WE’VE REACHED AN INTERESTING MOMENT in the Twin Cities’ physical/alt theater scene when a show as clever and accomplished as Shawn McConneloug and Kira Obolensky’s Force/Matter can seem unremarkable. Performers bat raw eggs back and forth with ping-pong paddles while carrying on devastatingly awkward seductions; they deliver surreal lines of supreme ennui or reckless collage while rolling around…

JAKI BYARD. Anything written about pianists needs to mention Jaki. He will probably come up again, actually, even though this piece is primarily about Marcus Roberts and David Berkman, two pianists I have been listening to a lot lately. Roberts is noted for a career in which he’s deliberately moved through the whole history of jazz piano, from ragtime forward. There are plenty of people who have…

WHEN ARTISTS DREAM OF SUCCESS, they probably dream of showing at the Walker, the Met, the Tate, Musée National d’Art Moderne — not the java joint down the street. But on the road to the big-time, those little coffeehouse shows can be important stops along the way, providing a safe platform for artists to practice the tricks of their trade: how to produce enough work for a show, create a cohesive…

IN 2006, NORTHERN LIGHTS.MN founder, president, and artistic director, Steve Dietz, helped organize the first Zer01 SJ biennial, a seven day festival of art highlighting the theme of “the interactive city,” which took place in San Jose, California. The event was a huge success, featuring the work of more than 250 artists representing over 40 different countries and drawing in excess of $9 million dollars…

WHAT DO WE GO TO PERFORMANCE FOR? Why leave our cozy homes to venture out in the dark among strangers, to sit, cold and uncomfortable, silent and still, for an hour or two? Why pay for this dislocation, confinement, mutual isolation? There is something to see, maybe: shapes leading our mirror neurons a dance. But there is also something to be: there are gestures to clothe and form inchoate desire; looks…

AFTER I FINISHED MY ESSAY SERIES, JAZZ IS A BASTARD, in February, mnartists.org asked me to continue writing for them regularly about music in the Twin Cities and nationally. I am very happy about this — I like to play music most of all, but as a close second, I like to thinkabout it. And given the forum, I like to talk and write about it, too. The Walker and mnartists.org commissioned the previous essay…

THINK SERIOUSLY FOR A MOMENT ABOUT HOW MUCH CULTURE YOU CONSUME every day. This morning you likely started your day by choosing some clothing to wear, a pair of shoes, maybe some glasses-all of which have been meticulously designed by someone, somewhere. Perhaps as you were getting dressed, you tuned into your favorite music or TV station, or popped over to a social media platform to see what your…

CLAIMS THAT THE LITERARY NOVEL IS DEAD APPEAR TO BE PREMATURE. Even though the pronouncement has been popular for almost a century (“Death of the Novel” even has its own Wikipedia page), and literature sales continue to plummet — at least in print — droves of authors continue to write and publish long works of literary fiction and find people to read them. Among them are two local novelists who will have…

IN THE EARLY MORNING HOURS OF DECEMBER 12, 2010, artist Martin Woodrich was asleep in his small, modestly furnished one-bedroom apartment in downtown Minneapolis. He’d been home all evening, working in his adjoining studio in preparation for an upcoming retrospective show. Like most Minneapolitans, he was glad to be indoors, sheltered from the blizzard that had dumped over three feet of snow on the…