4.19.08: The Current’s Fakebook: Chuck D and Brother Ali at the Fitzgerald

Last night at the Fitzgerald Theater, after Brother Ali killed it with an extended a cappella version of “Letter from the Government,” Chuck D turned to Mary Lucia and said, “I really don’t see anything this good on television anymore—it’s like a cool talk show from the sixties.”

I realize The Current’s Fakebook series is supposed to be for the kids, and even I’m not old enough to remember Merv Griffin without using YouTube, but Mr. D is right: Fakebook does seem like a throwback to an earlier format of variety show. Brother Ali and Slug were the musical entertainment last night, and after Slug performed two numbers off his latest Atmosphere record, When Life Gives You Lemons… Lucia called him over to the couch, and Slug-o proceeded to tell a hilarious story about how teaching Tom Waits’s son how to rap culminated in getting Tom Waits himself to beat box on the new Atmosphere record.

Actually, forget Merv Griffin—you’re not going to hear a story like that anywhere but Fakebook. Not on The Daily Show, not on Ferguson, not even on other local talk shows aimed squarely at younger, hipper, underserved demos, like Drinking with Ian.

Which is why I hope MPR brings the series back next fall.

Let me clear something up from my last review, where I wrote about my problems with Lucia as a host (and received anonymous hate email this morning for daring to drink beer backstage last night in lieu of said review). Despite some of my quibbling over Lucia’s hosting skills, FAKEBOOK IS THE MOST ENGAGING BOOK EVENT OUTSIDE OF A DAVE EGGERS BOOK EVENT. Ok? Look, I’m not the president of Lucia’s Hateration. I care, people. I really, really care! And now I’m worried, because there seems to be a lot of thinking going on at The Current these days—thinking on everything from the programming of the playlist to the programming at the Fitz, even thinking on how the Current fits into MPR’s proverbial “mission” itself. And while thinking is usually a good thing, let’s not overthink this one: Do you think (well, other than you, you nasty anonymous emailer) that you still want smart, hipsterish twentysomethings and thirtysomethings crossing the river to go to book events, to possibly drink beer at these book events, and to possibly return to Minneapolis to talk about books? Well if you do, bring back Fakebook next fall, please.

Now that the community consciousness-raising portion of my review is over, let’s move on…to hating on Lucia.

I kid, I kid. Kind of. Because after listening to Chuck D chop it up with Lucia last night, I’m pretty sure that it’s impossible to keep this guy on topic. Lucia tried valiantly to curtail Chuck D’s half-hour rant on Chuck D’s love of geographical knowledge, only to have him veer off into a digression in which he proved how much he knows about Minnesota by telling everybody that he was the one who told Busta Rhymes to name himself after former Vikings wide receiver Buster Rhymes. 

I know, that digression actually was kind of awesome. And so was Chuck’s digression about how Eddie Murphy and Dr. J lived down the street from where Chuck’s family grew up in Long Island, and about how Charlie Murphy was always the funny Murphy—already telling those stories about Rick James back in the eighties—with the only caveat being, “Charlie Murphy had a tendency to rob you.” And Chuck rambled through a précis on 1987, the first great year in rap history, and he expounded on the strange greatness of Flavor Flav, and what it was like working with Rick Rubin and Spike Lee in their respective heydays. But when it came time to cut the affable talk-show shit, and really pull a number-one-Public-Enemy-it-takes-a-nation-of-millions-to-fear-Chuck D moment and speak on what’s going on right now, in what already seems to be a pretty historical 2008, (and to be fair to Lucia, she did try to steer him towards politics), he really kind of blew it off.

It felt like a missed opportunity. Especially on a night that opened with Brother Ali dedicating an incendiary reading (well, when is the good Brother anything but incendiary?) of “Uncle Sam Goddam” to the Reverend Wright, and on a night featuring the performance of two new Atmosphere songs on which Slug’s ability to channel the bitter classes has never seemed more timely or apropos. Maybe Chuck D was just leaving the politics to the Minneapolis guys.

Shrugs. It was still better than anything on TV.

4.16.08: Voltage: Fashion Amplified at First Ave.

When rock stars and models get together, it’s usually the models who make the rock stars look good. Last night, at Voltage: Fashion Amplified, it didn’t quite work out that way. Voltage is an annual showcase of the best up-and-coming TC design scene (Abby Van Ness has the fashion lowdown on StyleParlor) accompanied by the music of up-and-coming TC bands. The models—and the clothes—are supposed to take center stage, and the six live bands are essentially arm candy, there to make the girls look better and add a little oomph to the show.  Together, good music and good fashion should have made for a hot night. But as many of the girls and fashions fell flat, the bands were left to pick up the slack—and not everyone was up to the task.

Zibra Zibra was, but even they fought to keep the energy level up. Outfitted in spandex superhero suits, purple crotchless cowboy chaps (which made me uncomfortable, even with tights underneath), and a zebra-striped onesie courtesy of a featured designer (all the bands were outfitted by designers), the clothes more than matched the band’s frenetic vibe. While the boys in the band were thrashing around onstage and having a ball, the inexperienced models, donning hippie-ish fashions from Standard Issue and Pomije, seemed lost and uncomfortable on the runway. The crowd wasn’t into it, either, mostly because First Ave. had packed the hall so tightly that moving—much less dancing—was out of the question. By the time Zibra Zibra left the stage, so much energy had drained out of the room that the show’s voltage meter was barely twitching.

And it stayed that way through the next two bands. The Haves Have It, led by two chicks with electric guitars (full disclosure: I’ve never liked chicks with electric guitars), failed to connect with the crowd. The music seemed to fit seamlessly with the Belle and Calpurnia Peaches fashions—loud and disjointed—but it wasn’t exactly an aesthetically pleasing match. Then, with the crowd already in a mild coma, it came time for the show’s “breather,” wherein pretty, romantic fashions by Max Lohrbach and George Moskal met with the band Bella Kosha. Unfortunately, the band sounds just like its name: pretty kosher. No risks, just two girls (vocals, violin) in snooze-inducing black dresses supported by three guys (guitar, percussion) in snooze-inducing tuxedos pants playing a somnambulant set marred by technical problems.

By that time people were yawning and I was reduced to begging for more crotchless chaps. What I got instead was local rock-scene staples White Light Riot, but that was enough. Dressed up like Panic At the Disco (long, colorful velvet coats, waistcoats, top hats, etc.), White Light came to the stage with all the gusto of a band that dreams of playing Madison Square Garden. Their energy seemed to inspire the girls onstage, many now feeling comfortable on their third trip down the runway. Some even had a spring in their step while modeling Amanda Christine and local Project Runway alum Katherine Gerdes. And, since the crowd had been cut by a third after the two previous sleepers, there were even—gasp!—hints of movement throughout the thinned crowd.

Then, as if the show’s producers could sense they had revived a dying crowd, they sent hip-hop hybrid MC/VL to add the final shot of adrenaline. Tall, skinny, curly-haired Viscious Lee in white jeans, white wind jacket, and short, mustachioed Mighty Clyde in a red version of the same, the boys looked like they’d stepped out of a Def Jam look-book circa 1985, and had a sound to match: Beastie Boys and Run-DMC-inspired jams that sampled everyone from AC/DC to Aretha.

With the freedom of two mikes and no clunky guitars, MC and VL took command of the runway before the models came out, strutting, rapping, and using every inch of available space to whip the crowd up. By the time the girls started down the runway, donning Swank Dollar and Red Shoe’s eighties-inspired outfits, the ladies were strutting as well, energized—and occasional harassed by—the emcees, who seemed to be living out a model-filled rap video fantasy. The crowd went wild—at least as wild as they were going to get—dancing, waving and, for the first time all night, actually smiling.

The show should have ended there. It was 11 p.m., and three hours of fashion-rock fusion felt like more than enough. So, as the last band of the night, The Birthday Suits, took the stage, most of the crowd, including my ride, decided to dip out early. From what I hear, I didn’t miss much, and the buzz on Seventh Street was all about the two white-boy emcees who saved the show.

Maybe next year Voltage should stick to the hip-hop scene. Move over rockers, the emcees are coming to steal your girls.

3.29.08: The Blue Man Group at the Xcel

On Saturday night at 8:00 p.m., while legions of energy-conscious eco-citizens were turning off their lights and computers in observance of “Earth Hour,” I and 10,000 other not-so-conscientious Twin Citians were gathered at Xcel Energy Center to witness one of the most gleeful, excessive, and exquisitely gratuitous uses of electricity ever devised by man: a performance by the Blue Man Group. (I’ll leave it to you to count up how many ironies are involved here.)

I wouldn’t be surprised if one of the Blue Men’s moving trucks secretly houses a small nuclear reactor. I mean, the megawatts necessary to power this show are enough to poke a few extra holes in the ozone and power an entire season’s worth of holiday displays on the moon, or Mars, or wherever it is the Blue Men are from. Let’s see: 6,000 or so strobe lights, a few million LEDs, dozens of spotlights, black lights, portable video cameras and projectors, enough juice to fuel a twelve-person rock band, all the computers necessary to keep it all synched properly, and occasional bursts of extra power to fire streamers out into the audience, all of whom are waving fully charged cellphones.

Don’t get me wrong: I wholeheartedly support this kind of nonsense. The gloom and doomers may think it’s necessary to conserve every last kilowatt by using fluorescent curly bulbs, eating by candlelight, and going to bed right after dinner. But every once in a while we need to be reminded that electricity is also a resource that should be squandered and enjoyed. It’s all about balance. Besides, electrons don’t care how much fun we have with them, so why not use them for whatever forms of ridiculous amusement we can think up?

Thankfully, the Blue Man Group is not run by a bunch of earth-hugging, buzz-killing conservationists. Otherwise, they would put on a very dull show. All the flash and sizzle would disappear, and they would just be three guys with blue heads banging on pieces of PVC tubing with plastic spatulas. As tube-bangers go, they’d still probably be among the best in the business, but it wouldn’t be the same.

For Saturday night’s show, the Blue Men brought their deluxe arena package, which means that everything was louder and crazier than usual. This was a stop on the How to be a Megastar 2.1 tour, though how it differs from the 2.0 version isn’t clear. The woman sitting next to me observed that the Blue Men themselves looked slightly bluer, but that could have been the beer talking.

It’s a funny, clever, entertaining show—the sort of thing that deserves to be running simultaneously in ten cities, six days a week, until the end of time. In it, the Blue Men are trying to become rock stars and are following the directions in a “Rock Star Instruction Manual” that shows them how to swivel their hips, bob their heads, pump their fists in the air, wear weird makeup, and generally fashion themselves after the great rock icons of yore. In between making fun of rock ‘n’ roll concert conventions and playing silly arena games with the audience, they and their band play the living daylights out of those tubes (I cannot emphasize enough how good they are at banging on plastic), and send booming waves of thunder throughout the arena as they whack their big drum and an open grand piano with a mallet the size of a lamppost. 

I read online yesterday that a scientist in Hawaii is suing to stop scientists in Switzerland from firing up something called the Large Hadron Collider, a seven-trillion-volt electron accelerator designed to smash atoms into each other with such force that it will recreate conditions similar to those of the Big Bang. The scientist in Hawaii is afraid that these electronic adventurers will accidentally rip a hole in the space-time continuum, creating a black hole into which the entire earth might be untimely sucked.

Before that happens, put it on your list to see the Blue Man Group, somewhere, someday. Their use of electrons is far less serious and much more entertaining—and if enough of us go, and if we ever do get sucked through a wormhole and blasted into a parallel universe, the Blue Men might be gracious enough to help show us the way.

3.28.08: The Current’s Fakebook: Greil Marcus and The Mekons

For the first time in the Current’s Fakebook series—a concert series pairing authors with like-minded rock bands at the Fitzgerald Theater, hosted by afternoon drive-time DJ Mary Lucia—I felt sympathy for poor Mary during her interview with Pompous Rock Crit Emeritus, Greil Marcus.

For the last couple of years, Fakebook has been the perfectly programmed series, bringing in writers who appeal to the ideal Current listener, the literate indie-rock lover. The station has booked John Hodgman, Neal Pollack, Chuck Klosterman, and Amy Sedaris. The interviews have been uniformly great, especially for what are basically book events, with the authors managing to elicit something more than the typical knowing “MPR chortle” out of the audience—people have actually laughed their asses off. But I’ve always thought the interviews have succeeded because of the level of talent they’ve brought in, that they’ve succeeded despite the interviewer, Mary Lucia.

Because as the Fakebook host, she totally bugs.

Look, The Current is the only music station that I listen to anymore. And I’ve been listening to Mary Lucia since she was on REV when I was a teenager; so in my lifetime of radio listening, I’ve heard her voice more than any other afternoon drive-time DJ’s.

There is no detracting from her local icon status. Her tone of voice is perfect for hosting an indie-rock radio program. Balanced between being a fan and being totally whatever, it’s probably the happy result of being Paul Westerberg’s sister and having been around legendary rock dudes her whole life. It serves her well, whether she’s sighing, “I love that song” after playing “Leave Without a Trace” for the millionth time, or whether she’s trying to keep Wayne Coyne on topic, or whether she’s trying to tease some interesting answers out of a road-weary rock quartet from Sydney, Australia. Mary’s our supercool older sister who’s been to all the shows and had all the dorky rock conversations with the rock stars themselves.

Basically, she has a conventional sense of humor that works great when she’s plowing through a list of questions intended to shake something novel out of a guitar player. But put her in front of an intellectual with impeccable comic timing, and Lucia comes off as rote. Like the time she asked Amy Sedaris, “If somebody put a gun to your head, what tattoo would you get?” And Sedaris answered with an are-you-kidding dismissal: “A gun?”

Awkward.

But in retrospect, the chemistry between Marcus-Lucia made Sedaris-Lucia look like Davis-Sarandon. Greil Marcus is given to crediting, say, a New Pornographer’s concert with, “restoring my faith in humanity.” In his most recent book, The Shape of Things to Come: Prophecy and the American Voice, he compares Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address to Sleater-Kinney. Uh…yeah. He takes this rock stuff seriously. It’s a pretty dramatic departure from Lucia’s philosophy of “color me impressed.”

Their interview covered all the requisite ground: Greil’s comparison between British and American punk, Greil’s thoughts on Dylan going electric, Greil’s time as music editor for Rolling Stone, and Greil’s rock critic creed (“You can’t care if the artist likes you”). But the entire time there was a disconcerting rhythm to the back and forth between Lucia and Greil. It was hard to watch.

Q: Do you think Lester Bangs was writing at the perfect time? Do you think it would’ve been different if he was writing now, for Mojo or something?

A: No.

Q: Do you think that back when you were editing Rolling Stone, the writers were able to write about themselves as much as they were writing about the music, and maybe that’s changed?

A: No.

Q: Do you think that maybe Dylan left for awhile after his 1966 tour because he just didn’t want to get booed anymore?

A: No.

Q: Do you have any strong feelings about David Bowie?

A: No.

Greil expanded on each one of those “no’s,” often hilariously (with that cold, derisive hilarity of the academy). He went on a long digression about how much he loved Jakob Dylan, and he shocked the audience by asserting “Lucinda Williams is a fraud.” But as the interview went on, I started feeling for Mary Lucia, up there with her list of questions for the Great Man. I mean, maybe she hasn’t seen the Stones at Altamont, and maybe she’s not a Stanford professor who can quote D.H. Lawrence off the top of her head, but she’s been backstage at the Entry when Tommy threw a beer bottle at Bobby. She knows what punk rock is too. She just hasn’t written the book on it.

At one point, after Mary was earnestly giving Greil credit for the New Pornographer’s quote, saying she appreciated the “innocence” in it, he protested that there wasn’t anything innocent about his opinions. And then he sort of compared his critical thinking ability to Lenin’s (a quick Walter Sobchak is called for: “Shut the f*ck up, Donny! V. I. Lenin. Vladimir Illich Ulynov!”). Talking about how he keeps his critical focus, Greil referenced Lenin’s famous quote about how he couldn’t listen to Beethoven’s Apassionata because it made him “want to say sweet silly things, and pat the heads of little children.” It’s a great quote, and it really does say something about how we probably need hard-asses like Greil Marcus in the world—thinkers who are unafraid to be negative, who are unafraid to tell us the truth even if it bothers us (even if it’s only about how Rufus Wainwright probably stinks). But it also says something about how there’s something really insufferable about being the smartest guy in the room. Really, is there anything more pretentious than comparing yourself to V. I. Lenin? 

We need the Mary Lucias of the world too. Maybe Fakebook works so well precisely because she’s never the smartest person in the room. She’s standing there in our place, asking the dumb questions we would ask. Charlie Rose does the same thing on his show, I suppose.

But Mary is way cooler than Charlie Rose.

12.2.07: The 2007 British Television Advertising Awards at the Walker

Those Brits. So clever. So cheeky. Just watching sixty of their best TV commercials makes you want to pound down a few Guinnesses and go buy a . . . Toyota. Or a Volkswagen. Or maybe a Coke.

Yes, the annual British Television Advertising Awards are back at the Walker, offering a cultural window of sorts on our allies across the pond. This year’s entries offer all kinds of insights into Britain’s national character. Among them:

• They buy many of the same cars and beverages we do.

• They are not squeamish about vomiting.

• They know how to mike a fart.

• They can show nudity, but thankfully don’t most of the time.

• They have no idea how to judge advertising quality.

The Walker has been showing these awards for sixteen years, and they have become one of the museum’s most popular draws, maybe because everyone in the audience can understand them. They’re entertaining, too, in a way that sixty of the best U.S. commercials probably wouldn’t be, if only because we take our capitalism a bit more seriously here.

For example, when was the last time you saw a funny car commercial? Volkswagen and Toyota appear to be funding teams of comedy writers to entertain British citizens into automobile show rooms. Why do we get stuck watching earnest ads about luxury and quality? Personally, I’d rather laugh my way into debt.

One thing they do much better in Britain than we do is public service announcements. In America, of course, we try to address our most pressing social problems by hiring sitcom celebrities to remind our citizens not to break the law or act like an idiot. In Britain, they don’t fool around—they go straight for the jugular. You stare directly into the eyes of a child molester; you see a girl waste away into nothing from anorexia; you see the scars of breast cancer up close and personal; you watch as kids drink and puke and try to get home without killing themselves. It’s really quite refreshing. I just hope for Britain’s sake that these ads work, because if they don’t, the queen has some serious problems on her hands.

It’s impossible to talk about specific commercials without spoiling the punch lines, but let me say for the record that the judging of these awards was, as they would say in Britain, a bit dodgy. None of the Gold Award winners or the Commercial of the Year even came close to the clear winner of the year, which was criminally thrown in with a bunch of also-rans in the Silver category. I’m speaking about the brilliant series of spots for Pot Noodle, which is evidently a kind of Top Ramen–like instant soup. The series features a bunch of grimy-faced miners who supposedly descend into the bowels of the earth to mine veins of the precious pot noodles that make this soup so special. This commercial isn’t just clever and funny; it strives to build an entire mythology around a lousy clump of instant noodles. Now that’s ambitious advertising!

Too bad they don’t sell the stuff here—I’d buy a case of it and send it to Walker in protest. The Sony Bravia commercial by Fallon London that won this year’s Commercial of the Year was a shallow pretender to the throne. This year’s king was clearly Pot Noodle.

If you agree, please let me know. Maybe if enough of us complain, the geniuses behind the Pot Noodle fable will get a small portion of the recognition they deserve.

The 2007 British Television Advertising Awards continue at Walker Art Center through December 30.

9.24.07: Ivey Awards at the State Theatre

One thing can be said for sure about the Ivey Awards (our local version of the Tony Awards): They’re a lot more fun than the actual Tonys.

Now in its third year, the Ivey Awards celebrate achievements in local theater, and judging from last night’s gala at the State Theatre, the Twin Cities theater community is starting to get the hang of this celebration thing. For many, the evening began at a VIP pre-party at the Chambers Hotel, where free martinis were flowing like Budweiser, and the number of stiletto heels raised the collective height of the women by a good three or four inches.

Thus lubricated, the party then moved over to the State Theatre, where the award ceremonies turned into the sort of good-hearted orgy of self-congratulation that only theater people can do with a truly good heart. And an after-party at Mission Kitchen & Bar extended the festivities until midnight or so.

Not bad for a Monday night.

The congenial atmosphere of the Ivey Awards is aided considerably by the anti-competitive ethos of the event. There are no set categories such as “Best Actor,” and there are no nominees. You either get an Ivey or you don’t. If you don’t, the very least you get from the evening is a few hearty laughs and a slight hangover at work the next morning.

That said, here is a list of the last night’s Ivey Awards winners:

+ Michael Matthew Farrell, for his choreography in the Children Theatre Company’s production of High School Musical.

+ Thomas Jones II, for his multiple-role performance in Yellowman, at Mixed Blood Theatre.

+ Ed Williams Jr., for his outstanding performance as Molina in Minneapolis Musical Theatre’s production of Kiss of the Spider Woman.

+ Mike Hallenback, for sound engineering in Emigrant Theatre’s productions of Kid Simple and Hunger.

+ Mixed Blood Theatre, for conceptual creativity and originality in its production Messy Utopia.

+ Sally Wingert, for her standout performance as Peggy Guggenheim in Minnesota Jewish Theatre Company’s one-woman production, Woman Before A Glass.

+ Theatre de la Jeune Lune, for the company’s skill in handling multiple musical scores in Don Juan Giovanni.

+ John Arnone, for set design in the Guthrie Theater’s Private Lives.

+ Chris Nelson, for his eerily accurate performance as the late senator Paul Wellstone in Wellstone, at the History Theatre.

 

+ Love, Janis at the Ordway, for music by bandleader Raymond Berg and musical direction by Barbara Brooks.

+ The Emerging Artist award went to set designer Kate Sutton-Johnson.

+ The Lifetime Achievement Award went to Sheila Livingston, the Guthrie Theater’s Director of Education and Community Programs for the past thirty years.

9.14.07: $99 Sale at the Soap Factory

Name recognition is worth its weight in gold in the art world. So it’s novel to think of relative unknowns side by side with art world fixtures, all identified solely by numbers. That’s the premise underlying the Soap Factory’s $99 Sale. All art may not be equal, but for two days, all artists are. The uniformly small size of the works plays on that egalitarian theme. Contributions by the likes of Alex Soth and Jan Estep rubbed shoulders with those of up-and-comers and under-the-radar art stars.

Billed as “an aesthetic mêlée, a bemused statement about the value of art, a snapshot of the Twin Cities’ art scene, and a fabulous fundraiser” the show featured works by 200 different artists across genres—photography, painting, collage, even embroidery. Trying to match artist with artwork proved an entertaining party game for some. But regardless of provenance, the show offered something for everyone, from nude studies to a collage covered in a thick layer of amber-colored laminate in which was embedded (among other things) a dead white mouse.

Perhaps it was this latter item that inspired a young boy to ask his mother, “Why would someone pay $99 for art?” Her reply: “Art has value . . . it’s mysterious.” In some cases, why someone would pay $99 is mysterious. But as for the art on view last night, $99 was in some cases surely a steal. If the $99 Sale is a sort of art lottery, last night’s winning numbers in my own personal and highly subjective system, where 88, 57, 36, and 12.

The pieces reflect the aesthetic diversity on display from 88, a whimsical painting of a yawning red cat in a yellow dress, to 55, an evocative photo of part of the Golden Gate bridge taken, it would seem, through frosted glass; gradations of gray and white punctuated by bits of rich, rusty red. And from 36, a cluster of tiny pencil drawings—revolving around an owl with “FBI” on its breast—connected through snippets of text and words that manage to suggest a rather troubling storyline; “Sunday school” and “You are a ghost” and “Syrup,” to 12, embroidered fabric with a decorative border, but in lieu of, say, a Bible verse, the text reads, “Why does it always smell like ass in here?” Thankfully, that sentiment did not apply to gallery environs.

The $99 Sale runs through Saturday at the Soap Factory.

8.19.07: Japanese Lantern Festival at Como Park

St. Paul and Nagasaki, Japan, have been sister cities since 1955; pretty amazing considering that Nagasaki was flattened by an atomic bomb dropped by the United States only ten years earlier. That relationship takes physical form in the Como Ordway Memorial Japanese Garden, a truly lovely place that is the setting for possibly the most enchanting moment of the summer.

The Japanese Lantern Festival is an annual celebration modeled on Obon, a brief window of time when ancestral spirits are thought to return to visit their families according to Buddhist and Japanese folk beliefs. The festival culminates in the release of paper lanterns on rivers and even in the ocean to guide the spirits away. Last night, the Japanese Garden glowed with the light of dozens of lanterns floating in the pond against a backdrop of miniature granite cliffs bordering its shore. Beautiful.

The festival offered less lofty pleasures as well in the form of sushi trays and shrimp tempura, origami and haiku booths, and daiko drumming and obon dance performances. Mu Daiko radiated sheer energy with its amazingly choreographed and resonant percussion. It was a hard act to follow, but Minnesota Bon Odori held its own with several dances punctuated by graceful gesturing of hands and arms. In Japan, each neighborhood or town has its own dance with gesturing particular to the way of life in that place. In keeping with the spirit of the dance, the group composed, choreographed, and performed a Minnesota bon odori with gestures evoking canoeing and fishing and, of course, shoveling snow.

Minnesota girls in kimonos, goth kids eating sushi, elderly Japanese women in kimonos giving away their Midwestern connection with their thick oversized spectacles, families crowing the origami table, and people composing haikus about the weather, all very Japanese, all very Minnesotan.