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BEST RADIO STATION KFAI-FM Is KFAI the radio experience most listeners want? Of course it isn't. At least judging by the persistence of commercial radio, people want to hear songs they know, opinions they share, commercials they don't mind waiting through. They want to encounter, in other words, exactly what they expect when they switch on a radio--to turn it on like windshield wipers or the defrost. KFAI, by contrast, is for the people who don't mind pulling the car over, stunned. It's for engaged individuals who want to run upstairs when they get home, frantically look up the studio line in the phone book, and call in to find out what song they just heard, or what speaker just spoke. It's not that the station is entirely unpredictable: A weekly program grid at the website listed above allows you to plan your listening around a variety of music and news that's available nowhere else. Cajun rock at Louisiana Rhythms every Friday at 9:00 a.m. Radical opinions and unpopular investigation at Democracy Now! every weekday at noon. Vintage twang on Good 'N' Country every Saturday at 1:00 p.m. (By the way, that very short list doesn't even count the shows where you'll hear Hmong '60s garage, French free jazz, or Swedish speed metal.) As with most local, listener-sponsored community stations, there's an element of the crapshoot in listening this broadly: dead spots here, bad choices there. There is also room for improvement at KFAI (more popular music during daylight hours, anyone?). But the choices at this unique, anti-corporate outpost are left entirely up to the DJ-programmers, whose only consistent hobgoblin is caring enough about what they play to waste time talking to you. And you--well, that's the most unpredictable element of all.
Readers' Choice: 93X BEST FM RADIO PERSONALITY Earl Root - KFAI-FM At a certain age, most people lose the ability to appreciate the artistic merits of heavy metal. The relentless screech of guitars. The songs celebrating bestiality and Satan. The face paint. The unfortunate font choices. It all becomes a bit difficult to take once acne and finding someone to score you booze have become things that other people worry about. That's what makes Earl Root's almost two-decade run as host of The Root of All Evil so astounding. Despite having passed age 40, Root remains absurdly, pathologically, giddily obsessed with metal. His five-hour Saturday-night/ Sunday-morning metalfest is as infectious a celebration of music--however loosely defined--as can be found anywhere on the dial. "There's nothing more glorious than bad metal," Root likes to say. Even if you've never before felt the urge to purchase the new Cannibal Corpse album or attend an Impaler gig, after listening to Root's show you can't help but agree.
Readers' Choice: Remy Maxwell - 93X BEST AM RADIO PERSONALITY T.D. Mischke - KSTP-AM We had a moment of sheer panic back on a Friday night in late January when we dialed in KSTP-AM (1500) shortly before 10:00 p.m. to catch the end of The Mischke Broadcast. There, to our horror, we discovered the ravings of some Neanderthal named Chris Krok. Our initial fear was that Mischke's battle with depression had permanently sidelined the renegade radio host. And then, panicking, we theorized that the station's brass had replaced him with yet another conservative evangelist to placate the right-wing radio faithful. But our fears were assuaged a few minutes later when the oddly calming voice of Mischke came over the airwaves announcing another two hours of singing drunks, skewed news stories, and peculiar interviews--the station had merely pushed back his daily shift. When a frequent caller named Luke belted out a truly angelic a capella version of Tom Petty's "Free Fallin'" during the opening segment of the show, Krok's bilious residue was instantly wiped away. And after a couple of months of adjustment we've concluded that Mischke is actually better suited to the 10:00 p.m. to midnight time slot anyway. His oddball parallel universe makes more sense with the moon high in the sky. Our only regret: no more kamikaze broadcasts from Midway Stadium.
Readers' Choice: Mark Wheat - Radio K BEST HIP-HOP RADIO PROGRAM 2 the Break-A-Dawn - KFAI-FM The difference between the Twin Cities' top two public-radio hip-hop shows is like day and night. We may bounce to Radio K's The Beat Box while we're running errands in our hoopty on a Saturday afternoon. But it's the Saturday night mix of local luminaries Siddiq and DJ Abilities, from 9:00 p.m. to 11:00 p.m., that really gets our groove on. Besides interviews with other local hip-hop crews and visiting guests, the Rhymesayers duo let their mixing skillz do most of the talking, and that's exactly what we want to hear. On this KFAI mainstay, the old school meets the new and then some with MC Lyte fading into Missy, Digable Planets spinning into the Roots, Black Eyed Peas simmering into Blackalicious. And you'll surely never miss the latest Rhymesayers releases, from Eyedea and Abilities' E&A to the Micronauts' The Emperor and the Assassin. It's only too bad that 2 the Break-A-Dawn falls about seven hours short of what it promises.
Readers' Choice: The Beat Box - Radio K BEST CLASSICAL PERFORMANCE OF THE PAST 12 MONTHS The Minnesota Orchestra in Lahti, Finland The plane was late touching down in Helsinki the day of the concert, February 26, and the charter bus to Lahti had to drive through a blizzard. So there wasn't even time for the Minnesota Orchestra to get a decent meal before setting up in the hall. After two weeks on the road performing for the world's toughest audiences in New York, London, and Vienna, this was the group's last stop and everyone must have been dog-tired. Despite that long haul, the musicians drew on God-knows-what reserves to play with their customary precision. Yet thanks to MPR's live broadcast, listeners back home in Minnesota could also hear the orchestra play with more than the usual adrenaline under their Finnish conductor, Osmo Vänskä. Yes, they've been sounding great all season, but their Lahti concert was like an out-of-body experience. First, they sailed through Aaron Kernis's "Color Wheel," a fiercely difficult showpiece for the whole orchestra. Next, they provided an unusually poised and polished backup for soloist Joshua Bell in Tchaikovsky's oh-so-romantic Violin Concerto. The orchestra closed with a sweeping, almost cinematic rendition of Prokofiev's intensely dramatic "Romeo and Juliet" ballet. The Finnish audience demanded, and received, a string of encores, including Steve Heitzeg's haunting elegy "Wounded Fields," which Vänskä dedicated to the late philanthropist Ken Dayton, who funded the tour.
BEST JAZZ RADIO PROGRAM Monday Evening Jazz with Tom Surowicz - KBEM-FM Let's just put this right out there: If anyone in the Twin Cities knows more about jazz--and how to present it to listeners--than Tom Surowicz does, he should get his own radio show. But until that unlikely font of wisdom emerges, we're sticking with Surowicz's Monday Evening Jazz on Monday nights from 8:00 p.m. until 11:00 p.m. If anything, the breadth and depth of this perennial category winner have only improved in the past year, with Surowicz equally likely to spin the Bad Plus as the Brad Mehldau Trio. And he'll gladly dig up an obscure arrangement of "Danny Boy" or play a Louis Armstrong chestnut just because a longtime fan wants to hear it. Combine this agreeably broad range with Surowicz's cozy, informational but never pedantic style and head full of stories, and you've got some of the best nighttime radio in the state.
BEST RADIO PROGRAM AFTER MIDNIGHT The Echo Chamber - KFAI-FM Is there a better music in the world for the three hours before 5:00 a.m. than dub reggae? No party-rocking needed at that hour--not on a weekday, anyway--and no wake-up jams required. At 2:00 a.m. on a Tuesday morning, you're either home from a second-shift job, well into a third shift, leaving the bar, or unable to sleep. In any of these cases, the most mysterious music ever created suits the moment just fine. The atmospheric, bass-dominated echo-rock of classic '70s Jamaican studio scientists sounds a lot like the upside-down version of surf or psychedelia conjured by the deep-sleep subconscious. This is the whale call of groove music, and it talks to you in strange ways at this hour, especially with host Dr. StrangeDub doing the time warp again. He's there each week, dipping back into rock-steady or pushing forward into every variety of newer music influenced by dub's pioneers, from Bill Laswell to Mad Professor. The last half-hour is usually given over to a prerecorded mix by StrangeDub's partner DJ Baby Swiss, which swings you into jump-up or ragga--your REM soundtrack before wakey-time. The whole show feels like a journey, in other words: a long trip between the only restaurants still open, where even the fry cooks are dreaming.
Readers' Choice: X-Treme Metal Shop - 93X BEST TV STATION Minneapolis Telecommunications Network Watching community-access cable is like listening to a preacher howling fire-and-damnation across the short wave. Strange, even dislocating, but also hypnotic. That's the thing about MTN. Sometimes you'll be flipping around the dial and you'll come across something so mesmerizingly weird that you just can't shake it: a grainy video of a transvestite dancing in a silver spaghetti-strap dress, or an elementary school Christmas pageant with no audio, or maybe just some middle-aged guy sitting in front of the camera with eyes burning, pouring out whatever beef he's got with the world. Not that everything on MTN is necessarily so oddly affecting. There are also the no-budget talk shows (yawn); the Somali music videos; and, of course, the preachers. Especially late at night, though, MTN makes you feel plugged into some manic, grungy, 3:00 a.m. collective unconscious, where the obsessed and the exhibitionists, the damned and the sleepless, surf along on the hum of static.
Readers' Choice: KARE-TV (Channel 11) BEST TV WEATHERPERSON MnDOT Aviation Weather Computers On any given night, the local news broadcasts will lead with an alarmist story about the classic Minnesota obsession: the weather. We reckon that out-of-town visitors find this strange and leave our state wondering what the hell the big deal is. Truth be told, it's usually nothing. Weather is not news. But try telling that to local meteorologists, who dazzle us with NASA-approved weather probes and baffle us with all sorts of highfalutin prattle about inverted troughs and wall clouds. That's why we prefer to skip the late local news (hey, we've got "socializing" to do) and get the raw feed that begins airing at midnight, the end of Channel 17's broadcast day. If computers could speak (and listen! they can!), they, like the rest of us, would want to talk about the weather. But these weathermatons have no interest in chatter, just the conditions of the moment, delivered in a clipped, eerie monotone. The overnight is breathtaking in its simplicity: The "male" voice, accented (East Indian?) and soothing, trading information with the "female" voice, coolly seductive--a sort of low-pressure duet. And on and on they go, repeating temperatures in Lake Elmo, rainfall readings in Eden Prairie, cloud cover in International Falls. And then there's the map, a Doppler loop, a sort of bas-relief of our fine state emanating from the late-night blue glow. It's all oddly comforting, we tell you, and somehow more human than any of those sky-is-falling talking heads on the other stations.
Readers' Choice: Belinda Jensen BEST TV NEWSCASTER Julie Nelson - KARE-TV In the wake of last year's tectonic shift--Paul Magers's departure from top-rated KARE-11 to the browner--and also greener--pastures of Los Angeles, local TV stations were left angling to fill the vacuum. WCCO, KSTP, and also-ran KMSP responded by going sensationalistic, with pointless live remotes and "breaking stories" about nothing. KARE largely sidestepped this race to the bottom, instead installing the steady, conscientious veteran Julie Nelson in the anchor seat, with Frank Vascellaro riding an amiable shotgun. Nelson, a Wisconsin native who also anchored briefly in Louisville, has long been considered an up-and-comer: She won a regional Emmy in 2000, only two years after popping up on the local scene as KSTP's morning anchor. With her move to KARE, though, Nelson seems to have found her true home. Her bright yet unaffected demeanor and straightforward news-reading style square perfectly with KARE's sober, homey image. Nelson could perhaps still stand to loosen up just a little (though her banter with Frankie V. does suggest a growing rapport). Even so, KARE's faith in her has already been borne out by that ultimate arbiter of television merit, the ratings.
Readers' Choice: Don Shelby BEST PUBLIC ACCESS CABLE TV PROGRAM Somali TV Most aficionados of public-access television go for some combination of kitsch, zealotry, oddity, or, preferably, all of the above. While you'll encounter all that and more while surfing the many stations of the Minneapolis Telecommunications Network (MTN), you may overlook what has earned MTN the public-access medal of honor. Through its three main channels, the network broadcasts community programming in a surprising number of languages. Top honors go to Somali TV, a pioneering immigrant program that is still a staple of the Somali community. But scores of other shows, from Vietnamese Minnesotans TV to Zona Latina offer immigrants in the Twin Cities both community journalism and a cultural outlet. In the mid-1990s, a number of Somalis learned basic video production through MTN courses and word spread from there. (To date, MTN has trained some 37 Somalis in video production.) For some, public access is an early, inspiring lesson in democracy and free media. As longtime MTN producer, Tarek "JC" Bagdadi, recently told us, "How can we tell that this country is still democratic? The first thing a dictator may do is close down public access." In other words, if you can still tune in the TV to find East African men lip-synching in Oromo, our First Amendment rights are safe for now.
BEST TV SPORTS ANCHOR Eric Perkins - KARE-TV If Joe Schmit, Mark Rosen, and Randy Shaver are the Three Tenors, then Eric Perkins, KARE's lanky Norm Macdonald body double, is Josh Groban. A big goof, yes, but also kind of endearing in his eagerness to please. Perkins's long-running "Perk at Play" segments, in which he performs stunts like trying out for a high school pep squad or driving in a demolition derby, smack of shtick. Then again, they're usually sort of funny, and Perkins always conducts himself with wry self-deprecation. That KARE promoted Perk to weekend sports anchor in the post-Paul Magers shuffle suggests that station management has recognized his offbeat potential as well.
Readers' Choice: Randy Shaver - KARE-TV BEST SPORTS TALK RADIO HOST Dan Cole - KFAN-AM They're not exactly running a think tank over at the Twin Cities' sports talk station. Fellating local athletes, soft-pedaling the loathsome acts of our bargain-ball team owners, pretending that U of M athletics aren't part of a professional sports league that doesn't pay its players--this is the standard for KFAN's on-air talent. And so what distinguishes the "Common Man" Dan Cole from this crowd need not be much. Some listeners tout Cole's left-of-center politics, which is all well and good; until Howard Stern runs for office on the Wobbly ticket (which might be sooner than you think), we'll take anything we can get on this count. But it's one small moment from a generic midwinter broadcast that exemplifies what makes Cole seem so decent. Marooned for a two-hour lunchtime remote in the Roseville theme eatery called KFAN: The Restaurant, Cole noticed that the program was blaring over the speakers, drowning out innocent diners. So Cole, in a moment of surprising decency, requested that the simulcast sound be turned down so that patrons could enjoy their meals in relative peace. In this simple request, the hopeful listener could sense a lot of things. A recognition that the radio was too loud, of course. But also a suggestion that he didn't exactly care to cater to the kind of person who would actually turn up to watch a white man of early middle age talk about baseball in December. And, more than that, that the notion of showing up each week to cross-promote such a feeble branding effort and food-service concept was a little embarrassing for everyone involved. Truly, it was a touch of modesty that came through in Cole's broadcast that day. And if bringing just a tiny dose of shame to this most shameless of radio formats isn't an accomplishment, we've got a ballpark to sell you.
BEST COLUMNIST Brian Lambert We're not sure how Brian Lambert summons the courage to crawl out of bed each morning. Covering the local media, particularly the broadcast version, is true car-wreck reporting. Run, kids! It's Trish Van Pilsum! And she's got a microphone! And then there's the really ugly part of Lambert's job: critiquing the dreck on TV other than the news. We have a feeling that Pioneer Press editor Vicki Gowler has to pump Lambert full of Vicodin and push him on an L.A.-bound plane each summer to preview the next round of tragic fare that the TV networks are about to foist on us. Yet somehow Lambert manages to maintain a caustic sense of humor about the whole ordeal. Occasionally he even locates a program worth recommending without more than a half-dozen caveats. Whether analyzing the continuous ratings freefall of KSTP-TV's 10:00 p.m. broadcast or illuminating the shortcomings of My Big Fat Obnoxious Fiancé, Lambert manages to write columns that are always sharp, enlightening, and funny--unlike so much of what shows up on our television screens.
Readers' Choice: Dara Moskowitz BEST READING OF THE PAST 12 MONTHS Al Franken at Ruminator Books/Central Presbyterian Church in St. Paul There couldn't have been a better kickoff to another queasying election year than Al Franken's October 15 pep-rally reading at St. Paul's Central Presbyterian Church. Ever since the Twin Cities' satirical southpaw came to town at the behest of Ruminator Books, we've been singing the praises of Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them. Even if he was preaching to the choir among the sold-out pews in downtown St. Paul, Franken did what that seasoned comedian now does best: He gave an investigative wallop to the right, wrapped in irreverent wit and delivered with a wink. It's fitting, too, that Franken's gig was brought to us by a bookstore that has been committed to cultivating community involvement and activism, and has been drawing top acts for nearly 35 years. Rather like the wheezing Democratic Party, business over at that Grand Avenue landmark has been precarious for a while now. So here's hoping the divine cow keeps on ruminating into 2007--around the time Al Franken is preparing for his Minnesota senatorial bid.
BEST BOOK BY A LOCAL AUTHOR The Language of Blood: A Memoir by Jane Jeong Trenka In a frank, poetic style, Jane Jeong Trenka shares the saga of her life. At the painful center of her experience is the adoption that brought her from a volatile life in Korea to a wholesome adoptive family in small-town Minnesota. Yet dark and dangerous resentments run below the surface in this writer. Part of a wave of 150,000 to 200,000 Koreans who ended up with new American names and lives, Trenka has written one of the most circumspect--and also just pissed-off--books on international adoption. (One wonders if her memoir will reach the parents who are today engaged in a wave of adoptions from China.) Should she lay into her own parents for never wanting to visit the nation of her birth? And if she does, can she still complain that today's more sensitive adoptive parents are just engaging in something akin to cultural tourism? Ultimately, the author seems unsure how to balance her own biographical account sheet: "Would I rather have not been adopted?" she writes. "I don't know...How can I weigh the loss of my language and culture against the freedom that America has to offer, the opportunity to have the same rights as a man?...How many educational opportunities must I mark on my tally sheet before I can say it was worth losing my mother?" It's a credit to this probing book that Trenka never comes up with a simple answer.
BEST THEATER FOR DRAMA Mixed Blood Theatre Mixed Blood Theatre is on a roll. Last fall, the company enjoyed a surprise sellout with Stephen Sachs's Sweet Nothing in My Ear, a family drama told largely in American Sign Language. They followed that one with a fiery production of Suzan-Lori Parks's Pulitzer Prize-winning tragedy of fraternal rivalry, Topdog/ Underdog, an area premiere that played to regular standing ovations. And this past February, Mixed Blood teamed with Michael Bigelow Dixon, the Guthrie's literary director, for Bill of (W)Rights, a collection of 10 mini-plays that explored the first 10 amendments to the U.S. Constitution with Jeffersonian wit and intelligence. Conceived by Dixon and Mixed Blood honcho Jack Reuler, and written by nine playwrights working individually, the 24-actor-strong Bill of (W)rights was put together quickly. This made for some rough edges. More important, though, it gave the production an immediacy and excitement that permeated the stages, dressing rooms, stairwells, hallways, and parking spaces where the miniatures were inventively staged. An invigorating and nervy effort from a 30-year-old institution that refuses to grow staid and irrelevant.
BEST THEATER FOR NEW WORK Pillsbury House Theatre With the possible exception of a musical version of The Odd Couple starring Donald Trump and Jesus Christ, any theatrical production is a financial risk. But staging a new script, in most cases, is an especially nail-biting affair for those in charge of budgets. Luckily, the Twin Cities has a number of theater troupes that fearlessly bring us new work. With its regular readings and world premieres, the Playwrights' Center deserves plaudits for developing new writers and working with established ones. And during the past 12 months, we've seen several excellent new plays from the Jungle Theater, the Guthrie Lab, Theatre Unbound, Mixed Blood Theatre, and others. But this year, special attention should go to Pillsbury House Theatre, whose offerings have been essential for those of us who don't want to climb on a plane (or wait 10 years) to see the plays we've been reading about in the New York press. In 2003, Pillsbury House presented Melissa James Gibson's touted [sic]. And, later, the company offered an exceptionally well-acted version of Stephen Adly Guirgis's Jesus Hopped the 'A' Train. Though these were must-see productions for the committed theatergoer, in all likelihood neither of those scripts will enter the canon. In March of this year, however, Chicago Avenue's finest theater staged a play that has a very good shot at attaining classic status: Caryl Churchill's war meditation Far Away. The four-person cast, under the direction of Noël Raymond, handled the challenging script's chilling brilliance with aplomb. Plus, Pillsbury House regularly collaborates with other local companies to put on new work, such as Zell Miller III's memorable spoken-word-and-music piece The Evidence of Silence Broken, a co-presentation with Trú Rúts Endeavors.
BEST ACTOR Steven Epp There are actors who disappear inside their characters and actors who always remain their charismatic, unmistakable selves. Theatre de la Jeune Lune's Steven Epp does both. His stage-filling but not scene-chewing style deserves its own adjective (Eppian). Yet his highly physical, idiosyncratic interpretations are always logical and wise character studies, whether he's creating a new role or re-inventing one of the classics (such as Tartuffe or Hamlet). Epp's antic wit was on display in Jeune Lune's recent revival of The Ballroom, but his finest performance of late came in The Seagull. Here, he gave the successful writer Trigórin a brooding intensity that expertly illuminated Chekhov's thoughts on the elusiveness of artistic inspiration and the corrupting influence of fame.
BEST ACTRESS Charity Jones Is it possible that the local theater performance of 2004 will come from an actress who spoke only a handful of lines in a seven-minute play? Well, yes, of course, or we wouldn't have brought it up. Charity Jones has done outstanding work for the Jungle, Eye of the Storm, and other outfits. But she may have topped herself in Jane Martin/Jon Jory's "The Billet," a short play that was part of Mixed Blood Theatre's Bill of W(Rights). A brilliant cautionary tale about the Patriot Act, the play cast Jones as Winifred, an affluent woman whose home is suddenly invaded by a couple of monstrous, acid-tongued soldiers. This pair proves they mean business by unceremoniously killing Winifred's husband. Jones began the scene poised and refined. Then, in a virtuoso display of physical, facial, and vocal expression, she progressed through anxiety, terror, rage, and shock. By necessity, these were quick transitions, but they never felt abrupt or calculated. In a few gripping minutes, Jones let the audience experience all the terror and pity of classical tragedy. BEST DIRECTOR Michelle Hensley Michelle Hensley's Ten Thousand Things Theater Company, which does most of its productions in prisons and community centers, performs with the bare-bones simplicity of street theater: no theatrical lights, minimal props, creative but simple costumes. But as nearly every theater fan in town has been saying for years now, the company's art is far from low budget. Hensley's interpretations tend to highlight the class-consciousness of the text, but she's never preachy. And she consistently digs right to the emotional core of a play, whether it's Shakespeare, Brecht, Rodgers and Hammerstein, or Kevin Kling. Hensley seems to devote most of her production resources to getting the best performers, and she's the kind of thoughtful, visionary director who attracts great actors. This, of course, makes her job a lot easier. Only the Guthrie and the Jungle can rival TTT in terms of thespian prowess. The company's recent production of Kevin Kling's At Your Service, featuring Luverne Seifert, Bradley Greenwald, and Jim Lichtscheidl, exemplified Hensley's gift for guiding the players to be broad but not hammy, loose yet always acutely engaged.
BEST INDEPENDENT THEATER Frank Theatre These are lean economic times for arts groups, and many theater companies have responded either with scaled-down productions (such as one- or two-person shows) and/or safe, box-office-minded fare: familiar scripts, remounts, crowd-pleasers of all stripes. And we understand this, and if it's a good crowd-pleaser, bring it on. But it's heartening to see 15-year-old Frank Theatre completely bucking the trends with large-scale and risky stuff that one can't imagine anyone else taking on. Last year, Frank put on Marc Blitzstein's rarely seen The Cradle Will Rock, a wonderful Depression-era folk opera full of lovely melodies and impassioned populism. Frank's artistic director Wendy Knox gave the show a smartly over-the-top, comic-book quality, but never scoffed at the show's socialist idealism. This made for an evening that was both aesthetically inspired and politically inspiring. As if that weren't enough, Frank pluckily decided to stage the show in the old Sears building on Lake Street, which gave things an appropriate industrial grandiosity. (Plus, seeing a gloriously pinko play in a sort of capitalist mausoleum provided nifty irony.) Frank returned to the Sears building this March for its five-hour (!) production of folklorist-scholar-storyteller Jack Zipes's Sicilian Nights, a new collection of scenes based on Sicilian folk and fairy tales. The meandering show could have been reined in a bit, but it was zestfully performed and full of bawdy wit. Frank only does two productions a year, so each one is an event. This fall, look for Frank to take on a new work by a contemporary playwright, possibly Suzan-Lori Parks, whose The America Play received the Frank treatment way back in 1996.
BEST STAGE PRODUCTION PROM - Children's Theatre Company There's one almost reasonable reason not to give honors here for this second offering from Children's Theatre Company's teen program. Namely, the director (Whit MacLaughlin), several folks on the creative team, and one cast member are from Philadelphia's New Paradise Theatre Company. And this item is not running in Philadelphia's City Pages. But that argument doesn't really hold water. All sorts of local productions are collaborations between townies and carpetbaggers. Besides, this funny, visually stunning, and moving production wouldn't have been possible without the great talent of the CTC acting company, its teenage apprentices, and CTC's artistic director Peter Brosius. It is this impresario's commitment to working with the coolest artists of international experimental theater that is making CTC's youth-minded endeavor one of the most exciting developments in recent local theater history. Conceived as a quasi-athletic competition between high school seniors and their dorky chaperones, the show was an hour-long riff on the institution of prom, full of smartly chosen (and intoxicatingly loud) music and inspired choreography. (This movement ranged from the spasmodic to the nearly balletic, and featured kids being flown around on cranes.) The performances were wonderfully odd, funny, and sometimes plangent, especially Gerald Drake's aphoristic principal and his teaching staff, played by Dean Holt and Autumn Ness. And then there was Reed Sigmund, whose medieval history teacher offered a risibly earnest, yet somehow deeply sad, version of Bryan Adams's "Everything I Do (I Do It for You)."
BEST THEATER FOR COMEDY Bryant-Lake Bowl One should never count out the yuk-yuk progeny of Aristophanes from Brave New Workshop, Comedy Sportz, or Stevie Ray's Comedy Troupe. But the Bryant-Lake Bowl remains our favorite spot for left-of-center comedy. The Scrimshaw Brothers regularly bring their brainy satire and shameless silliness to the BLB's tiny stage, and Joshua Scrimshaw's moonlighting gig with David Mann and Craig Johnson in The Worst Holiday Pageant Ever was funnier than an eggnog dunk tank. Our absolute favorite BLB show of the past year, though, was Crab Apple Theater's Good Clown, Bad Clown, Mark Ehling's dry, strange, and often-uproarious collection of scenes about the joyous, dangerous, hardscrabble existence of professional harlequins.
BEST BUDGET MOVIE THEATER Riverview Theater Looking beyond the exceedingly generous $2 cover charge, this old-fashioned urban showroom has rare virtues aplenty. The inviting art deco lobby, complete with copper water fountain, looks much as it would have when the Riverview was built in '51. Inside, the sound (DTS and Dolby) is state of the art, the room is spacious, and the screen is gigantic. Owner and manager Loren Williams chooses carefully among second-run Hollywood titles, throwing in both indies (e.g., the Paul Westerberg doc) and "indies" (e.g., Pieces of April) for good measure. Though Asian Media Access's "Cinema With Passion" series of Hong Kong action movies is on hiatus at the moment, the Riverview still screens Rocky Horror twice a month at midnight, and plays host to some of the Minneapolis/St. Paul International Film Festival's niftiest fare in April. Oh, yeah--and there's real butter on the popcorn.
BEST FILM What America Needs: From Sea to Shining Sea It had to happen eventually, and now it has. A major Hollywood studio has announced plans to release a documentary "celebration of a nation told through the voices of its people" (including John Mellencamp singing "The World Don't Bother Me None"), directed by an unknown who "packed up his camera and hit the road, making it his mission to meet some ordinary Americans with extraordinary stories." But Twin Cities-based filmmaker Mark Wojahn did it first, traveling by train, motor home, and car from New York to Los Angeles, his trusty digital-video camera in tow, to ask more than 500 people: What do you think America needs? The film's refreshing just-folks vibe is accentuated by Wojahn's jittery videography, rendered with a consumer-model camcorder. His is a film that's unprofessional--and unpretentious--in the best way.
BEST MOVIE THEATER Minnesota Film Arts' Oak Street Cinema "The Twin Cities' essential neighborhood movie house," they're calling it now--and we couldn't convey it more succinctly ourselves. Essential because the programming continues to strike an accessible balance between new and old (Human Rights Watch docs and Buster Keaton silents with live scores); high and low (films by French intellectual Chris Marker and California nudie-king Russ Meyer); near and far (local director Charles Bowe and Japanese fantasist Hayao Miyazaki). And most, if not all of it, is rare and vital. Neighborhood because it continues to draw the campus crowd in Stadium Village. And, yes, it's a movie house in the classic tradition: flashing lights on the marquee, soda rather than Sobe, cinephilia instead of snobbery.
Readers' Choice: Lagoon Cinema BEST ART CINEMA Minnesota Film Arts' University Film Society at Bell Auditorium In what can only be described as an act of God, an obscure documentary ode to Christian activist/theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer drew 10,000 faithful over the course of two months last summer. This miracle booking not only helped U Film to resurrect itself commercially, but to find its religion--in nonfiction. Indeed, the Bell has nearly become the site of a year-round documentary film festival, having played host to some of the most genuine art cinema in years, including the Brooklyn-set family epic Love & Diane, the Brazilian reality nail-biter Bus 174, the Chinese Cultural Revolution doc Morning Sun, the French primary school heart-warmer To Be and to Have, and the aging-hippie portrait The Same River Twice. Though U Film's 35mm equipment has certainly seen better days, a spiffy new video projector has been installed just in time for us to witness the rebirths of both the Bell and the populist art film in sharp focus.
BEST ART GALLERY Ox-Op Gallery See if you can follow this: Bar owner and ex-Marine starts a punk rock label, puts his logo on a Zippo, sells a bunch, starts putting underground artists' work on Zippos, sells a bunch more. Next, he converts the garage in the back of one of his bars into a gallery and hires the publisher of a hip-hop and graffiti magazine to manage it. That, in a nutshell, is the story of Ox-Op, one of the Twin Cities' least likely fantastic art spaces. Since opening a year ago, the smallish gallery--founded by Tom Hazelmeyer, the godfather of the Grumpy's/Amphetamine Reptile/FlameRite Lighters empire; and run by Wes Winship of Life Sucks Die magazine--has exhibited a veritable who's who of the art and design underground. There have been big names, like the insanely prolific Gary Baseman, Shep "Andre's Got a Posse" Fairey, and former Devo frontman Mark Mothersbaugh. And there have been shows by underrated local design treasures like CSA and Aesthetic Apparatus. Ox-Op's "Rated XX" exhibit, a group exhibit of all-female work, expands the gallery's horizons a bit while continuing to hew to the apparent mission of displaying outwardly innocent but slightly sinister work. And in lieu of $8 Walker After Hours martinis of the month, at Ox-Op you can find on-tap Grain Belt a few steps away.
Readers' Choice: Walker Art Center BEST MUSEUM Walker Art Center The St. Paul kid-thrillers are more hands-on than the Walker. The Weisman is prettier, the American Swedish Institute more opulent. MIA guards have better uniforms. Even the modestly funded Bell Museum of Natural History surpasses the WAC in one respect: It has dioramas. But sculptor Ed Kienholz's Portrait of a Mother with Past Affixed, from the Walker's permanent collection, works like a diorama in a way that's more mysterious, more profound. Plus, you can walk all the way around it and peek through the door of this toolshed-sized house at the plaster mom and her accumulated belongings. The construction is spooky, sad, and just a little bit lurid--in a satisfying way. We wouldn't want this house to be any larger--but the museum that houses it has swallowed the pill that makes things bigger. With a little luck, we'll soon see more of Portrait and its peers in the permanent collection that have been in and out of storage. The Walker will soon be opening its own ultrahypermegacomplex. But we've hardly had occasion to grouse before this point. Thanks to the Walker, the past 12 moons have seen us rock with Wilco, scratch our heads to Lee Ranaldo, and marvel at the surreal escapades of Big Dance Theater. And with its porcine building, grassy seating, and convertible coat-tent combo, the design show titled "Strangely Familiar" offered more nourishment for our hungry imaginations than Rupert Murdoch and company provide in a fortnight. With its unrivaled performing arts programming, globalist vision, education efforts, and mini-golf, the Walker has long tentacles that reach far out into the community. That's right, mini-golf is coming to the sculpture garden. Fore!
Readers' Choice: Science Museum of Minnesota BEST MUSEUM EXHIBITION "Crossing the Channel" - Minneapolis Institute of Arts This summer blockbuster, which came to the MIA after debuting at the London's Tate Britain, is the kind of show that never ends up in Minneapolis. Starting with its centerpiece, Theodore Gericault's macabre yet luminous shipwreck scene The Raft of the Medusa, "Crossing the Channel" constituted a veritable walking tour of 19th-century European art, including a number of well-known paintings that have never toured stateside before. But, despite its rarefied subject and catchall salon-style presentation, "Crossing the Channel" wasn't just a moldy greatest-hits collection of Delacroixs and Constables. Curated by the MIA's Patrick Noon, the show also made a provocative and convincing case for the cross-germination between French and British painters after the Napoleonic wars. As with any thoughtfully organized exhibit, however, it was the paintings themselves that made this art-history lesson manifest.
BEST SINGLE-ARTIST SHOW Don Holzschuh's Minneapolis exhibit at Flanders Contemporary Arts We could all use a Don Holzschuh to make us look good. For almost 25 years, the painter has been transforming Minneapolis streetscapes on canvas with a bright palette: painting sidewalks turquoise, boulevards purple, and White Castles as though they were attractive landmarks. Holzschuh has used all parts of our fair city as muse, even the ugliest concrete spaces, and created a body of work that could be called an extreme makeover success. The paintings chosen for Holzschuh's exhibit last December at Flanders were dynamite: The bright colors and strong brushstrokes acted like a sunlamp, recharging those of us dismayed by the gray winter sky outside. Through this artist's eye, a neighborhood takes on a new and slightly idealized form on a two-foot-by-two-foot scale. The Flanders Gallery itself will be adopting a new shape after bailing on the Warehouse-cum-Frat Party District, and will inhabit a new Lyn-Lake space in June.
BEST PUBLIC ART PROJECT Merit Printing Mural Most of the workday warriors and nocturnal thrill-seekers who pass the mural on the First Avenue side of Merit Printing probably dismiss it as yet another garden-variety graffiti piece without even bothering to examine its contents. Too bad--the Krylon-covered wall is as much text as it is a work of art. Climb out of the car someday and read the thing, starting with the words "On a little planet called Earth," in the upper right-hand corner of the piece, closest to Washington Avenue. You'll soon encounter a blistering indictment of the Bush-era American Way, one that reminds us that the root of "consumerism" is "consume," which is what we are doing as we sit idling in First Avenue traffic. A cupid holding a fistful of dollar bills proclaims, "Romance isn't dead, it's big business." A monitor-enclosed skull with devil horns announces that "the average American watches 56 days of TV a year." A charging--or fleeing--rhino protests, "I need my horn more than you do." Sure it's sloganeering, but there's not an assertion on the wall that's easily disproved. Shortly after the mural went up in June of 2003, instigator Daniel Chen expressed the hope that it wouldn't last for more than a year. Lucky for us, he hasn't gotten his way.
BEST ARTS ORGANIZATION Springboard for the Arts Even given our flaccid economy, Minnesota offers a wealth of funding options for artists and nonprofit arts organizations, what with grants from McKnights, Jeromes, and Bushes (no relation to you-know-who) practically begging to be taken. But securing a piece of the pie requires a certain kind of savvy, which is where Springboard for the Arts comes in. The organization provides reasonably priced workshops and individual consultations that cover every aspect of the grant-writing process. Plus, the group can advise you on copyright law, marketing, going nonprofit, and everything else associated with the business of art. For the criminally minded (actually those in need of tax info), Springboard even offers a workshop called "Staying Out of Jail."
BEST LOCAL IMPRESARIO Clint Simonsen Anyone can book a music show, especially if the promoter has got a bundle of cash and is willing to see it evaporate. But promoting is like any other kind of gambling: When your stake is gone, you're out of the game. For two consecutive years, DeStijl/Freedom From Festival co-creator Clint Simonsen has boldly wielded his own hard-earned nest egg to spectacular effect--and kept his shirt at the end of the day. At last October's two-day extravaganza, Simonsen's fiscal temerity brought us face to face with dozens of musicians from a wild international underground. Jazz iconoclast Arthur Doyle, minimalist pioneer Tony Conrad, and folk legend Bridget St. John probably hadn't played in Minneapolis in years--if they'd ever been here at all. Even fairly frequent visitors to these environs bent over backward to enhance the sonic circus--literally, in the case of New York's No Neck Blues band. That neo-tribalist collective's performance found the band more or less abandoning their instruments to perform various feats of physical derring-do using the Fine Line itself as a prop. Even they were upstaged, though, by veteran Massachusetts sonic disrupter Emil Beaulieau, whose inspired, mock-professorial shtick captured the event's "you can be serious and have loads of fun doing it" spirit perfectly.
BEST CHOREOGRAPHER HIJACK Kristin Van Loon and Arwen Wilder have spent the past decade setting movement to the words of Gertrude Stein and harmonica practice tapes, diving into wading pools, finding new ways to improvise while grating carrots, creating works for casts of "thousands," and generally elevating the concept of the dance duo to a new level. Last fall the pair decided it was high time for a retrospective and they invited a bevy of lucky dancers to inhabit a HIJACK classic for a few nights. It was fascinating to watch other performers assume roles that were created out of Van Loon's unbridled athleticism and Wilder's intractable cool. At the same time, the retrospective proved that while a HIJACK work might not find its intended emotional or physical target on every try, the development of broader themes is just as important as the duo's desire to be seen onstage. HIJACK closed the anniversary shows with a new duet, "Fetish," a meditation on desire and fierce knee-high leather boots. Performed by the choreographers themselves, this piece subtly transformed the politics of power into the politics of play. Having recently scored a prestigious Bush Foundation Fellowship, Van Loon and Wilder should have more deep thoughts (and plenty of belly laughs) in store for their next retrospective in 2013. BEST DANCER Roxane Wallace The most memorable dancers are those who move effortlessly, leaving an imprint on the atmosphere yet barely betraying evidence of any kinesthetic toll. For more than 10 years, Roxane Wallace has shared her singular state of grace with the Twin Cities dance community, combining confident serenity and an ever-present potential for explosive power. Whether tackling West African dance by Chuck Davis and Morris Johnson, Haitian rhythms with Djola Branner, or modern works from Cathy Young, Morgan Thorson, June Wilson, Reggie Wilson, and Urban Bush Women, Wallace always manages to capture the balance of physicality and spirituality that is the intent of the choreography. Now in her second season with Stuart Pimsler Dance & Theater, Wallace continues to develop as a standout performer on stage. At the same time, she has become a leader through her management of the troupe's Beauty in Difference Project, a community-based endeavor recently launched in response to the politics of fear dividing post-9/11 American culture.
BEST DANCE PERFORMANCE Ballet of the Dolls Ah, The Nutcracker...that annual tradition featuring a war between rats and toy soldiers, aloof sugarplum fairies, a young girl's coming of age, and a magical Christmas tree that grows larger when the grown-ups go to bed! Hmmm. Seems more like a fine opportunity to riff on dysfunctional family dynamics, consumerism, sex, and all those things that make our seasons bright. The Ballet of the Dolls has developed its hipster Nutcracker?! (Not So) Suite over several years, but last December the troupe ventured into the Ordway's McKnight Theater for a grander production. Kevin McCormick joyfully reprised his role as the chic Upper East Side Momma to Julie Tehven's ingenue Marie--an awkward teen consumed by adoration for her Ken doll. Meanwhile, Zhauna Franks elevated her Barbie portrayal to superheroine status and Stephanie Fellner infused the Rat Queen with Angelina Joliesque dominatrix verve. The Dolls even offered up a "naughty" version for those who like their Nutcracker with more sauce (and skimpier lingerie). Few have dared to challenge the underlying premise of this seemingly innocent ballet, but Johnson, who skillfully combines a true love of the classics with the subversive genius to reimagine them, really delivers the holiday cheer.
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