by Ann Klefstad   April 14, 2004 Four artists from Minnesota are currently represented in the Whitney Biennial, arguably the most important show in the country for artists arriving on the world stage. What follows is a series of brief quotes from the Whitney catalogue essays on these artists. (See the link below to see the show on line and to access the full versions of these essays.) More coverage of…

by Ann Klefstad   April 14, 2004 This is one of an occasional series of essays on issues in the arts by the features editor of mnartists.org. We locked the keys in the car outside a Chinese restaurant. On a long drive with our son, we�d gotten a longing for potstickers, little pork and scallion dumplings fried crisp on the bottom. We stopped, and in our haste, locked the keys in the car. We peer back in…

by Jaime Kleiman   April 9, 2004 As Fringe Festivals all around the globe draw nearer and nearer to opening this summer, harried producers, directors, actors, writers, designers, and all those in between are scrambling to get funding, finish their scripts, cast actors who will work for pizza, and produce professional-looking publicity press kits with little more than $20 and a digital camera. Did I mention…

by Lightsey Darst   April 1, 2004 As part of our coverage of young people in the arts, Lightsey Darst writes about a group of young dancers—Springboard—and their show at the Southern—”Mianiatures”— in March. �I want to dance.� There are fourteen dancers in the Springboard Dance program at Ballet Arts Minnesota, thirteen young women and one young man. They range in age from sixteen to twenty-two, with…

by Dean J. Seal   March 23, 2004 The Twin Towns have some small companies that do what the Children�s Theater does. Stepping Stone in St. Paul and Stages in Hopkins have both carved out niches. But there’s a shining example in central Minneapolis that’s ambitious and successful. Founded in 1989, Youth Performance Company is committed to serving young artists, young audiences, and the community at large…

by Dean J. Seal   March 23, 2004 In a trend that seems to be growing nationwide, Youth Performance Company (YPC) has made an alliance to rent out space from a church. YPC has moved its administrative, classroom and rehearsal activities to what was the education wing of Salem English Lutheran Church, on 28th St. and Lyndale Ave. South in Minneapolis. Their University Avenue space was sold, and they spent…

by Jaime Kleiman   March 10, 2004 Brian Sostek can�t sleep. It�s his second day back in Minneapolis after a four-month tour that danced its way across North America, with side trips to Seattle, Ottawa, London, and Edinburgh, to name a few. The show, of course, is �Trick Boxing,� the two-person, multi-character gangster/swing romp that has been a smash hit since its first incarnation at the Minnesota Fringe…

by Chris Godsey   March 10, 2004 Standing in the black maw of a long-dead jail cell, Karin Kraemer shuddered. Her guest on a tour of the old building�ages ago it was the Superior Board of Trade and City Hall—did the same. Any unheated space is bound to be cold in January; these chills (more like hebeejebees) came when she opened the cell�s 100-year-old iron door: it groaned, revealing a cavern of human…

by Ann Klefstad   February 28, 2004 The Twin Cities Artist Front could have as its motto William Carlos Williams’s line “No ideas but in things.” As artists, they seem to instinctively know that ideas are changed by passing through materials. Their actions and constructions happen on the sites of ideas but aren’t illustrations of them. Because ideas are finally always about things, these actions are…