A QUICK LOOK AT JUSTIN JONES’S LATEST WORK, JIG (+Band), showing this weekend at the Bryant-Lake Bowl: A trio of dancers (Sam Johnson, Justin Jones, Hannah Kramer), dressed in dirty union suits with fur dickies, pile up on each other in shaky assemblages, brief multi-limbed creatures that unravel one into the next. Their hands reach up, in search of, then claw; they sniff and shiver volubly, then strike noble…

THERE’S A NEW ART FORM ON THE HORIZON: POETRY-FILM. Approaches to the burgeoning genre are many, but the work is unified by intention: to shed light on and expand the boundaries of poetry in ways words alone can not. Poetry-film projects have been popping up all over in recent months: Todd Boss and Angella Kassube’s Motionpoems, ashort film re-visitation of The Waste Land by writer Jay Orff and…

THE STEPPES OF SOUTHERN RUSSIA ARE LOCATED on roughly the same latitude as our own country’s Great Plains, right around the 45 parallel, halfway between the equator and the North Pole. In Russia, this area consists, in part, of the land between the Black and Caspian Seas, and in the U.S., it spreads from the western part of Minnesota into the Dakotas. Besides being the breadbaskets for respective…

WHAT DO PIXILATED IMAGES OF BUILDINGS and photographic stagings of amateur pornography(whatever that is) have to do with one another? And where do phone booths and chalkboard-hovering sports analysts fit in? Why would you hang a low budget, street-style video of running children with large-scale wall reliefs referencing arctic glaciers?  Or, how are solitary, expressionist paintingsrelated to the cool…

LET’S START WITH THE DRESS worn by this year’s curator of Choreographers’ Evening, flamenco diva Susanna di Palma: a slinky one-shouldered column of viridian and silver sequins, it cast shimmering pools and dancing sparks at her feet and scattered disco stars all over the Walker’s McGuire Theater. For the dress, di Palma could not have chosen better. Its glitz exactly fits the mood of Choreographers…

EXUBERANTLY, EXTRAVAGANTLY, JUBILANTLY PHYSICAL with a soupçon of the metaphysical — enough to give your thinky bits something to do, but not enough to wear them out — this fall’s Zenon concert was exemplary, the Twin Cities’ top modern dance company at its best. At its heart, what Zenon Dance Company offers (in buckets) is the dancer as dream-self, leaping into life with all the passion we hope we have in…

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…

ONE OF OUR FIRST GLIMPSES OF EMILY JOHNSON, choreographer and co-creator of the luminous new performance piece, The Thank-You Bar, is on video. She’s lovely and engaging, even if the words of the story she’s telling come not out of her mouth, but from the remove of pre-recorded narration (emanating from a tape recorder tucked in her shirt), and through her facial expressions. Johnson light-heartedly…

WHAT DO BEING A PRIEST AND WRITING A NOVEL HAVE IN COMMON?  I have been pondering this question ever since reading the book, Vestments,and talking with its author, first-time novelist John Reimringer.  Vestments, which was published recently by Milkweed Editions, is a realistic novel about a young priest from St. Paul who struggles to maintain his vow of celibacy in the face of his growing desire for a…