DEFINING WHAT TYPE OF MUSIC ONE MIGHT HEAR on a Tuesday night at Art of This Gallery can be just as challenging as predicting what sort of art will be part of the next exhibition. When asked to describe the performances, Casey Deming (Squid Fist), the curator of the Tuesday Series, shies away from traditional labels. He explains that there is a language gap that exists when talking about this music…

Lightsey Darst’s essay on the distinctive character of Minnesota dance is part of a series of topical articles,”Feeling Minnesota,” jointly published by mnartists.org and Minnesota Playlist, a site with “information and inspiration for Minnesota’s performing arts”. IS THERE A “MINNESOTA STYLE” IN DANCE? Tough question. Why ask it in the first place — aside from the seasonal appropriateness or a little…

IT IS OF COURSE NO COINCIDENCE that the hunger for connection, and the fearful consequences of isolation and alienation, make for constant and enduring themes in art. They are the prevailing conditions and preoccupations of our very existence. We are social animals, after all, and the brief spans of our lives are spent searching for contact, then playing out the consequences. The German performance…

BASSIST AND COMPOSER ADAM LINZ is Jazz Coordinator at MacPhail Center for Music. He attended Park Center High School in Brooklyn Park, studied with Peter Olson at MacPhail, and earned his Bachelor of Music degree from William Paterson University in New Jersey. Linz co-leads the group Fat Kid Wednesdays with childhood friends Mike Lewis and JT Bates and plays with numerous groups and bands around…

Quinton Skinner’s musings on local theater visionaries’ “Minnesota way” of creating work — a shared sense of “dogged determination leavened with the necessity of community” — are part of a series of topical articles,”Feeling Minnesota,” jointly published by mnartists.org and Minnesota Playlist, a site with “information and inspiration for Minnesota’s performing arts”. THAT WE ARE BLESSED BY CLIMATE is a…

I am waiting to be distinguishedbecause I am no longer beautiful depending on the wind and conceitgoing wherever the wondering drove us watching ants crawl across the counteras dish-fog spreads over the window a skinned knee under her only dressthe way I remember it the geese on their return beneath fixed starsabove the humpbacks and driftwood the unknown sum definedby the numbers around it…

IN 2002, YOU COULD HAVE SEEN EMILY JOHNSON’s Plain Old Andrea, with a Gun at the Southern Theater as part of the Momentum series. In 2004, you could have seen her Heat and Life at the Soap Factory, presented by the Walker. But since then, you’d have to be either lucky or savvy to catch Johnson — she’s performed primarily at various small venues (the BLB, the Rogue Buddha Gallery) or in site-specific…