Art Hounds: Rocking chairs, new opera and breaking

From MPR News, Art Hounds are members of the Minnesota arts community who look beyond their own work to highlight what’s exciting in local art. Their recommendations are lightly edited from the audio heard in the player above. 

Want to be an Art Hound? Submit here.

Resting as resistance 

Folk musician Emily Youngdahl Wright of Minneapolis admires writer and community-space-maker Amọké Kubat. She wants people to know about the final step of Kubat’s ongoing project to honor those who mother children by offering them a place to rest — literally.

The exhibit features rocking chairs that were created during a community build and then painted, collaged or otherwise re-created by Minnesota artists.

“Rocking Chair (Re)Evolution” is a free, drop-in show at the Weisman Art Museum on the West Bank of the University of Minnesota campus in Minneapolis.

The exhibit is open Friday, March 28 and Saturday, March 29 from 11-5 p.m., with a ceremony on Sunday from 1-3 p.m. The rocking chairs will be gifted to 12 mothers and grandmothers previously chosen with community feedback. 

Emily said: The whole project itself is just such a beautiful example of thinking about what kind of rest do you need, and what kind of support do you need?

The chairs are an example, I think, of tending to the spirit and the heart and the body [in] this work that really doesn’t end when you’re a parent and when you’re a grandparent, and when you are tending to this world that is in so much need of tending right now.

— Emily Youngdahl Wright

21st century opera 

Composer Eric Heukeshoven of Winona plans to head to Rochester to watch Hometown Opera Company’s New Media Opera performance, featuring scenes of new and familiar works staged in a multimedia format.

The first act consists of scenes from Rochester composer Kevin Dobbe’s “Tempus Fugit.” The second act centers women’s voices with scenes from Verdi, Puccini, Dvořák, Wagner and Strauss. Performances are Friday, March 28 and Saturday, March 29 at 7:30 p.m. at the Rochester Civic Theatre. 

Eric Heukeshoven said the staging is: As 21st century as I can possibly imagine.

It is an opera that explores the human experience and time, and it does this by combining live performances of vocalists and dancers with digital projections, what Kevin calls motion-capture ‘metahumans’ and singing projected avatars. I’ve seen a clip that he sent me recently, and it is absolutely mesmerizing.

(He adds that Act Two scenes are “fully staged and choreographed, but also using projections that Kevin has created.”)

— Eric Heukeshoven

Minneapolis hosts breaking qualifier for national competition 

Kelly Rabe of Champlain started taking hip hop and breaking classes over the pandemic, and she wants people to know that Minneapolis will be in the national eye this weekend when it hosts the Red Bull BC One Cypher One competition. Local and regional b-girls and b-boys will compete in one-on-one battle style for a spot at the National Finals in Denver.

The event will be held in a new venue on the Minneapolis scene: Royalston Square, located in the North Loop. There are open qualifier preliminaries on Friday. The main event is Saturday, starts at 7 p.m. and costs $10. 

Kelly described her experience: This is probably maybe my third year going to the BC One, and I have to say, it is like the most hyped event I have ever been to in the Twin Cities.

I mean, it’s better than music festivals. It’s better than dance parties. There’s just an energy like nothing else. The spectators are really supportive of the dancers. They’ll be cheering, they’ll be screaming, jumping up and down when they see the dancers do amazing things. It’s a really welcoming community.

Not to mention they have, like, world-renowned DJs that are spinning the tunes for these dancers. So, I mean, it’s a full dance and music action.

 — Kelly Rabe