(gentle music) - [Narrator] Tonight on stage, take a front row seat for the inspiration, connection, and joy you've been missing.

♪ Now I've got you ♪ An "Art Is... Showcase," featuring performances from three seasons of the hit series, which features some of the best up and coming artistic talent in the Twin Cities.

(gentle music) (upbeat music) - This is my second to last song, it's called "I Wish".

A lot of y'all might know that song.

So if you know it, please sing along, 'cause I don't wanna sing it by myself.

(audience laughing) All right.

(keyboard music) And it's about looking back on your past and living in the moment right now, because I know there's some times where I wish there are moments that I haven't been taking for granted, and I wish I could go back.

So right now I'm capturing this moment, I hope you all capture this moment too.

- [Man] Yeah.

(audience cheering) (keyboard music) ♪ Looking back on when I was a little nappy headed boy ♪ Come on y'all.

(audience applauding) ♪ When my only worry was for Christmas ♪ ♪ What would be my toy ♪ ♪ Even though we sometimes would not get a thing ♪ ♪ We were happy with the joy the day would bring ♪ ♪ Sneaking out the back door to hang out ♪ ♪ With those hoodlum friends of mine ♪ (audience cheering) ♪ Greeted at the back door with ♪ ♪ Boy, I thought I told you not to go outside ♪ ♪ Trying your best to bring the water to your eyes ♪ ♪ Thinking it might stop her from whooping your behind ♪ ♪ I wish those days could come back once more ♪ ♪ Why did those days ever have to go ♪ ♪ I wish those days could come back once more ♪ ♪ Why did those days ever have to go ♪ ♪ 'Cause I love them so ♪ (vocalizing) ♪ Brother said he's telling 'bout you playing doctor ♪ ♪ With that girl ♪ ♪ Just don't tell, I'll give you anything ♪ ♪ You want in this whole wide world ♪ ♪ Mama gives you money for Sunday school ♪ ♪ You trade yours for candy after church is through ♪ ♪ Smoking cigarettes and writing ♪ ♪ something nasty on the wall ♪ ♪ You nasty boy ♪ ♪ Teacher sends you to the ♪ ♪ principal's office down the hall ♪ ♪ You grow up and learn that kinda thing ain't right ♪ ♪ But while you were doing it, it sure felt outta sight ♪ ♪ I wish those days could come back once more ♪ ♪ Why did those days ever have to go ♪ ♪ I wish those days could come back once more ♪ ♪ Why did those days ever have to go ♪ ♪ 'Cause I love them so ♪ (vocalizing) Thomas Power y'all.

(audience cheering) (keyboard solo) (woman laughing) (audience cheering) (Amani vocalizing) - All right, y'all.

(audience cheering) (gentle hip-hop music) - As Black people, music and dance is a very important aspect of who we are, and how we formulate identity in this country, in America.

People are very comfortable with celebrating me as a woman artist, or like a Muslim artist, or like an artist that has a twin sister.

Yeah, just it'd become a point in time where I'm just like, my Black identity is connected to each one of those things that you like to recognize, all in different, diverse ways.

Once I found how to express just my blackness through my art is when I understood hip-hop better, and understood Black people in their relationship to artistry better.

(hip-hop music intensifies) I think it's important for us to tell our stories.

My people were distanced physically and metaphorically from our African roots.

And so, with that comes the separation of language, and dance is, I'd say, my home when it comes to language because it's not something that was forced on me, it's just always been my means for communication.

- Our parents taught us a lot about speaking up for ourselves and holding space for ourselves, and what it means to be present in your surroundings.

And we try to do that through words, but movement, I say, is the way that we do it best.

Getting our bodies to say, "I'm here and I matter".

(upbeat music) This is my best friend, Iman.

I call her my interpreter, because she's always able to like interpret and articulate feelings that like, I just can't.

Yeah, as far as movement, you're more of the technical dancer, so I learn a lot of my technical movements from her.

- This is Khadiiah, also my best friend.

She is an extrovert that has picked up some of my introverted ways.

(Khadiiah chuckles) She is the person that adds a spark to my life and gets me thinking outside of my head sometimes and more into my body and my heart.

As far as dancing, she is sporadic and energetic, all over the place, which I love, and she teaches me a lot about groove and essence and all of that feel good warm stuff.

Khadiiah and I are twins, identical twins at that.

The older we get, the more and more we start to look different.

- A visual difference and also a personality difference.

- [Iman] That's even bigger than our visual different.

- Yeah, our relationship is a balance of expressing our individuality and also blending the differences that we do have.

(upbeat piano music) We are in North Minneapolis, this is our Masjid, titled Masjid An-Nur and this is our sacred place of worship and spiritual grounded practice.

- This is where our family grew up.

This is where we grew up.

This is what we consider our spiritual home.

Part of what makes this community special to us is giving us the space to be artists and Muslim at the same time.

I feel like part of the spiritual component within Islam stresses an emphasis on beauty and grace and dignity.

I feel like that influences the way in which I carry myself in art spaces, believing that I am a sign of beauty and believing that I represent an essence of grace.

(gentle music) Me and Khadiiah perform, and we do our thing just with each other.

But I'd probably say, like in these last few years we've been getting back to the group dynamic joy, creating work with larger groups.

She is a collective of all urban and hip hop dancers, but also many of the movers in the collective specialize in so many other different dance styles.

And yeah, we form, we hold space for one another.

- We produce work together.

The intention for creating the group was to increase the presence of women and girls in the hip hop and urban dance community.

And so, we would go to different like hip hop spaces.

And we'd notice that like the two of us would be few of the women there.

And we wanted to see more representation of women and girls in the community.

We knew that in doing so, we could make it a more comfortable place for us and the girls and the women to come after us.

We're here, and then we come up for eight.

Being inshi has allowed me to be intentional about sisterhood and what it means and what it looks like, and the responsibility and roles that I have, and maintaining it.

(uplifting music) - Where I'm at in the work that I'm drawn to right now is still creating work that I guess you could say is political, but also creating work just for my soul, and creating work that makes my people feel good, and creating work that makes my family proud.

- And that gives us the chance and opportunity to re-imagine the world and the way that we wish it could be.

(gentle electric music) (uplifting drum music) (gentle chime music) (upbeat music) (upbeat drum music) (gentle chime music) (upbeat music) - My name is Roy Guzmán and I'll be reading a poem from the collection, "Soul Over Lightning".

The first poem I'll read from my collection is one of a series of poems, titled "Queerodactyl".

Queerodactyl.

After they locate and excavate your wing fossils, perseverance might be the trait you're known for.

How swiftly you sloped downward to pick up the carcasses floating just above the bloodstained surface of your old neighborhood.

In the laboratory, the paleontologists will use radiometric dating to zoom into what bequeathed you that agency to fly.

This one might have outlasted all the others, they'll say.

Might have even seen each one disappear behind a bolt of fire blasted from who knows where.

Or you might have been the first to vanquish.

To vanish directly in the way of the asteroid's course.

Who will, in the end, exhume our myths conclusively?

A young angel's bones, shaped just like yours, were uncovered this morning.

A group of diggers hadn't found anything exciting for months, in jeopardy of losing all their funding.

I too, have buried myself under the heavy presence of change, from a longing, perhaps, to find my remnants, or their profiles, in places where curious strangers might prize them.

Church is anything with a pair of wandering hands and a bucket.

I, too, have questioned the usefulness of finding a boy stuck in a perpetual position of near flight, arms extended like the incandescence from a lamppost at night, and wished it be mine.

The next poem I'm going to read is titled, "Our Lady of Suyapa," and this is why I'm wearing this sweater, is after the Virgin Mary, but if you look more closely, it's Cardi B.

"Our lady of Suyapa".

I believed in our Lady of Suyapa before I believed in the Phoenix Force, in her opaque gold aura of an eight, in the 12 mojados above her distended coronet of erupting, devalued lempiras.

Before I believed in possession, I learned when to vanquish the barbarous eyes of those who crave universal forms, platonic adversaries.

Anchored against the loss of flesh, a hand or a skeleton.

I knew resurrection before I knew death.

Identified the hazardous chemicals that equaled higher wages, my mother's lungs gone AWOL, a hacking in the meat sky, arid the reverberation.

I have cast eclipses from my house of tremors, only to find them revived under the floorboards upon my return, the tricks perception pulls as when night consumes a nebulous man, a star's stern birth, the kernel.

Nothing touched is ever sacred unless it's robbed first.

Our pilgrimage involved hewing the country our knees purported, scabs and breadcrumbs befitting a pigeon's throat.

No sacrosanct architecture without lament.

When Cyclops holds whatever angle of immortality can perish in issue 136 of Uncanny X-Men, we run into grief that aspires to exist as nothing more than grief.

Smoldering shadow of the Phoenix as quintessential disaffection, onslaught, either slaughter or sainthood, stateliness or snapped wire.

In every uniform seal they stranded feather of an extinct bird.

Which is what I meant to show my mother when I led her down the staircase of vine handrails within my crypt.

Though she shrieked that love like mine is nonviable, holding a plate under the tap water, as if to stand on thin ice past the season's rotting.

For now, outlines.

For now, letters of grief inside church domes in lieu of tonsils.

You are no longer a virgin, he rustled as I guzzled his entire pool of handsomely green leaves, as if the Minotaur's myth had been unwarranted.

What conviction will foment in the exoplanets.

I trusted servitude before belief, the fires that cavalcade without pageant.

But those ashes, how they gather in the faceless ether.

Masterless gloom-glowers remarking, I'm not from here.

When and why would I leave?

Thank you.

(gentle piano music) ♪ It's not simple to say ♪ ♪ That most days I don't recognize me ♪ ♪ With these shoes and this apron ♪ ♪ That place and it's patrons ♪ ♪ Have taken more than I gave them ♪ ♪ It's not easy to know ♪ ♪ I'm not anything like I used to be ♪ ♪ Although it's true I was never attention's sweet center ♪ ♪ I still remember that girl ♪ ♪ She's imperfect, but she tries ♪ ♪ She is good, but she lies ♪ ♪ She is hard on herself ♪ ♪ She is broken and won't ask for help ♪ ♪ She is messy, but she's kind ♪ ♪ She is lonely most of the time ♪ ♪ She is all of this mixed up and baked in a beautiful pie ♪ ♪ She is gone, but she used to be mine ♪ ♪ And it's not what I asked for ♪ ♪ Sometimes life just slips in through a back door ♪ ♪ And carves out a person ♪ ♪ And makes you believe it's all true ♪ ♪ And now I've got you ♪ ♪ You're not what I asked for ♪ ♪ If I'm honest I know, I would give it all back ♪ ♪ For a chance to start over and rewrite an ending or two ♪ ♪ For that girl that I knew who'd be reckless just enough ♪ ♪ Who gets hurt but who learns how ♪ ♪ To toughen up when she's bruised ♪ ♪ And gets used by a man who can't love ♪ ♪ And then she'll get stuck and be scared ♪ ♪ Of the life that's inside her, growing stronger each day ♪ ♪ 'Til it finally reminds her to fight just a little ♪ ♪ To bring back the fire in her eyes ♪ ♪ That's been gone, but used to be mine ♪ ♪ Used to be mine ♪ ♪ She is messy, but she's kind ♪ ♪ She is lonely most of the time ♪ ♪ She is all of this mixed up and baked in a beautiful pie ♪ ♪ She is gone, but she used to be mine ♪ (crowd cheering) (gentle music) (singing in Hmong) (speaking Hmong) - Song poetry in the Hmong tradition is a method of carrying story.

(singing in Hmong) (Bee speaking in Hmong) Kwv txhiaj is a sequencing of language.

(speaking Hmong) Patterns of words that can carry the yearning and the hopes of a people together.

(speaking Hmong) My name is Bee Yang.

(speaking Hmong) I'm a refugee from the country of Laos.

(singing in Hmong) My name is Kao Kalia Yang, I'm Bee Yang's daughter.

2016, I wrote "The Song Poet."

And the song poet is sitting right beside me right here, is my father.

A Hmong man, a factory worker from the Midwest, who will remind others of not loss, but of love.

(uplifting music) (Bee speaking Hmong) I was born with a love of language, a love of song poetry.

From my earliest memories, you know, if there was a celebrated song poet or even anyone just singing at all, I would stand close to them, move closer, so I could hear those words.

(Bee speaking Hmong) I was a child who knew loneliness early.

My father died when I was just two.

My song poetry was my way of expressing what was in my heart, what was weighing me down, and that the wind and the world carry it with me.

February 17, daddy.

(both speaking Hmong) 1984, yeah.

(Bee speaking Hmong) January 10, 1983, daddy, that's your birthday.

- [Bee] Yeah.

- Yeah, it's your birthday.

Daddy, you were 23.

(Bee speaking Hmong) When we were in the refugee camps of Thailand, I would sing and I would sing so that the people who I knew had tears inside of their hearts, that those tears could come out.

And so in that way, for me, my process has been very communal because it was the responses of my audience that prompted my songs to exit into the world and to live on and on.

(gentle music) (engine humming) (Bee speaking Hmong) In America, when we got here, I was unable to do what I was actually good at.

(speaking Hmong) The gifts that I'd been born with couldn't translate.

(Bee speaking Hmong) The refugee is inherently broken hearted, because how can you not, when you've witnessed the death of entire villages, your loved ones left behind.

(speaking Hmong) For the refugee to survive in a country like this, finding food for the table, finding drink, all of these are issues of heartache, not just problems to be solved.

(speaking Hmong) Unless you've gone through war and unless you've left so much behind, it is an experience that is incredibly hard to translate into simple human understanding.

(soft guitar music) (Bee speaking Hmong) When Kalia wanted to write the story of my life, I said "Don't write it, it's a life soaked with tears, it's too heavy for the pages."

But more than anything, I think I wrote my father's story because people keep, you know, they kept on asking, "Where are your biggest literary influences?

Where did you learn your love of language?"

And I used to talk about Robert Frost and I used to talk of Louise Erdrich, who I thought was phenomenal and who is phenomenal.

And then there was that day when I realized, you know, my father's poetry, and the truth is, I think my father is quite an incredible man, incredible song poet in this tiny little language, and I understood the vast loneliness of that.

To be a great song poet, to be trapped in a language that people are perpetually saying is dying, that he is so keenly aware, isn't that the stuff of great literature?

(Bee speaking Hmong) I do song poetry and I do it in understanding that because I've raised my children in a different country, maybe they won't understand all the nuances within my songs or even the language.

(Bee speaking Hmong) Part of what I burn to do is to preserve the song as a gift for future generations.

If they don't like it, that's okay, but if one of them should come searching, that it is there to be found.

(gentle guitar music) (soft piano music) (townsfolk chattering) (car beeping) (roosters crowing) (dog barking) (car beeping) (rooster crowing) (vendor speaking foreign language) (cars honking) (dog barking) (cars honking) (rooster crowing) (vendor speaking foreign language) (cars honking) (dog barking) (cars honking) (dog barking) (gentle guitar music) (rain splattering) (thunder clapping) (soft acapella music) (gentle guitar music) - This next poem, I'm gonna need some audience participation.

'Cause y'all know how we do.

Call and response.

- Yeah, okay.

- Yes ma'am.

- Okay?

- [Spectator] Okay.

- All right?

(crowd chuckling) So when I say "Black girls," I need y'all to say, "Don't dream of blue eyes anymore."

- All right.

- Okay.

- Amen, I say.

- I say.

- Hey, that's.

- So we gonna practice that.

Black girls.

- [All] Don't dream of blue eyes anymore.

- Let's try it again, Black girls.

- [All] Don't dream of blue eyes anymore.

- One more time, Black girls.

- [All] Don't dream of blue eyes anymore.

- Because we recognize the brilliance of Black.

We are black diamonds, shimmering in the sun and mesmerizing by moonlight, Shea buttered up and coconut oiled down.

We are forces and a million different shades and get to see ourselves represented in so many ways like Lupita Nyong'o's midnight skin, shining on silver screens, Serena Williams smashing racist remarks with a tennis racket and Compton rage.

Gabby Douglas leaps and little Black girls know if you dream, you can fly.

In the political realm, Thuli Madonsela, South Africa's public protector, Ory Okolloh, Kenyan digital activist, Minnesota's Andrea Jenkins, Ilhan Omar, all laid the foundation for new policy and constitutional change, and these are only a few in a white male dominated political game.

And we are so filled with the richness of our magnificence.

There is nothing left to desire.

Who else could I possibly want to be when I am the dazzling, shining, radiant me, Janelle Monáe.

(audience cheering) Erykah Badu, Solange.

(crowd cheering) - Embay (moans), fiercely roar the soundtrack of liberation and provide images of divine femininity for the next generation, so Black girls.

- [All] Don't dream of blue eyes anymore.

- Because we're surrounded by so much Black excellence.

We've come to realize that we are enough to strive for.

When we examine those within our own village, who set the standard on a global stage for all else who witness our beauty, our scholarship, our talent, self-mastery and genuine genius.

And why wouldn't we set the standard when we are the mothers of all civilization, genetic composition as ancient as the dirt and healing to all its inhabitants?

The story of Henrietta Lacks, the story of Henrietta Lacks, remember her name, can attribute to this fact.

That Black girls.

- [All] Don't dream of blue eyes anymore.

- Because we view ebony eyes as a privilege, because we're unlearning the poor preschool lessons, because content creators Issa Rae, DuVernay, Kenya, Coogler, Coel, and Rhimes are providing beautiful, complex reflections because the divine creator didn't make no mistakes in making us.

Coily, kinky, chocolate, old-manned, brown, Redboned, vanilla, yet all Black.

In fact, my curl pattern mirrors mitochondrial DNA.

So as they say, Black girls.

- [All] Don't dream of blue eyes anymore.

- Because we've broken the spell of self hatred and discovered Black girl magic, our melanin re-imagined as a deep well within that we can tap into without even knowing how, we just know.

And our blood memory echoes and we are called back, back, back, to indestructible, implausible, marvelous Black.

- All right.

- Yes.

(audience applauding and cheering) (gentle music) ♪ I have thrived on my pain ♪ ♪ My pain I feel the rain cleansing this place ♪ (speaking in Anishinaabemowin) - My name is Jada, I'm affiliated with the Turtle Mountain Band of Ojibwe, and I'm a singer, vocalist, and spoken word poet.

♪ Make sense of this mess hard to impress your heart ♪ ♪ To impress your heart ♪ For me personally, I feel like all my art is political in a sense, because with a microphone comes power.

So as an artist, it's how you're thinking about using that power and speaking out against things that have been silenced.

♪ It dealt in his hands ♪ ♪ Oh, in his hands ♪ ♪ Evil does its way ♪ As an artist, I identify as Anishinaabe and also mixed race.

In my music, I'm navigating those same paths of understanding myself and my family and my community and my environment.

I feel like my responsibility, and something that I really value, is that communication to your audience and like open up that common ground.

♪ And so I carve out a sense for healing ♪ ♪ To be myself again ♪ (gentle guitar music) ♪ Oh, am I my head I find fragments of a broken past ♪ I feel like as Native Peoples, we're always kind of put in a box of who we are.

In music, we could be reduces down to like, a certain like, our tradition music or pow-wow music, but I do R&B, blues, alternative rock, soul, and it's kinda, pushes those boundaries of what people set upon you.

I hope that it gives like representation.

♪ Colors blending all the time ♪ ♪ Just hope to feel a little better inside ♪ - My name is Glenny Blackson, I'm a Lakota Sioux from Rosebud Yankton Reservation there in South Dakota.

- We just met here and I feel like music brings people together, especially when you don't have no other place to go.

That's what I like about music.

It's a common language to speak, and a lot, we learned a lot of different styles, you know, 'cause Glenny is a seasoned musician.

(vocalizing) (cheerful guitar music) My fluidity is an affinity to creation.

I'm infinite beyond imagination.

I'm mystery when you thought you had seen it all.

Tender, self-driven, skin licking, sweet like ode'imin.

Soul dipped in wisdom, happiness, curiosity, feelings of doubt and depression, but it's all heaven, all the time.

I think in my art, I really focus on healing.

And so I hope that it's reciprocated.

I think resiliency in my art is speaking or sharing the stories and truths of myself and family and community and environment.

And just that single act of speaking up and with that voice is resiliency.

So we free it with long, drawn out kisses, trying to remember our own senses, stripped away by the violences in our childhood in teenage essence.

So let us entangle ourselves in love and reciprocity, healing together, forever and always.

- Maldives, Australia, Maldives.

I love telling people where I'm from because I think I'm from the most gorgeous place in this whole planet.

I'm from the Maldives.

How many of you here tonight know where the Maldives is?

Show of hands, let's see.

Oh, it's okay, if you know, I'm glad.

Or if you think you know, or you absolutely don't know where Maldives is.

Because usually when I tell people that I'm from the Maldives, people will guess that it is an island in the Pacific Ocean.

Well, Maldives is an Island Nation, all right.

But we are not in the Pacific.

We're out in the Indian Ocean.

Here, let me show you.

I need two volunteers, can anyone volunteers, please, come on, yeah, come over.

Hey, I need one more.

Anybody, come on over.

Yeah, give them a round of applause.

(audience applauding) Go, go, go.

Thank you, my friend.

Come on over.

What are your names?

- [Ravi] Ravi.

- What?

- Ravi.

- Ravi, and what's your name?

- Perry.

- Careful, Ravi and, did I say it right?

Ravi and Perry, round of applause.

(audience applauding) I know what you're thinking, like, I'm supposed to see theater, I should be sitting down right now.

No, this is the theater where we're gonna interact.

There's no way to tell the story without moving around.

So I need your help.

I would like you to stand over here and hold this big giant shower curtain slash world map.

Just stay there for a moment.

All right, this is a shower curtain that you can buy from your local Target store for 14.99.

I personally love to take a shower and study the world map at the same time.

I think it make me smarter, right?

Yeah.

Multitasking.

That's what I'm all about.

Anyway, here's the Indian Ocean.

All right?

You see that?

Yeah?

- [Audience] Yeah.

- And here is our friendly neighbor up north, India.

And I always have to give a shout out to Sri Lanka.

Right there.

(audience cheering) We got some Sri Lankans in the house.

All right.

We're like, all right, anyway, but do you see this empty spot between South Asia and Africa?

That's where Maldives' supposed to be.

We're so small we aren't even on the map.

Anyway, I got it fixed.

Here you go.

Now Maldives is on the map.

Thank you, wait, wait, wait.

Thank you, okay, okay, now you can like gently lay it down now.

I'm gonna do this, gently lay it down.

Thank you so much.

All right, please give them a round of applause again.

(audience applauding) (soft music) - Hello.

My name is Su Hwang, and today I'll be reading some poems from my collection, "Bodega."

The first poem is titled "Cancer."

Feet on dashboard.

Godawful music blaring from mixed cassettes.

My father let me have my way as he played chauffeur.

Never easing his grip on the wheel down straightaways.

Four hours to my college dorm across New Jersey and the Poconos.

Up through Scranton to the Gulch of Broome County and upstate New York.

Not a word passed between us, mile after mile markers on fence posts, yellow dashes, streaks of trees, blurred liturgy of autumn, spring.

Summer into winter, into summer, ticking off hours that measure the distance as he drove.

And I watched the road that held nothing but our widening Gulf.

My father taught me willful reticence, folding desire into cellular spaces.

Perhaps one day I will enter this dusty warehouse filled with neglected boxes, find the one labeled, "For my daughter," and unpack its long-held secrets.

For now, I let him seal their seams with tape.

Stuff them into corners.

Recently, when I visited, he sat across the dinner table as mom prepared our holiday meal.

Both of them aging exponentially like radioactive particles.

Wisp of his former self, barely recognizable.

Recited the Lord's prayer.

Our father in heaven, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, your will be done.

On Earth as it is in heaven.

They had just taken out his kidney.

The half life of failure.

Suddenly, he opened his eyes, looked straight into me and said, "I know you, you have a frontier spirit."

Where did he even get that word?

Frontier.

We nodded in agreement, then ate in silence, like we always do, losing our nerve.

All I've ever wanted him to say is, "Tell me something, tell me everything."

Thank you.

(gentle electric music) - [Narrator] Stage is made possible by the Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund, the citizens of Minnesota, and by viewers like you.

(gentle chime)