Art Hounds: Batuque, Sondheim, and prairie painter pioneers

Orabel Thortvedt, one of the artists featured in the "Prairie Daughters" exhibit, as a young girl carving sculptures into the banks of the Buffalo River near Georgetown, Minnesota, c. 1910. (Photo courtesy of the Historical & Cultural Society of Clay County)

The hounds take you to St. Paul for some unadulterated Sondheim, to Minneapolis in search of the roots of Afro-Brazilian dance, and to Moorhead for some late 19th-century prairie paintings.

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Nobody, according to Twin Cities dancer Anthony Galloway, brings Brazilian dance forms to the stage with the physicality and grace of Contempo Physical Dance. Contempo's latest performance, "Batuque," at the Cowles Center for Dance in Minneapolis Feb. 1-3, embraces the African roots of Brazilian dance with live, extremely percussive music and Afro-centric art and design by St. Paul artist Ta-Coumba Aiken.

For singer and Minnesota Opera communications manager Daniel Zillmann, Broadway composer Stephen Sondheim has written the story of America, and his life. Daniel plans to revel in Sondheim's music at the Ordway in St. Paul, which is featuring Sondheim this month as part of its "Broadway Songbook" series through Jan. 27.

Tania Blanich, Executive Director of the Rourke Museum Art Gallery and Museum in Moorhead, felt a strong kinship with the two painters featured in "Prairie Daughters: The Art and Lives of Annie Stein and Orabel Thortvedt." The exhibition, at the Hjemkomst Center in Moorhead through Dec. 31, focuses on two prairie women who documented their lives on canvas during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. For more Art Hounds' recommendations, check us out on Facebook and Twitter. Art Hounds is also available as a podcast on iTunes. Art Hounds is powered by the Public Insight Network.

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