a kora resembles that of a harp, though when played in the traditional style, it bears a closer resemblance to flamenco guitar techniques. And here’s a little piece of trivia for you in case you are studying to appear on Jeopardy: A traditional kora player is called a Jali, similar to a bard or oral historian. Diabate blends traditional music from Mali with flamenco, blues, jazz, and other international styles to create a stunning sound that is backed up by the fabulous Symmetric Orchestra. If you’re jonesing for something unique or simply want to enjoy some stunning instrumentals, check out Diabate, the Dakota’s favorite Jali. —Kate Leibfried

    7 & 9:30 p.m., Dakota Jazz Club and Restaurant, 1010 Nicollet Ave., Minneapolis; 612-332-1010; $20 – $40.

  • Filling The Gaps at Il Vesco Vino

    My husband and I found ourselves over the weekend in that gap between wedding ceremony and reception and desperately in need of a drink.

    Now, I must admit, I’m a bit bewildered by the whole traditional formal wedding affair. It’s always seemed to me more show than celebration, a day seized by the "happy" couple to make other people a) focus attention on them b) follow their directions and c) WAIT. There’s the "everyone turn to look at the bride as she makes her way down the aisle" moment; the "you may not leave your pew until the newly married couple greets you" ritual; and then, of course, the "we must take several dozen photographs before leaving the church so you should hang out in the vestibule or on the street or in the empty reception hall waiting while we do so" tradition.

    Which is exactly why I got married barefoot on the deck of a boat with only my children in attendance and a preacher (Mitch Omer, from Ode to a Sycophant fame, in fact) who got his license from the back of Rolling Stone. . . .then threw a big party two months later with a lot of food and wine and absolutely no requirements of the guests but that they come and enjoy.

    But I digress.

    We’d just left the church on Saturday afternoon, where the brightest moment of the ceremony — for me, at least — was the minister’s recounting of the "love story" in Rocky. I’ve never seen Rocky, which sounds incredible, I know. But after his telling, I probably will. The anecdote had to do with the thug played by Sylvester Stallone falling in love with a plain woman who worked at a pet store then explaining to someone who questioned the romance "she’s got gaps, I got gaps, together we fill gaps," which was as fine a description of the strange magic of marriage as I’ve ever heard.

    So we were talking about this and dawdling along Dale Street in St. Paul, on our way to the reception near Cathedral Hill, when suddenly I remembered something wonderful: Il Vesco Vino was just around the corner!

    So we went.

    What a lovely interlude, a perfect place to fill the gap. Because first, this is a simple, warm, rectangular room lit with the sort of turnip-shaped fixtures you might imagine at an Italian carnival. But better even than this is Junior, one of the area’s best and most unusual sommeliers. This guy KNOWS HIS WINE. He was trained at D’Amico Cucina and he’s a friend of Bill’s (Summerville, that is). But he’s also, well. . . .just freakin’ cool, in a way that most wine experts — I’m sorry, guys — simply aren’t. The son of jazz saxophonist, Irv Williams, Junior has that low, blue, lazy, smooth-voiced style.

    It’s all an act, however, in that behind the laid-back facade is a man who keeps a sparkling bar and makes the best personalized wine recommendations in town.

    I, for instance, love an earthy, sweaty red. ("Dirt," my husband will sometimes say when he sniffs the wine in my glass. "Terroir," I will respond. Just one example of our gaps.) So Junior poured me the Azienda Agricola Morellino di Scansano, a hot muddy Sangiovese that’s full of plum and cherry with the strangest hint of banana underneath, also black roses, leather boots, and peat. Just the way I like my midafternoon, post-wedding wine.

    John drank a far lighter and generally more approachable Nero d’Avola — again, selected by Junior — which tasted of raspberry and black cherry and finished clean.

    And we sat, holding hands under the bar, until our wine was gone, at which point we said goodbye to Junior and reluctantly got up and headed to the clamorous wedding reception where there were too few tables for the guests and the only wine available was heavy and tannic and about as subtle as a brick to the head.

    Sometimes, I find, it is in filling the gaps that the best of life occurs.

  • The Three Pointer: Best Beats Worst By One

    Copyright 2008 NBAE (Photo by Brian Babineau/NBAE via Getty Images)

    Game #42, Road Game #23: Minnesota 86, Boston 87

    Season record: 7-35

    1. KG In A Nutshell

    During the twelve years Kevin Garnett spent with the Timberwolves, a debate steadily escalated over his true value and place in the annals of the all-time great NBA players. KG supporters could point to his unprecedented versatility, his unbelievable endurance, his unyielding work ethic, and his infectious competitive spirit. Critics carped that there was a level of greatness to which KG’s character and temperament could not ascend: The ability to put a team on his back and deliver the goods when it mattered most; the seizing of the onus that he would be The Man when a Man was required.

    Garnett boosters point to the longest consecutive streak of at least 20 points, 10 rebounds and 5 assists–7 years, nearly all of them buttressed by KG’s place on the league’s all-defensive team. His detractors would point to one measly year in which the Wolves made it past the first round of the playoffs, and three straight years in the prime of his career when his squad didn’t even make the postseason.

    Most Wolves fans are intimately familiar with the debate, which prompts eye-opening claims on both sides. Detractors like to say that Garnett is merely a great sidekick, that he needs a more dominant personality on the team in order to be truly effective, a Pippen to someone else’s Jordan. Strib writer Jim Souhan and KFAN jock Dan Barreiro have both voiced this view, with Souhan recently dubbing Garnett the "world’s greatest complementary player." By contrast, Celtics’ color commentator Cedric Cornbread Maxwell was the latest to big-up Garnett by naming him the second best player in Celtics history, behind only Bill Russell and ahead of Larry Bird, among others. Maxwell didn’t flinch from the predictable outcry, saying that KG’s huge edge on defense tipped the scales in his favor.

    As one who is closer to Maxwell’s view than Barreiro’s and Souhan’s–I have actually taken the Garnett position in KG vs. Bird debates, although I go back and forth on who I think is a better player–it was a sincere pleasure watching the greatest Timberwolf there likely will ever be in my lifetime going against the Timberwolves when it counts (meaning a non-exhibition game) for the first time in his career last night. And it was a curiously nostalgic feeling to be marveling in his myriad gifts on the court and then being compelled to remember again his "flaw of unselfishness" that is necessarily part and parcel of his many virtues.

    101 seconds into the game, when KG vanquished a triple-team near the corner baseline by feeding to his point guard Rajon Rondo for an easy layup, I realized how very little that has occurred on the Wolves this season, and how deeply ensconced such a play was in the DNA of any Wolves fan who watched the team in the KG era. Ditto when Garnett sealed off penetration with his interior rotation and his help with teammate Kendrick Perkins guarding Al Jefferson.

    But after going 4-4 FG and registering a game-best plus +7 to lead the Celts to a three point halftime lead, Garnett stubbornly continued to take only what the Wolves’ D gave him in the second half. Now that he’s surrounded with the highest caliber teammates of his 13 years in the league, KG is even more inclined to trust his teammates with the open look–something Wolves’ fans always admired and cursed during his stint in Minnesota. If four shots in 16:29 seems like injurious modesty for a 7-1 gazelle being guarded by Al Jefferson and/or Ryan Gomes, consider that Garnett deigned to offer up exactly one shot in 14:35 of second half action, with Antoine Walker as one of the prime defenders.

    Yes, the Wolves (obviously wisely) chose to constantly at least double and often triple team him. But how many bricks does Ray Allen have to toss before you realize it just isn’t his night? For all you folks who watched the game–how many times to KG dish out to the perimeter to an open Ray Allen; five? Six? Eight? Do you know how many times Garnett assisted on an Allen bucket? Zero. Allen going 1-9 FG in the first half should have been a clue. Then 1-4 FG in the third quarter. Then he got "hot" and went 2-5 FG in the final period. That’s 4-18, with five turnovers to boot.

    Meanwhile, after doing a marvelous job of breaking down the Wolves with dribble penetration in the first half–he was 1-5 FG but had 6 dimes and 4-4 FT in 20:06–Paul Pierce had a surprisingly difficult time with Corey Brewer’s length and quickness and the Wolves’ alternation of zone and deftly rotating man-to-man. Pierce clearly remained a thorn for the Wolves–he finished with 19 points, 9 boards and 8 assists–he Minnesota made him earn it, sending him to the line 10 times (he made them all) and forcing him into a 4-18 FG night with a half dozen turnovers.

    So, to recap: The smaller two of the Big Three for the Celts combined for 8-33 from the field with 11 turnovers. The current favorite to win the NBA MVP was 4-5 FG with 2 turnovers that weren’t his fault. The faithful in Boston are generally smart hoops observers, and probably appreciated how Garnett’s defense quieted Gomes in the first half (5 points and 2 rebouns for someone averaging 16 and 7 for the past few weeks) and helped quiet Jefferson in the second (6 points and 3 rebounds for the 20-12 Big Al; by contrast, Craig Smith had 4 points and a team-high 10 rebounds playing 13:22 of his 14:20 with KG on the bench). Even so, if you’re a diehard Celtic fan, you’re screaming for KG to get the ball and then do something with it in the direction of the hoop. You’re like Doc Rivers, who went bananas on Tony Allen after Allen chose to drive the lane and *then* dish to KG, resulting in a three-second call (the first of Garnett’s two turnovers) rather than immediately feeding an open KG on the low block. Allen, a third year pro currently averaging 6.0 ppg., had as many shots in the 4th quarter as Garnett took the entire game. The problem is that Doc had to speak for KG, who needed to pull a Keyshawn Johnson–as in "somebody get me the damn ball!"–long before then.

    But then it’s crunchtime and many of the attributes that make Garnett a player for the ages come to the fore. After staggering to the sidelines with an "abdominal strain" (replays seemed to indicate that Brewer inadvertantly punched him in the nuts trying to strip him on a drive to the hoop, creating a pain intense enough for Garnett to immediately drop the basketball, which was his second turnover), Garnett went to the dressing room for four minutes of play in the latter stages of the fourth quarter. His trainer advised him not to play again that night. But Garnett talked his way back into the lineup. Amazing ability to surmount all manner of injuries? Check. Which segues into the Celts’ last basket: KG sets the pick that frees Ray Allen for an open layup which Allen promptly blows, but the Wolves are so concerned with Allen-Pierce-KG that Perkins has an easy weakside putback. Faithfully doing the little things that don’t show up on the box score but help the team? Check. Which segues into the final play of the game. KG, the seven-footer, ranges out to the perimeter beyond the three point arc and uses what Flip Saunders calls his Inspector Gadget arms to steal the ball from Sebastian Telfair, diving on the floor with Telfair to push the ball ahead toward the other end of the court as the buzzer sounds, sealing Boston’s one-point win. Freakish athletic versatility and extra hustle in service of defense? Check.

    Which segues into something that is foreign territory for Wolves fans, even when KG was here. Team has a serious chance of contending for the NBA championship? Check.

    2. What About The Wolves?

    They played thei
    r fourth solid game in a row. After the Celtics burned them with a flurry of points in the paint early, they played good-to-great defense in the second half, perhaps their best defensive effort of the season. The bench was especially important here, with Brewer regaining that controlled intensity on defense that has been only sporadic in recent weeks (and don’t overlook the continued accuracy of his much-maligned jumper–he went 4-8 FG tonight), and Walker ball-hawking superbly as well as giving KG a variety of different looks, occasionally fronting him and at other times fighting him for postion. Yes, they concentrated on not letting Garnett, and then Pierce, beat them, and if Ray Allen could have hit the broad side of a barn, that strategy could have easily looked foolish, or soon abandoned. As it was, Perkins was free to cut in from the baseline most any time he chose, which is why he went 8-10 FG with a game-high 21 points. But that’s why the Celts own the NBA’s best record–they have a load of offensive weapons and are playing stout team defense.

    Most nights a game like Brewer’s would have qualified as the most pleasant surprise, but Top Kudo of this tilt has to be Bassy Telfair’s team-MVP performance. Not only did Telfair face up to Boston’s pressure defense–his counterpart Rondo is a superb defender–with six assists versus three turnovers, but he was the most confident Timberwolf on the floor during the 4th quarter, one of the rare occasions that can be said about a Minnesota point guard this year. Knowing him well from his stint here last year, Boston dared him to shoot and so Bassy did–7-14 FG, including 3-7 in a throat-squeezing final period–while playing the entire second half. Along with his team-high 18 points he chipped in 3 steals (Walker had 4, and the Wolves as a team filched a remarkable 13). But most significant was his demeanor. This was a player determined to live up to that cliche of the guy returning home to show his former team they had made a mistake giving up on him. Mission accomplished.

    Some final quick hits about the Wolves this night:

    Great to be reminded that Corey Brewer has a killer instinct. When the Wolves were making their run and forcing the Celts into 6 straight turnovers at one point, you could just see Brewer pouncing on the perceived vulnerability, upping his aggressiveness and looking to do something very proactive at both ends of the court, be it a steal, a daring assist, or a jumper with a flourish. He and Telfair were fearless, trying to dance on a grave in crunchtime. It augured well for the rook’s future.

    For the second straight game, Craig Smith had trouble getting his shot to drop but worked hard on the glass, pulling in ten rebounds. There is no place for Smith in the team’s starting lineup, nor should there be. But in the right situations he can be a valuable reserve on a good team.

    Got to hand it to Gerald Green, who, inserted into the game for the first time in nearly two weeks in the final seconds of the first period, went on one of his little mini-explosions in the second quarter, with 8 quick points. He also played what for him was very good defense (and what for others would be very inconsistent) and obviously seemed happy to be back on a court where he had plenty of opportunity to shine last season. I understand this is condescending, but I can’t help but liken Green being in the game to a child holding a gun with a robber in the house: His family knows somebody is going to get hurt and they just hope they buck the odds and it turns out to be the other guy.

    3. The Unpleasant Shilling of Hanny and Pete

    I have great respect for Wolves announcers Tom Hanneman and Jim Petersen, and when you get the NBA League Pass (it has been free all this week on cable, in an effort to sell the half-season remaining for $99) you hear commentators working games for other teams who usually aren’t up to their standard, particularly in analyzing the game and refraining from blatant homerism.

    But last night was a sorry exception for Hanny and Pete and made the game practically unlistenable. The first problem was when Petersen went out of his way to justify the KG deal as having been a shrewd trade. Now I endorsed the trade at the time it was made, and still think the deal was one Minnesota had to make, given all the financial and attitudinal circumstances involved. But methinks Pete doth protest too much about how Minnesota didn’t get screwed. To do that, he absolutely lionized Al Jefferson, who obviously was the key to the deal, along with the draft picks, for the Wolves. I like Al Jefferson, quite a bit in fact, all things being equal. But when Pete brings up only to downplay the Lakers’ offer of Andrew Bynum and Lamar Odom and others, in order to continue praising Jefferson by comparison, it begins to sound fishy. Raving about how Jefferson is such a great low-post scorer at the age of 22 (he forgets Jeff turned 23 on January 4), Pete conveniently omits that Bynum won’t turn 21 until October, averages more rebounds per 48 minutes than Big Al, is two inches taller than Big Al, is already a better defender than Big Al, is shooting 63.6% from the field and averaging more than 13 points per game in less than 29 minutes of action. And gave Jefferson fits in their head-to-head matchups this season.

    I’m not saying Bynum is better than Jefferson; only that it will be an intriguing thing to track as they both mature over the next five or six years. And, more to the point, the same *must* be said about the Garnett deal. Minnesota could very well look very smart round about 2010–or look like fools. As I say, relative to other superstar trades, I think McHale and Minnesota came out pretty well, at least on paper, compared to what, say, Philly got for Iverson.

    But let’s get a little perspective. Boston came into this game with the best record in the NBA–and undefeated against the generally tougher Western Conference (and yes, I know they haven’t played the West’s cream of the crop). Minnesota came into this game with the worst record in the NBA. This is *not* the time to be thumping your chest about how well the Wolves did in that transaction. Petersen can be prone to overselling the Wolves, but generally he stays on firmer ground than this.

    Having invested themselves in praising the blockbuster deal that had so many of the players on the court staring at the uniforms they so recently wore, Hanny and Pete began to root for the Wolves as nakedly as I can ever remember, and it really hurt the quality of their announcing. Petersen moaned about a no-call on Jefferson (hardly the first of the evening–the refs pretty much let them play) but didn’t bat an eye that there was no call on the play that sent KG to the sidelines and prompted a turnover just a few minutes before then. He openly wondered if the five-second call on Corey Brewer–a devastating crunchtime turnover–was a quick count by the ref until the replay demolished that little conspiracy theory.

    Meanwhile, Hanny offered up a series of whoppers. Two of my "favorites," in stiff competition, was first his claim in the 4th quarter that "Garnett has not been a big factor. Al Jefferson has been a big factor;" then, sailing into a commercial, the statement that if the Wolves were to prevail it would be "One of the biggest wins in franchise history." To state the obvious, KG was a big factor in the Celtics win–he already had one of those double-doubles Hanny used to rave about when Garnett played for the Wolves (he finished the game with 16 rebounds), and was a defensive force the entire night. And unless Al Jefferson went off for 82 points on 29-53 FG and 24-33 FT or something, any game that would "up" Minnesota’s record to 8-34 is not, in the grand scheme of things, memorable to any franchise–even the Timberwolves.

    I expect sanity will be restored during the next telecast.