Mama Mariachi

Scenes from the 2005 Global Village Block Party

Next poll: Do we care about how the Dutch feel about us?

Sankthansaften

Denmark

In Denmark the solstitial celebration is called Sankt Hans aften ("St. John's Eve"). It was an official holiday until 1770 and in accordance with the Danish tradition of celebrating a holiday on the evening before the actual day, it takes place on the evening of June 23. It is the day where the medieval wise men and women (the doctors of that time) would gather special herbs that they needed for the rest of the year to cure people.

It has been celebrated since the times of the Vikings and of Odin and Thor, by visiting healing water sources and making a large bonfire to ward away evil spirits. Today the water source tradition is gone. Bonfires on the beach, speeches, picnics and songs are traditional, although bonfires are built in many other places where beaches may not be close by (i.e. on the shores of lakes and other waterways, parks, etc.). In the 1920s a tradition of putting a witch made of straw and cloth on the bonfire emerged as a remembrance of the church's witchburnings from 1540 to 1693 (but unofficially a witch was lynched as late as 1897). This burning sends the witch to Bloksbjerg, the mountain 'Brocken' in the Harz region of Germany where the great witch gathering was thought to be held on this day.

Holger Drachmann and P.E. Lange-Müller wrote a beautiful midsommervise1885 called "Vi elsker vort land..." ("We Love Our Land") that is sung at every bonfire on this evening.

Norway

Like in Denmark, Sankthansaften is celebrated on 23 June. The day is also called Jonsok, which means "Johannes wake," important in Catholic times with pilgrimages to churches and holy springs. Right up to 1840 there was, for instance, a pilgrimage to the stave church in Røldal (southwest Norway) whose crucifix was said to have healing powers.

In parts of Norway a custom of arranging mock marriages, both between adults and between children, is still kept alive. The wedding was meant to symbolise the blossoming of new life. Such weddings are known to have taken place in the 1800s, but the custom is believed to be older.

In the last century Midsummer's Eve was largely celebrated in the local communities, but during the 1990s it has developed into a more private party with family and friends gathering round a bonfire to dance.

Sweden

Midsummer DanceAnders Zorn, 1897 by

In Sweden, Midsummer's Eve and Midsummer's Day is moved to the third Friday and Saturday of June, in order to make a dependable long weekend. The main celebrations takes place on the Friday, the traditional events include raising and dancing around a huge (phallic) maypole. Before the maypole is raised, greens and flowers are collected and used to cover, to "may", the entire pole.

Raising and dancing around a maypole is primarily an activity which attracts families, even though it traditionally was a fertility ritual. Dancing around the pole is often accompanied by traditional music and the wearing of traditional folk costumes. The year's first potatoes, pickled herring, sour cream, and possibly the first strawberries of the season are on the menu.

By many swedes this holiday is seen as a holiday of partying, and as the start of the summer. Also, quite interestingly, many Swedes would rather have Midsummers Eve as their National Day.

Finland

Before 1316, the summer solstice was called Ukon juhla, after an old Finnish god Ukko. In Karelia, people had many bonfires side by side, the biggest of which was called Ukko-kokko (the "bonfire of Ukko") Now in Finland the midsummer holiday (Juhannus — or midsommar for the Swedish-speaking minority), is a notable occasion for drunkenness and revels. As in Sweden, maypoles have been transferred to the midsummer festivities, and pickled herring is the hallmark of the coastal areas, where also the Finland-Swedish language and culture have their stronghold. In the rest of Finland, a bonfire (kokko) take the place of the maypole, and smoked fish from the nearby lake is eaten instead of pickled herring.

Midsummer in Finland is celebrated at least as intensely as in Sweden. Many people get indecently drunk and happy. The statistics of the number of people drowned and killed in accidents is morbidly counted every year. Also statistics of assaults demonstrates a peak for this weekend.

Dr. Ellison is in and would like to experiment on you

Her Dad makes India Pale ale and swords, finds creative ways to keep our curtains from closing and bringing people back on stage for encores and nurses his cat Oolong. Her Mom nurtures her flock, her family, her friends, her library and her world and tries to make a living writing about the experience. Her sister marries a man from Mumbai in the hayfield east of the garden on a windy Saturday in August and tries to make a living by singing, as she does by dancing.

Locals wondered what was going on inside the FAA Thursday night. Was it an secret AA/UU meeting? An equally secret midsummer DFL/CTG rally? The few cars parked outside on South Broadway were different, some were obviously not from around here, yet the dust colored Subaru wagon was. 56572 heard that a Modern Dance Company from Minneapolis was performing and sent our arts critic and a photographer inside to find out what was going on. This on a midsummer evening when the heat index was 98F and tornadoes were dancing from dark clouds just north of Detroit Lakes.



It's not every day that 56572 hosts a modern dance company. Compared to most two stoplight towns in Greater Minnesota, 56572 is decidedly experimental. Amber introduced the evening by defining modern dance for us as experimentation. Welcome to the laboratory. Feast your eyes and ears. Please turn off your cell phones, pagers and quit wondering what it all means.

Wilderness:
Dance Expeditions and Creative Research

Wilderness is a modern dance compan based in Minneapolis. It is co-directed by Amber Ellison and Jesse Walker who have made work together for the better pat of a decade. The dancing style of Wilderness blends Modern Dance, the high-flying style of Contact Improvisation, and the subtlety and quickness of the Martial Arts. Wilderness is inspired by the beauty and intricacy of natural systems. Wilderness is proud to present this evening of work that includes two world premieres.

Zoo (Premiere of Version 2)
Performers: Amber Ellison, Kimberly Richardson, Laura Selle and Jesse Walker
Music: Professor Long Hair, W.A.Mozart, Niccolo Paganini, Tom Waits
In order of appearance:
Homo Sapiens Sapiens
Pongo Ponginae



Anopheles Gambiae
Callithrix Pygmeae
Elephas Maximus
Buteo Jamaicensis






Peacock Feathers
Performers: Jesse Walker, Amber Ellison
Music: Simon and Garfunkel, Dave Grusin
Costumes: Amber Ellison







Channeling
Performers:Jesse Walker, Amber Ellison
Music: Somei Satoh, Samba Gringa, Terry Riley, Jesse Walker
Costumes: Amber Ellison













Budd's Polka (World Premiere)
Performers:Jesse Walker, Amber Ellison, Kimberly Richardson, Laura Selle
Music: Oktoberfest
Costumes: Amber Ellison



Thank you Wilderness for bringing your mobile laboratory to 56572 and treating us to an hour of your art. If all one has to do is suggest that the next time you come to town you ought to put one thing or other (such as a polka) in it, my wish would be for a tango with a heat index of 98F and a tornado for a finale. Next summer? I'm not quite as wise as Budd, but a sensuous tango with Jesse or two or three others might pack the house. We could sell tickets. I'll be in the front row, next to Mom and Dad. Can we call this the First Annual Wilderness Dance Expedition? We're still waiting for the encore.

Building a Global Village

Forrest Adams

Friendship Festival welcomes everyone By Forrest Adams, Fergus Falls Daily Journal

The 8th annual International Friendship Festival in Pelican Rapids is billed as many cultures in one community building a global village, and event organizer Johanna Christianson said that rain or shine, the event is something you will want to experience.

"We like to say that we are a small town but a global village," she said. "I hope that we in Pelican Rapids can show people that it is possible to live together with others in unity and peace. Sometimes diversity is seen as a challenge. We like to see it as an opportunity. When you find ways to live together with people who are different from you, you find that in the most important things, we are much the same."

One such similarity is an enjoyment of good food, and participants in this year's festival will have the opportunity to taste different ethnic foods made by members of ethnic populations which call Pelican Rapids home. Among these are Somali, Vietnamese, Mexican, Bosnians, German, American and Scandinavian foods.

The 2005 festival also has a distinctive Native American theme. It will include a lecture on Native Americans in Otter Tail County with a slide show and artifacts presented by Otter Tail County Historical Society staff, a teepee raising by local Native Americans and possibly traditional Native-American dancers, said Christianson.

She said she is not exactly sure about the status of the Native American dancers but is not worried because after eight years of experience organizing this event, she said she has learned to just go with the flow.

"When you are organizing with other cultures, you find that things almost never go exactly as you have planned," she said. "The important thing is that you need to share a vision and be flexible and relaxed."

Different perceptions of structure, order and planning are common to inter-cultural dealings, she said. Christianson estimated that a large, informal network of people is working together to help her make the international friendship festival happen. That's how things always happen.

Raised in Amsterdam, what Christianson called, "a world city," she said she hopes to create more of a world city atmosphere in Pelican Rapids during the festival, with performing artists and artwork on the sidewalks.

"We will have a chalk art contest for people to design art or a logo on the sidewalk," she said. "We will create an art gallery right there."

She said some chalk would be provided but suggested that artists bring some of their own chalk if they tend to be passionate about their chalk art. Prizes from Wells Fargo bank will be awarded to the winner.

defensa propria

A teen facing second-degree murder charges for stabbing his roommate in Pelican Rapids pleaded not guilty Tuesday morning and demanded a speedy trial.

Want one?

First time I've heard of this expression

For Ben and Bev

White Nights

Surely, all the world wants to be like us!

Wade Davis 1953
Poster available from Syracuse Cultural Workers

Wilderness performs Zoo, Thursday at seven, PRHS FAA.

(From the Pelican Rapids Press, June 15, 2005 by Joanie Ellison)

Wednesday evening, June 22, the dancers from Wilderness, a Twin Cities based contemporary dance company will conduct a movement and dance workshop for all ages and all skill levels at the cafeteria in Pelican Rapids High School at 7 pm. This workshop will teach dance improvisation skills. No previous dance experience is necessary. Laughter is guaranteed. The workshop is free and open to the public.

Thursday evening, June 23, the dancers of Wilderness will perform "Zoo" at 7 pm in the High School Fine Arts Auditorium. Watch dances of flirtation, captivity and joy as three foot poles swing through the air and dancers catapult off of each other. Watch carefully, you might even see a polka. This performance is also free and open to the public.

Wilderness is a dance company co-directed by former Pelican Rapids resident Amber Ellison and her partner Jesse Walker. As a child, Amber took dance lessons from Darla Kratzke, a local teacher. She also studied with eighth street Studio of Dance in Fargo and spent her junior and senior years of high school at the Perpich Center for Performing Arts in Minneapolis. Amber minored in Dance at Macalister College and received a MFA in choreography at the University of Utah. Now she is back in town to share her dancing and her dancing friends with her home town.

The programs put on by Wilderness are sponsored by the Friends of the Pelican Rapids Library and paid for in part by a grant from Lake Region Arts Council through an appropriation from the Minnesota State Legislature.

From Knot Magazine

Amber Ellison

by Amanda Vail
My Own Two Eyes
1.16.04

My first encounter with Amber Ellison was last spring. During an alumni performance at the Perpich Center for Arts Education, Ellison stepped smoothly onto the stage and smiled encouragingly at the small audience. She has sweet eyes, a soft voice, and a charming manner that form an immediate bond between her and the audience. What followed that evening can only be described as a dialogue. Ellison stepped and swayed, bent and stretched to the sound of a crackling recording of her grandmother's voice. In this spontaneous dance, entitled "Conversation with My Grandmother," Ellison sparked a connection between the audience, her movements, and the empty chair and voice that echoed of her deceased grandmother. I remember the audience being oddly hushed and still as we watched and listened and existed in the space she created.

I'm not a stranger to dance, but neither am I overly familiar with it. Modern dance is a part of my schooling that has been conspicuously absent, and I immediately wished to talk with Ellison in order to begin to understand it. At this point, I certainly cannot claim to understand it all, but I enjoy it immensely and have a deep and abiding respect for Ellison herself. When we got to talk one summer evening at a favorite coffee shops of hers deep in south Minneapolis, her sheer love and enthusiasm both for her own work and for mine simply bowled me over. Our conversations since have covered a variety of topics; her interests range far and wide, which only serves to make her dances all the more interesting and multifaceted. Like many artists, Ellison wishes to show people something they've seen before, but in a new manner. She broadens both her own horizons and those of her audience by exploring simple subjects, like the body, and presenting them in a new form. Everyone knows what the human body looks like, but do we know everything it can do?

I found out that Ellison even choreographed a dance on chaos theory and cellular automata while she was in high school at the Perpich Center. Later in the fall I got to watch some of it on video and was, unsurprisingly, astounded. While the moves seem simple, they were in fact based upon a complex series of numbers and required the dancers to count continuously during the piece. I came out of my viewing trance slightly confused but definitely fascinated. The intrusion of "cold" and "abstract" mathematics into the blatant warmth of the human spirit and creativity still leaves me with an occasional grin of sheer wonder at life. If I remembered any of my algebra and calculus from high school, I could probably tell you more about it, but I'm a fine arts major -- my brain doesn't work like that anymore. I certainly understood it on a gut level while watching Ellison's piece, though.

"Conversation..." is still one of my favorite pieces by Ellison, despite viewing snippets of others on tapes. Perhaps I like it because it is blatantly personal, perhaps because it utilizes what Ellison told me is called "spontaneous choreography," a fascinating concept. Basically, the dance itself is an improvisation, but the challenge is to present it as a complete piece. Therefore, she has a set of moves, a language, established beforehand so that the piece can be both scripted and impromptu. The spontaneous nature lends it a dynamism that refuses to become static and the language of movements allows it some measure of stability. In a way, the "words" permit a greater threshold of creativity -- working within a system instead of completely outside of one, bending it to produce different results.

Ellison's talent doesn't stop at choreographing dance. She has also become interested in "dance for camera," or, to put it less elegantly, making videos of dances. The dynamic changes, however, when the audience is removed from the dance through the intervention of the camera, and Ellison is not only aware of this but also uses it to her advantage. She does not merely tape her dances, but makes films whose creation is a goal in and of itself. Music, camera tricks and, as always, the movement of the human body and the dance inherent within it feature in many of her films. I was privileged last fall to watch part of a work in progress, the content of which I shall not reveal in order to leave you in anticipation. Suffice it to say that, even incomplete, it is a work of harmony and power. Ellison places her beautiful soul, and body, into the film, creating as much for herself as for her audience. The dialogue that ensues between herself, the camera, and the viewer does not have words to go with it, but the meaning is nevertheless made clear.

If you miss Amber and Jesse Thursday night, book your tickets for July 9th in St.Paul here.

Officially summer

Why we love living here (2) Full moon over Hallaway

Goddess of Maplewood

Must be that Pelican team playing

For Laurel; six months later

World Refugee Day

How to celebrate in the United States.
It takes courage to be a refugee.

IFF8 Crew

Johanna and her crew of volunteers are gearing up for next weekend's 8th Annual International Friendship Festival, our almost impromptu very local solstice block party/community pot luck/fiesta/smorgasbord/Taste of 56572. This year's entertainment includes a Mariachi group from the Twin Cities and a band from Namsos, no, not Greece, Norway. Let's hope this weather holds, but so what if it doesn't? Come out and meet and eat with your neighbors, rain or shine. Advance tickets (free will offering) can be purchased from any Volunteer wearing the Collectible (hotter than PRPD Police patches on eBay) IFF8 t-shirt, which you can purchase without free will at Historic City Hall.

Water under the bridge

May 5, 2005 vs. June 17, 2005

Just how much water has been in your rain gauge?
The gauge just above the Mill Pond Dam on the Pelican River in Pelican Rapids, Minnesota

Aggressive High Achiever?

At four feet, wet toes and a flooded pier ramp

The ramp to the Mill Pond Fishing Pier is also under water. Last night this resulted in a local girl slipping on the wet ramp and breaking her leg in three places. She had surgery this morning.

1008 South Broadway SOLD!!!

A reliable source told 56572 this noon that the new Family Dollar store will be about the size of Larry's Supermarket! The Rieman House will be sixty years old next year. The trees must be at least that. Are you willing to adopt a tree? Would the VFW like to park a cannon at the corner of Broadway and 10th? How about a tank? Anybody else got any creative ideas on how to save the forest? We need to act fast.......... I heard a third Dollar Store will go in on the North end of town across from the Tastee Freeze. What did you hear?

Blightblog (4)

OK, I admit it's not in the city limits, but it has the same zip code and is within view of the water tower and no, it was not a tornado.


Remember this photo from a few weeks ago?



This was the bedroom.



Don't worry. I don't think they're gonna come back again.

Living in America

Pastoral (within sight of the water tower) Pelican Rapids (2)