What was the local arts highlight of 2010?
Posted at 5:00 AM on December 30, 2010
by Eric Ringham
(16 Comments)
Filed under: Culture
The Minnesota arts scene produces hundreds of concerts, shows, exhibits and performances every year. Today's Question: What was the local arts highlight of 2010?
Comments (16)
For me it was definitely the Monday night Bryan Nichols' 10-piece jazz project We Are Many played the Turf Club. Utterly blew my mind.
They have a clip of another performance on YouTube. I know The Current recorded the Turf session, but haven't heard it broadcast yet.
For me, it was self publishing my own book; but then not only am I a narcissist, I'm easily amused:)
My highlight of every year is the May Day parade hands down.
Far and away the best Arts event I was a part of in 2010 was a series of business classes for artists all over Minnesota- from Rossau to Houston, Jasper to Aurora. The Minnesota State Arts Board, the eleven Regional Arts Councils, and Springboard for the Arts- working with funding from Minnesota's Legacy Ammendment- made these 10 session courses possible in eleven different locations. I spent seven months on the road and worked with nearly 200 artists- from puppeteers and luthiers, poets and writers, woodcarvers and makers of traditional Swedish flutes, makers of felted garments and jewelers, and a guy who was inventing a new techniques in glass, to name merely a few. Our neighbors are doing amazing things!
This is a no brainer. The Great River Shakespeare Festival in Winona.
Music is alive and well in Rochester! The local arts highlight of 2010 was the weekly musical offering at Rochester's Thursdays on First, as well as the local food and crafts. In the same vein, the marvelous mix of music at the Rochester Farmer's Market made shopping for vegetables high entertainment. On a more personal level, my two talented teenagers and their friends filled my house with eclectic music every day.
It's kind of hard to pick among all of Ely's art offerings in 2010. But topping the list are NLAA's production of Godspell, the Snow Sculpture Symposium, or the Ely Art Walk. The Art Walk is particulary inspiring. The amount of local talent is pretty unbelievable!
My kids' school band & choir concerts.
For us, the highlight was a dance performance by Saburo Teshigawara -- the contemporary Japanese dancer -- at the Walker. He danced by himself for a full hour and it was spell binding. A lot of things with shadow and light. And he could do things with his body that I still can't believe. Like making his whole body seem as flexible as a piece of sea grass waving on the beach. It was amazing.
Here's a little sample that shows a bit of the light/shadow play and the sea grass image I mentioned:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=087mSXaima4
The Walker has been putting on so many great performances - music, puppetry, dance. Usually a special mix of things.
The Legacy Amendment struts its stuff, making tremendous impact throughout the state for negligible cost to taxpayers!
The art 'experience' that I found the most singular is the still-on-exhibition Thaw Collection of American Indiand Art at the MIA.
The Thaws have approximated a Platonic Ideal of a collection.
The items each is a perfect representation of its class and category.
In its entirety the exhibition is gloriously symphonic, and each and everything in it is as exemplary as imaginable, and the perfect condition of every individual piece is stupefying.
I've gone to see the exhibitions twice and will return for more of it.
For me, the heartbreakingly brilliant production of "The Scottsboro Boys" stands out as 2010's local arts highlight ... the exploration of race, social injustice and our country's history played out nightly on the Guthrie stage to audiences of all shapes, sizes and colors and did what all arts should strive to do: create a dialogue that lasts long beyond the performance.
Of the plays I attended this last year, I would have to say my two favorites were the Master Butcher's Singing Club, and the Scottsboro Boys. Both Guthrie Theater productions. The first was very personal to me as I grew up in a small town and my family is of German heritage. I loved how the characters stories were so different and yet connected to each other.
The second was just amazing. The story was very sad but the performers were so talented and the energy was incredible. I was sorry to read the Broadway production did not last long.
This year's Minnesota Fringe Festival was amazing. 11 days of incredible perfomances and surprises, a delight through and through.
On a very personal level: my debut novel, "Whiteout," won the Independent Publisher Association's gold medal for Midwestern fiction published in 2009. For an old guy, starting a new career after retirement, that was pretty cool.
The other highlight was seeing my youngest son perform the role of the devil in Central High School's production of "Damn Yankees."
a guitarist on the Lake of the Isles pathway , foggy day - last May. He wasn't looking for money - just playing - no singing - THAT was a great moment of simple everyday art. foggy lake, music, ..... The serendipity of it ... made it the best experience I had. Great, great memory in year of crazy angst and turmoil.
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