MUSEUMS AND GALLERIES

Weisman Art Museum

“There are some who would insist that clothes are utterly unimportant. To even focus on them is to dance with the devil of superficiality and pretension,” writes Robin Givhan, fashion editor of The Washington Post, in the exhibition catalog for “Pattern Language: Clothing as Communicator,” which comes to the Weisman Art Museum this fall. “Clothing alone does not give us the full picture of the person,” she concedes, but notes that it’s “a thumbnail sketch, an introduction, and a tool for deciding how much more we want to know.”

The exhibition, which originated at Tufts University Art Gallery, goes beyond examining the everyday function of clothing and into the realms of clothing as art, design as social critique, material as inspiration for interaction, and fashion as cultural system. Items from the 1960s through the present, created by artists from around the world, include Joseph Beuys’s Felt Suit, Emily Sontag’s Second Skin (labeled with anatomically correct terms of plastic surgery), and a dress

SUITS: THE CLOTHES MAKE THE MAN (1998) (above), by the Art Guys, Courtesy of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; ANTI_DOG COPYWRITING UNWANTED SENTENCES (2003), by Alicia Framis, courtesy of the artist; and NEXUS ARCHITECTURE x 8—CITE LA NOUE (1997) (below), by Lucy Orta, courtesy of the artist, are part of “Pattern Language” at the Weisman.

woven out of cloth tape measures. In conjunction with the exhibition, curator Judith Fox and three of the artists conduct a panel discussion (October 15), Weisman curator Diane Mullin talks on James Rosenquist’s famous Paper Suit (November 2), and exhibition artist Galya Rosenfeld juries a student runway show (November 30).

“Pattern Language: Clothing as Communicator” runs October 14 through December 31 at the Weisman Art Museum, 333 E. River Road, Minneapolis, 612-625-9494.

Goldstein Museum of Design

Meanwhile, in the tiny Goldstein Gallery on the St. Paul campus, guest curators Dolores DeFore, former merchandise manager at Dayton’s Oval Room and former president of Harold, and Gloria Hogan, a former bureau chief at Women’s Wear Daily, plumbed the archives for couture by the most influential designers of the 20th century. For “American Fashion Transformed,” the duo selected Norman Norell, Pauline Trigere, Geoffrey Beene, and Bill Blass.

All of them “were in business more than 50 years and were behind the growth of American postwar fashion,” Hogan explains. “Their work also demonstrates magnificent tailoring and fit.” She recalls that whenever Blass came to town, “he always said Minneapolis women made it one of the best-dressed cities in the country.” Many of those women have generously donated hundreds of Blass, Beene, Trigere, and Norell items to the Goldstein, enabling an exhibition that looks back at the fashion innovations that still influence designers today. In a lecture, Valerie Steele, chief curator and director of the Museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology, New York, addresses how everyday clothing, high fashion, and wearable art in both this exhibition and “Pattern Language” at the Weisman communicate our social and personal desires (November 16).

“American Fashion Transformed: Four Master Designers” runs September 23, 2006, through January 7, 2007 at the Goldstein Museum of Design, 244 McNeal Hall, 1985 Buford Ave., St. Paul, 612-624-7434.

Bell Museum of Natural History

Jim Brandenburg is best known for his portraits of wolves, photographed primarily in the North Woods of Minnesota and published extensively in National Geographic, as well as in several best-selling books. The Ely, Minnesota–based photographer has also published the creative challenges he’s set for himself, such as shooting just one a photograph a day for 90 days around the lakes and woods that surround his home.

But Brandenburg grew up on the prairies of southwest Minnesota, and in the past 10 years he’s been getting back to his roots. He established a gallery on Main Street in his hometown of Luverne that showcases his past and present prairie photography. He started the Brandenburg Prairie Foundation, which is dedicated to the restoration and expansion of natural prairie in southwest Minnesota. And he began spending more time shooting the tallgrass prairies of Minnesota, Nebraska, the Dakotas, and Iowa.

This exhibition brings together 43 of those photographs, in which he captures the prairie’s wide-open magnificence and intricate detail, as well as the ecosystem’s meditative splendor and incendiary drama. Prior to the exhibition’s opening, Brandenburg speaks about his photographic and conservation work (September 30).

“Touch the Sky: Prairie Photographs by Jim Brandenburg” runs October 1 through December 31 at the Bell Museum of Natural History, 10 Church St. SE, Minneapolis, 612-624-9050.

Pauline Trigere is one of four designers whose work is featured in “American Fashion Transformed” at the Goldstein. Above, her GREEN AND WHITE WOOL SUIT (circa 1960).

Katherine E. Nash Gallery

The University’s art department began the “Fifth Minnesota National Print Biennial,” a juried exhibition, in 1996 as a way of “showcasing the vitality of printmaking, both traditional and unconventional, while stimulating dialogue among Twin Cities artists and print aficionados about the contemporary ideas and issues printmakers are exploring in their work,” explains Jerry Krepps, curator of the exhibition and associate professor in the art department.

Traditionally the genre of printmaking includes woodcut relief, etching and graving itaglio, lithography, and silkscreen. But the genre has expanded to embrace the highly experimental subgenre of digital media. The fifth biennial includes more than 90 works that exemplify printmaking of all types, created by more than 70 artists from around the United States.

Local contributions to the exhibition include a large, bold abstraction rendered via woodblock printing and layers of oil paint on canvas by young, up-and-coming artist Matthew Bindert; and a silkscreen that provocatively merges images of a flower, a bird, and a fan by Stephanie Hunder, associate professor of art at Concordia College. Krepps also singles out Heather O’Hara, a graduate student at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, who had three works accepted into the biennial that “humorously deal with political commentary about the religious right, for instance, in very graphic reds, blacks and whites using woodcuts and silkscreen.” If there’s a theme to this year’s biennial, Krepps ventures, it’s the preponderance of “strong expressive images that deal with issues of humanity.”

The “Fifth Minnesota National Print Biennial” runs October 10 through November 9 at the Katherine E. Nash Gallery, Regis Center for Art, 405 21st Ave. S., Minneapolis, 612-624-7530.

THEATER

University Theatre Presents
The Master and Margarita

For almost a decade, Mikhail Bulgakov struggled to finish his novel, The Master and Margarita. The first version was burned. Subsequent drafts were completed in fits and starts. And Bulgakov died while working on the final version; his wife completed the book in 1941. When it was first published, in Moscow magazine, the

PRAIRIE SMOKE (above) and TOUCH THE SKY AT DUSK, by Jim Brandenburg, are part of “Touch the Sky” at the Bell Museum.

book was heavily censored. In 1989, scholars published a complete version of the novel, now lauded as one of the most important literary works of the Soviet era.

What was the fuss all about? Get a glimpse when University Theatre, under the co-direction of Michael Sommers and Luverne Seifert, performs its version of the novel on the lawn behind Ted Mann Concert Hall. The epic, anti-Stalinist novel is so complex, explains Seifert, head of the B.A. Performance Program in theater, “that we decided it had to be outdoors, otherwise the production would be too confined. The novel is extraordinarily theatrical and the scenes take place in huge spaces, like the entirety of Moscow.”

The theater group also eliminated one of the novel’s three plot lines that intertwine ideas about art and religion, satire and realism, historical truthfulness and contemporary values that were subversive in Bulgakov’s time. They kept the story thread about Satan (i.e., Stalin), who arrives in Moscow in the guise of a gentleman magician named Professor Woland, accompanied by an entourage of questionable characters (including a gun-toting black cat and a fanged hit man).

As this motley crew turns Moscow upside down and causes the citizenry to question the presence of God, another plot centers on the Master, a writer imprisoned in an insane asylum, and his married lover, Margarita, who sells her soul to the Devil to free the Master. (A third thread about the Master’s book, which depicts the crucifixion of Jesus, is merely alluded to.)

But even University Theatre’s streamlining of the novel, under the guidance of Minneapolis playwright Kira Obolensky, promises to be a multidisciplinary pageant, because of the contributions of all the collaborators involved. The 30 student performers come from dance, theater, music, and studio arts. Co-director Sommers, who also directs the Minneapolis-based Open Eye Figure Theater, brings his trenchant social commentary, adventurous staging and puppetry to the production.

Minneapolis choreographer Shawn McConneloug created a movement vocabulary for the students. And Minneapolis composer Eric Jensen helped the students create a band that will perform live within the play and has written the musical score as well. In other words, the group essentially used Bulgakov’s novel “as a springboard,” Sommers explains, “to create a work that’s our own.”

The book can be read from various perspectives, as it’s infused with slapstick-style humor, allegories both religious and philosophical, and socio-political satire. In University Theater’s version, those perspectives will be explored largely through imagery. “The images are the motor of the play, and we tell the story through tableaux, cinematic approaches that take the performers really close or really far away from the audience, and lots of movement,” Sommers says.

The back of the music building will be “dressed,” he adds, to look like apartments. The devils arrive in a tricked-out car. The audience moves with the performers from scene to scene. And there will be a bonfire, and perhaps even fireworks. Adds Sommers, “It’s an outdoor spectacle.”

The Master and Margarita, a non-ticketed production, plays October 5–14 outside the Ted Mann Concert Hall on the West Bank campus. Call 612-625-4001 for information on this and other University Theatre productions.

MUSIC

Northrop Jazz Season

Jazz may still belong to the urban clubs where it originated,

From top: KATHE: DESPAIR and DEFIANCE (2005), color etching, by Warrington Colescott; CATHERINE HARDING TESTS THE SEALS ON HER HOME CANNED PRODUCE (2006), woodcut/silkscreen by Heather O’Hara; and BUSHMEAT(2005), lithograph/monotype, by Tom Christison, are at the Nash Gallery.

with their dusky intimacy. But since Wynton Marsalis first headlined Jazz at Lincoln Center, America’s unique style of music has found a home in concert halls around the country, including through the Northrop Jazz Season at Ted Mann Concert Hall.

Now in its 13th year, the jazz series has a programming approach that generates both excitement and confidence in concertgoers, says Dale Schatzlein, Northrop director and curator of the series. Each year, the series presents a singular combination of jazz masters and young turks. “Our patrons may not know all the artists on the program, and there’s always a wild card,” Schatzlein explains. “But because our patrons know at least one of the artists, they’ll take their chances. They’ve learned to trust the jazz series.”

Case in point: This season opens with tenor-saxophone giant Sonny Rollins (September 17), in concert with Clifton Anderson (trombone), Bobby Broom (guitar), Bob Cranshaw (bass), Kimati Dinizulu (percussion), and Victor Lewis (drums)—hot on the heels of Rollins’s new summer release, Sonny Please. Because Northrop seeks “to journey with the musical evolution of artists,” Schatzlein says,

The Bad Plus performs at the Ted Mann Concert Hall October 4.

this is Rollins’s third appearance in the series. And it could be his last. According to Schatzlein, Rollins has cut back on touring since his wife’s death. This concert provides one more chance to hear the saxophonist who still “blows like a force of nature,” as one reviewer says, and revel in Rollins’s quirky rhythmic patterns, inspired improvisations, and wry humor.

New to the Northrop Jazz Season is the legendary McCoy Tyner (October 28). A celebrated member of John Coltrane’s iconic 1960s quartet, the revered composer, pianist, and bandleader hand-picked a septet for this engagement: Eric Alexander (tenor saxophone), Donald Harrison (alto saxophone), Steve Turre (trombone), Nicholas Payton (trumpet), Charnett Moffett (bass), and Eric Gravatt (drums). The group will resurrect classics from 1960 to 1974 that showcase Tyner’s original blues-based style featuring big block chords and a percussive left hand.

Now, for the series wild card: The Bad Plus (October 4). Made up of three local musicians (pianist Ethan Iverson is from Eau Claire, Wisconsin, while bassist Reid Anderson and drummer David King are Minneapolis natives), the trio blends indie rock’s

McCoy Tyner performs at the Ted Mann Concert Hall October 28.

edge and pop music’s mainstream appeal with jazz’s free-wheeling idiosyncracies. “For decades, jazz artists have been taking standards and making them their own,” Schatzlein explains. “The Bad Plus just does this with rock and pop.” The band’s cover of Vangelis’s “Chariots of Fire,” one reviewer writes, “is a weirdly heartbreaking interpretation . . . that manages to reflect all that is cross-eyed and beautiful about the Bad Plus.”

For more information, call 612-624-2435 or visit www.northrop.umn.edu.

DANCE

Northrop Dance Season

A timeless American modern-dance icon and an ageless African American tap phenom; an opulent Russian ballet classic, and an imagistic butoh ensemble. The fall lineup for this year’s Northrop Dance Season is stunningly diverse, with each offering a must-see event unto itself for dance aficionados and curious neophytes alike.

Never was there a more auspicious season opener than the Martha Graham Dance Company (October 20), last seen here in 1978. Inarguably the doyenne of modern dance, Graham invented a choreographic style centered in the solar plexus that infused

The Martha Graham Dance Company performs at Northrop Auditorium October 20.

her stark, ritualistic dances with primal power. Her legendary collaborations with fashion designer Halston and sculptor Isamu Noguchi also contributed to Graham’s status as a figurehead for the potent rigor of modernism. Since her death, however, Graham’s company has been in disarray, from which dancer Janet Eilber and others have pulled the repertory to relative safety. A selection of signature works will make up the program by the 22-member company.

The dance series continues with the return of the precedent-setting, Paris-based butoh troupe Sankai Juku (November 3), which previously graced the Northrop stage in 1996. The seven-man ensemble—known for shaved heads, white-painted bodies, and glacially paced movement style—was among the first of butoh’s practitioners to bring the post–World War II art form to the concert stage. The company’s evening-length “Kagemi—Beyond the Metaphors” is composed of seven tableaux that open with a forest of lotus flowers and that examine risk, danger, and death within the solemn quietude of butoh.

An aural feast of percussive dance and live sound fills the stage when Savion Glover drums the floorboards in a partly improvised

Sankai Juku performs at Northrop Auditorium November 3.

session with ten classical string musicians and a four-piece jazz band (November 8). Drawing from the deep expressive well in which tap lives as communication, Glover literally “speaks” with his feet as he calls and responds, challenges and answers the musicians with his singular, virtuosic fluency. The musical palette for his solo show, “Classical Savion,” ranges from Vivaldi’s “Four Seasons” to jazzed-up version of “The Stars and Stripes Forever.”

The fall lineup concludes with the return of the Miami City Ballet, founded by the irrepressible Edward Villella, a former superstar of the New York City Ballet. Beloved around the world for their flawless artistry and Balanchine-based repertory, the troupe indulges Northrop audiences during this engagement with the full-length ballet chestnut, “Don Quixote.” Based on Miguel de Cervantes’ classic tale of a foible-rife swordsman and his trusty servant, the endearing ballet bursts with comedy, fantasy, and romance during three acts based on the original ballet by Marius Petipa.

Camille LeFevre is a St. Paul–based freelance writer.