Foot in the Door

Once every decade, the Minneapolis Institute of Arts invites any Minnesotan to submit one piece of visual art into the exhibition Foot in the Door. The only criteria: The work must fit in a one-foot-squared box. 3-Minute Egg met with artists (and many wanna-be artists) waiting in line Saturday morning to drop off their contributions. Opening reception is February 18.

Weekly quiz No. 4

The prizes for this installment of our weekly contest are a pair of tickets to an upcoming Minnesota Orchestra concert, to be determined. Here’s what you do:

• Watch the 3-Minute Egg videos that aired Feb. 1-4.
• Correctly answer the four questions below based on these videos. Email your answers, along with your name and a phone number, to quiz@3minuteegg.org
• If you’re randomly chosen from other perfect responders, you win the tickets. Simple as that!

Deadline for entries is 10 pm Monday, Feb. 8 — only one entry per person and email address. We’ll announce the winner next Tuesday! Happy viewing and good luck.

Questions

Which of the following musicians ISN’T interviewed in our video featuring the Minnesota Orchestra and St. Paul Chamber Orchestra?:

1) Steven Copes

2) Janet Horvath

3) Tony Ross

4) Daria Adams

Violinist Kimberlee Dodds-Dray, one of the winners in Kenwood Symphony Orchestra’s Master’s Concerto and Aria Competition, believes her return to music helped her overcome:

1) depression

2) financial hardship

3) an illness

4) shyness

Tracey Maloney says she and other co-founders of Thirst Theater were motivated to:

1) Experiment with improvisational theater.

2) Create an environment where an evening of theater would feel like seeing bands in a bar.

3) Give themselves artistic control in careers that are otherwise spent working for large, equity theaters.

4) Create a communal experience between performers and audiences.

Kristin Van L0on and Arwen Wilder, of Hijack, created a dance for the James Sewell Ballet that comments on:

1) The development of the Schubert Theater.

2) A disparity in funding for artists.

3) The cultural and technical differences of dancers trained in ballet and modern work.

4) Environmental justice.

Email your answers by 10 pm Monday, Feb. 8, along with your name and a phone number, to quiz@3minuteegg.org

Sewell Ballet Hijacked

James Sewell is sharing the choreography for this weekend’s program at the Southern Theater. 3-Minute Egg takes a look at work in rehearsal by company member Nicolas Lincoln and the duo of Hijack — Kristin Van Loon and Arwen Wilder.

A Thirst for Dinner Theater

Thirst Theater formed several years ago as an outlet to produce new short works in front of bar and restaurant patrons. The series has returned to Joe’s Garage, where you can catch four works every Monday night, through March 29. 3-Minute Egg brings you to this past Monday’s dining-room action.

Soloists shine through Kenwood

Women swept the honors at the 13th annual Kenwood Symphony Orchestra Concerto and Aria Competition, and 3-Minute Egg met up with three of them at a rehearsal for the winners’ concert. Check out 3-Minute Egg’s coverage of the 2009 showcase.

Two orchestras, one stage

Musicians in the Minnesota Orchestra and St. Paul Chamber Orchestra know each other well — there are a couple of cross-orchestra marriages, and many have joined to form small ensembles — but rarely join each other in their entirety on stage. 3-Minute Egg caught a rehearsal with both orchestras as they prepared to perform Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring.

Weekly contest No.3

UPDATE: We have a winner — Cate McKinney of Minneapolis! She watched and won, and so can you. Our next contest for local tickets goes online Friday.

Our third weekly contest is here, and we’ve got a prize worth your time — two tickets to see Hedda Gabler, which runs Feb. 11-14 at the Southern Theater.

Here’s what you do:

• Watch the 3-Minute Egg videos that aired Jan. 25-28.
• Correctly answer the four questions below based on these videos. Email your answers, along with your name and a phone number, to quiz@3minuteegg.org
• If you’re randomly chosen from other perfect responders, you win the tickets. Simple as that!

Deadline for entries is 10 pm Monday, Feb. 1 — only one entry per person and email address. We’ll announce the winner next Tuesday! Happy viewing and good luck.

Questions

Judith Brin Ingber, in creating her dance work Stepping into Heaven, discusses using:

1) Stones as metaphors of loss and growth.

2) Ancient texts as a narrative roadmap.

3) Her breath as an expression of grief.

4) The music from a sole flute as a call to healing.

Visual artist Robyn Stoller Awend, discussing her recent exhibition at Form+Content, was initially inspired by the story of Jews:

1) Photographing places of worship within the Lithuanian ghetto of Vilna.

2) Melting down Hebrew letters to make bullets.

3) Continuing to celebrate the High Holidays during the Holocaust.

4) Keeping detailed journals of their resistance to Nazi persecution.

Bassist Adam Linz says Fat Kid Wednesday began charging admission to their Monday performances in the Turf Club’s Clown Lounge because:

1) The tip jar kept getting stolen.

2) A cover charge would keep the growing crowds in check.

3) The Turf Club management saw the Monday night sets as a small but steady source of revenue.

4) The musicians wanted at least token compensation for performing.

Otto Ramstad of the Body Cartography describes being inspired creatively by:

1) Learning how protons and neutrons move in relation to each other.

2) The tight confines of Cold War-era bomb shelters.

3) The effects of oceanic debris on global climate.

4) The social collision of peaceful and military uses of nuclear energy.

Email your answers by 10 pm Monday, Feb. 1, along with your name and a phone number, to quiz@3minuteegg.org

Body Cartography: Half Life

Otto Ramstad and Olive Bieringa — a couple collectively known as the Body Cartography — have always made environmentally inspired dances. Their new work, 1/2 Life, is born from more than five years of scientific and social exploration involving nuclear war and energy. 3-Minute Egg caught glimpses of the work and spoke with the pair about the research that went into their stage work. Performances run tonight through Saturday at the Southern Theater.

Monday = Wednesday

Michael Lewis, J.T. Bates and Adam Linz started playing jazz together as kids and, in 2000, began performing as the trio Fat Kid Wednesdays every Monday night in the basement “Clown Lounge” of the Turf Club. Those late-night Monday sessions are still going strong, despite success and commitments in other musical avenues for all three musicians (Lewis is the saxophonist in Happy Apple). Fat Kid Wednesday also brings other jazz artists into the mix and recently began curating Tuesday nights there. 3-Minute Egg dropped in to find out why Fat Kid Wednesday are still motivated to spend their Monday nights in the Clown Lounge.

Visualizing Print

Georgette Sosin and Robyn Stoller Awend are Jewish artists whose faith play into their artwork. Sosin’s latest work, part of her Shared Heritage exhibition at the Tychman Shapiro Gallery, derive from Neil Douglas-Klotz’s book Prayers for the Cosmos. Awend recently merged printmaking, photography and sculpture into an exhibition at Form+Content based on an Abraham Sutzkever poem written in Lithuania’s Vilna ghetto. 3-Minute Egg went to the opening reception for Sosin’s show and the closing reception for Awend’s.