Art Hounds: Sonnets, Destination TC, and love in a science lab

From producer Chris Roberts:

If you feel that 14 lines is the ideal poem length, that surveying Twin Cities history through song and dance sounds appealing, and that love is not just a matter of the heart, but a subject for scientific exploration, you'll be especially intrigued by what the hounds have to say this week.

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Jon Skaalen works for VSA Minnesota, a group that makes the arts more accessibile to people with disabilities. Jon says Theatre Pro Rata's "Emilie: La Marquise Du Chatelet Defends Her Life Tonight," is a captivating study of love through the eyes and methods of a brilliant female scientist who also happens to be Voltaire's lover. Jon says the fact that the play is staged in a lab at St. Catherine's University in St. Paul only strengthens its credibility. Through June 22.

Local dance artist Erinn Liebhard is going to take a historical tour of the Twin Cities, with the help of famed rag time pianist Butch Thompson and Kinetic Evolutions dance company. Erinn, who's artistic director of Rhythmically Speaking Dance, says "Destination Twin Cities" employs music and dance to highlight seminal periods in Twin Cities history, such as the prohibition era, or West Bank counterculture in the 1960s. At the Lab Theatre in Minneapolis, June 14-15.

St. Mary's University music professor Eric Heukeshoven wants to drum up interest in the Great River Shakespeare Festival's annual sonnet contest. Eric says you don't need a plumed pen to craft a sonnet that might net you a chunk of the thousand dollar pot and the eternal admiration of your friends.

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