Kaleena Miller went from bopping around the dance studio where her mother was a teacher to producing a show as a senior dance major at the University. And Karla Grotting - University dance instructor and...

Emerson Drive doesn't exactly have the stereotypical look of country musicians. Among them, the group wore a Hollister shirt, a track jacket and a faded Vikings jersey. Yeah, one had a cowboy hat. But...

In terms of the artistic hierarchy of the early 20th century, one would think that Europe " and its meccas, London and Paris " would claim the top spot. After all, countless writers, painters and poets...

The ideals of honor, duty and sacrifice play out more often in a military academy than a film about love. "Tristan & Isolde" sets itself against bloody battle scenes, jealousy, betrayal and brutality...

Love is never easy, especially when surrounded by the piranhas, crocodiles, poisonous snakes and disease-carrying mosquitoes packed in the novel "The Sunflower." And writing a book about love has just...

Students who complete the competitive, rigorous Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in art at the University often take one of two roads when they finish: pursuing a graduate degree or working professionally...

Like it or not, Thanksgiving is over and the holiday season is in full swing. But before you say "Bah, humbug" to all the celebrating, try out the theater shows and the parades and the holiday displays...

He's a spoken-word artist. She's a second-year medical school student with a 6-year-old son. University students Ismail Khalidi and Rebecca Trotzky-Sirr are student-activists. They fight for justice in...

Maybe this book is supposed to be a clever way to approach the failure-riddled world of dating. Maybe we're supposed to laugh at the stories about booty calls and friends with benefits. This book claims...

The theater is silent. Then we hear a piano " the introduction to "Seasons of Love" " an anthem both on and off Broadway. But this is not a staged production of the beloved musical that shook up Broadway...

We don't even have time to catch our breath. But she tells us to hurry, so we do. We run to our places for what seems like the hundredth time so Briana Kennedy-Coker can start. The stereo blares Christina...

The last home football game was Saturday, but the season isn't over for the University Marching Band. Another week of high-stepping, keeping in time and staying in tune " all at the same time " doesn't...

More often than not, directors hold a clear vision of what they want in a show. But, as Jonah Winn-Lenetsky found out, sometimes a director has to be flexible. The theater arts graduate student directs...

Bowling pins, like middle-school crushes, are fickle. Just ask University sophomore Cloid Green. Out with some friends at Coffman's Goldy's Gameroom, Green stood, prepared himself and took a deep breath....

Tales of young, tragic love are as popular as, well, "Romeo and Juliet." But other stories of star-crossed lovers are often thrown aside in favor of the tearjerker about teenagers in Verona. Just don't...

This could be big - bigger than learning that Dad's been eating the cookies left out for Santa, that the money from the Tooth Fairy really came from Mom's purse. Of course, this has nothing to do with...

Don't be surprised if they sing snippets of songs in lectures and practice bits of choreography on the bridge. It's simply because they spend their days on campus and their nights on a stage in Bloomington...

In the rock musical "Rent," the performers declare that dance is no way to make a living. They sing of "masochism, pain, perfection, muscle spasms, chiropractors, short careers, eating disorders." And...

The play's the thing," quoth Shakespeare's Danish prince. But it takes more than writing a play to win a Nobel Prize. Sometimes a playwright is awarded for writing the silences. The University's Xperimental...

Clad in a leotard, cut-off tights and a "Flashdance"-style sweat shirt with her hair pulled back into a neat bun, Roshaunta LaBroi looks like a typical dancer. But her road to the University's dance department...

The higher and quicker you climb, the harder you fall. In "Two for the Money," directed by D.J. Caruso, a good guy gets caught up in a game of excess - too much excitement, and too much fame and glory,...

Science can explain only so much. When science fails, we can remember that, as Henry Miller said, "Every man has his destiny." And every woman hers. And in the case of "Just Like Heaven," every couple...

The lines between the genres of art are often blurred. A singer may use a painting for inspiration, while a theater production might incorporate dance. In this case, architecture molds the art. The Walker...

Charlie Schaller does it all. He sings, plays the piano and guitar, and writes his own songs. But, unlike the majority of up-and-coming singer-songwriters, music wasn't Schaller's first choice. The University...

The witches in "Macbeth" would have had a ball with a cauldron like this. With the concentration of a brain surgeon and the dexterity of a circus juggler, the participants in Pour Bastards: The 36th Annual...

Nobody ever knows what to do with them. Nobody else would want them or care about them. Nobody, that is, except Chris Pennington. Pennington is the man behind the Ten-Second Film Festival, set for July...

On one hand, Don Giovanni is a manipulative man bent on conquering as many women as possible. On the other hand, he's a misunderstood character who embodies all the extremes of human nature. The University...

The original choreographers of "Swan Lake" would pirouette in their graves at this production. Australian Dance Theatre's "Birdbrain" takes the classical ballet technique of Marius Petipa and Lev Ivanov's...

Two groups with divergent but complementary styles join forces this weekend. Between Measures, a newly formed barbershop quartet, and 7 Days, the University's a cappella choir, appear Saturday at Ted Mann...

Some people have too much time on their hands. Imagine a CD that takes 47 recording sessions during 2 1/2 months and a "record" button that's pushed more than 3,000 times. And it's all just for fun. Army...

The transition from student to professional is difficult in any area of study but especially in the performing arts. Ballet Arts Minnesota, though, has a solution to that. Springboard Dance, an intensive...

The oldest proverb of entertainers is simple: The show must go on. But some shows are so radical and provocative it's hard to keep the audience in the theater. And that's just how Jerome Bel likes it....

Dance is a language of the body, not of the tongue. For Benjamin Rasmussen, though, the constriction that silence puts on dance is something to be broken. Rasmussen, a dance student in his fifth year at...

The world is indeed a stage, and the Guthrie Theater makes the best of it. Love, war, mistaken identities, a gay subtext and a happy ending mark "As You Like It" out as definitely a Shakespearean comedy. Joe...

Holly Williams sings, plays the piano and plays the guitar. And one more thing: Hank Williams Sr. was her grandfather. As a performer with some of country music's biggest legends in her family album, it's...

With more than a century of experience among them, the artists in this exhibit deserve to curate it themselves. "Retrospectives: Bethke, Cowette, Hoard," the new exhibit at the Katherine E. Nash Gallery,...

A single explosion can shatter more than a single life. We witness the aftermath of devastation on our televisions. The destruction is neatly printed in the clear black type of our newspapers. No matter...

It's back. And, unfortunately, it's more irritating this time around. "Son of the Mask," the sequel to the 1994 Jim Carrey film "The Mask," brings back the eponymous magical object, plus over-the-top special...

Parents say it'll give us acne. Magazines tell us it has a marvelous effect on women. It apparently helped the Aztec Emperor Montezuma with his, ahem, bedroom antics with his 200 wives. Now, approximately...

Sometimes, it's lonely when you play by yourself. Ani DiFranco did it all on her last album, "Educated Guess" - she played all the instruments, recorded all the tracks and even sang backup for herself. This...

Oh, the sordid world behind the scenes of the music business. There's backstabbing, catty behavior and sex jokes. Sounds just like high school. Tom Matthews' novel, "Like We Care," is a satirical look...

."Alfred Maurer: The First American Modern" is a traveling exhibition that has made a temporary home in the University's Weisman Art Museum until April 24. The 52-piece exhibit covers the artist's journey...

Tiresias, the blind prophet, warns Oedipus with a curt "It is a curse to know too much." But humans have always hungered for knowledge, always yearned to know more. We can't leave well enough alone and...

For a film that features sword fights, sopranos and subterranean intrigue, "The Phantom of the Opera" is surprisingly humdrum. Director Joel Schumaker ("Phone Booth," "Batman Forever") has brought Andrew...

Now this is a symbiotic relationship. Swiss graphic designer Niklaus Troxler combines a love of jazz music with a similar affection for visual art to create an array of posters that advertise performances...

There might be a lot more single women out there soon, thanks to this book. Come to think of it, there'll probably be a lot more single men, too. "He's Just Not That Into You: The No-Excuses Truth to Understanding...

When will we wake up? "The Plot Against America" is akin to the middle of a nightmare. All you can do is pray you awaken and realize, thankfully, it was just a bad dream. Written by acclaimed author Philip...

Hold onto your sleighs, folks, it's gonna be a bumpy night. Santa's in a forest with a shovel stuck in his throat, and a blond guy in a trench coat is searching the streets for little children. This book...

From Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's "Sherlock Holmes" to Agatha Christie's "Hercule Poirot," British mystery writers have a knack for creating just the sort of detective who keeps things quirky while solving...

Her growing popularity is not due to chance or accident. Chicago-based singer-songwriter Rachel Yamagata's "Happenstance," released earlier this year, is a mellow, piano-heavy album that's perfect to listen...

Just think of it as a two-hour halftime show. The University Marching Band presents its 43rd annual indoor concert this weekend. The program, called "Pride of Minnesota," consists of a diverse variety...

A game of word association rarely puts "sex" and "nun" together. Unless, of course, you're writing a book about the secret lives of the real people who often undermine the "Sound of Music" stereotype. Cheryl...

The play is set in the 1960s, a time when old values and traditions collided head-on with new fashions and ideas. A lot of the characters end up colliding, too. "Black Comedy," directed by Joel Sass and...

To hell with the third time. This time, the fourth time's the charm. Jimmy Eat World's first album didn't even crack the Top 200, and the band was dropped by Capitol Records for poor sales. But the fourth...

There's a serial killer loose on campus. "The Overnights," by St. Paul native Jeffrey Victor Dorle, is a chilling tale of murder and revenge at a college somewhere in the Midwest. The setting seems awfully...

A woman who attempts to strangle herself with a phone cord, a scheming family that attempts to rewrite a will and two lovers who just want to be together make up the cast of characters. This horror show...

Buttons and light bulbs and cardboard, oh my. This month, the Nash Gallery plays host to a new exhibit that shows the dexterity and versatility of a baker's dozen worth of artists. "Interplay" (n. action,...

With 101 years of experience at throwing Homecoming celebrations, imagine how intense this year's will be. The University's School of Music's annual Homecoming Collage Concert, set for Saturday, includes...

This is a real heroine, even if she has some, well, out-of-this-world genes. Lt. Ellen Ripley, of "Alien" fame, is considered the first woman in science fiction who didn't need to wear a mini-skirt, push-up...

F rom "The Wizard of Oz" and Kermit the Frog to Lucky Charms, rainbows have been fascinating for generations. "Seeing Color: Color Across the Collections," the new exhibit in the Goldstein Museum of Design,...

He's put out two dozen albums, contributed to approximately 30 compilations and has made 10 appearances on other artists' recordings. This is one persistent musician. Greg Brown's latest album, "In the...

For some, the sought-after miracle arrives 10, 20, 30 years down the road. For others, exoneration comes after death; by then, it's too late. "Bloodsworth: The True Story of the First Death Row Inmate...

Take a Stravinsky opera, add brand-new music and dance, throw in some sin and you've got "A-morality Cock-tale." University students, alumni and faculty members have combined forces to create a project...

If Chekhov isn't broke, don't fix him. Theatre in the Round's production of an adapted "The Cherry Orchard" does the best it can with a script that sporadically mixes classical language with modern speech. "The...

The best way to create art is when there are no limits. After receiving $25,000 in McKnight Artist Fellowships, four photographers put their creativity to the test. The result is "New Photography: McKnight...

She's an American icon, a bright green figure of evil incarnate. She haunts the dreams of children; her watery death at the hands of a farm girl still sends shivers down the spine. But nobody ever took...

Ah, love. From innocent playground romance to tumultuous middle-school affairs, love at first sight and best-friends-to-lovebirds, poets and songwriters have seen it all. Just because Valentine's Day has...

Davy Rothbart's grade school habit of picking up forgotten notes, pictures and letters spawned a magazine. That journal in turn created a book that delves into the U.S. psyche. Well, more or less. "Found:...

Rituals need a little spice every now and then. Formed in 1987, the American Indian Dance Theatre has garnered worldwide acclaim for its interpretations of both sacred and secular American Indian dances. Traditional...

Imagine there are five people who can explain your existence. Then imagine your heaven is five situations that shaped your life and told from the point of view of the other person in that situation. Mitch...

College students are generally hip, cool and cutting edge, and that's especially so for these eight graduate students. The Master of Fine Arts exhibitions now showing at the Katherine E. Nash Gallery are...

Take a handful of poets and painters, another of philosophers and those they love or wish they loved or wish they didn't, put them in 1830s Paris, where they live and love in uncertain times, set it to...

Finding an "angel" in the art world can be a hell of a problem. Thank heavens for The Soap Factory. No Name Exhibitions @ The Soap Factory is providing 26 up-and-coming artists with a place to show more...

When Olympic athletes finish first, they climb a platform to receive medals of recognition. After heroic deeds, soldiers are awarded Purple Hearts and Silver Stars to pin on their chests so all can appreciate...

Relics of a ruined empire capture the imagination of scholars and laypeople alike. Dr. Michael Miller collects the history, real and imagined, of ancient Rome. He collects memories in limestone and marble,...

IDir. Thanos Anastopoulos f Atlas thought he had a tough time holding up the world, he should have tried holding an entire country's Olympic dreams on his shoulders instead. First-time director Thanos...

ODirected by Charles Bowe h, what a tangled web we weave when we pit brother against brother, husband against wife and playwright against director. Such is Charles Bowe's "New World Symphony." Shot on...

TArgentina, 2003 Dir. Albertina Carri o mourn is one thing, but to mourn people without remembering them is another. Argentina's "Dirty War" during the late 1970s and early 1980s left more than 25,000...

Literature has the glorious power to enlighten, to teach and, more importantly, to make people learn to question authority. In "Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books," Azar Nafisi, recounts how she,...

This is one of those albums that makes you swear you've heard it somewhere before, you're just not quite sure where. Then again, that's what happens when the band's frontman combines a Counting Crows modern...

As Americans, we pride ourselves on our variety of ethnic restaurants, our clothing styles and our tastes in music. We seek new ways to express ourselves and our individuality, but despite the United States'...

Bangs, crashes and clashes occasionally blot out a human voice that's sometimes clear and precise, but sometimes hard to understand. The noise is obvious as soon as one enters the gallery, but it's unclear...

Israel's Batsheva Dance Company presents a remix of pieces from eight or nine dances this Saturday at Northrop Auditorium. The only problem must have been deciding which parts of which dances to showcase,...

Enough of the oodles of albums that teenyboppers-turned-sex-symbols churn out with tired old lyrics and the same incessantly happy beats. Bring on the punk rockers and the folk singers. Bring on Ani DiFranco. "Educated...

Bicycles and semi-trucks are modes of transportation and both have wheels, even though the semi has a good 16-wheel advantage. The similarities seem to end there, unless you're the One on One Bicycle Studio...

T"Ö It is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security Ö" - The Declaration of Independence, 1776 he United States has long been upheld...

One should avoid clichés like the plague. But there's no place like home, and a chain is only as strong as its weakest link. And, of course, never judge a book by its cover. Dan Brown's "The Da...

When the cat's away, the mice will play. Hopefully, three local art institutions have a back-up plan for keeping burglars and grimy fingers away from their masterpieces while the staff switches roles....

Very often, the most popular view of an artist misses the larger picture. James McNeill Whistler, a Massachusetts-born artist, was a pioneer printmaker in the 19th century, and the Minneapolis Institute...

Technology is supposed to make things easier, but try telling that to the judges for the Minnesota National Print Biennial. Visual art is no longer confined to analog media such as pencils and watercolors....

I"Let man have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moves upon the earth." - Genesis 1:26 n an age of technology and life-saving medical breakthroughs,...