Art Hounds: Dance, improv and sacred music

This week on Art Hounds: Dance, improv and sacred music.

Writer and historian Tamatha Perlman is going to Bryant Lake Bowl Monday night to check out The Theater of Public Policy, a local comedy group that creates improv out of meaningful conversations. This week T2P2 is interviewing James Eli Shiffer, author of "The King of Skid Row: John Bacich and the Twilight Years of Old Minneapolis." Perlman says she's looking forward to hearing about the lives of the men of Skid Row.

Commonweal Theatre's Adrienne Sweeney is looking forward to "Now is the Time," an original work by dancer Tamara Ober and flautist Julie Johnson inspired by the four seasons. Sweeney says Johnson's compositions on the flute are highly physical, and are a great complement to Ober's movement. The performance is at 7:30 p.m. Saturday at the St. Mane Theatre in Lanesboro, Minn.

Amateur pianist and music aficionado Rebecca Lindholm is a big fan of pianist Richard Tostenson and plans to attend his performance of Messiaen's "Twenty contemplations on the infant Jesus" April 28 at the Basilica of St. Mary. The piece, which was composed after Messiaen was released from a Nazi prison camp, is believed to have been inspired in part by a poem written by his mother. Lindholm says the beauty of his music is in how he uses rhythm to draw in the listener, while past and future fall away.