GLENSHEEN MANSION

Minnesota Ballet offers regional take on 'The Nutcracker'

Christa Lawler — Sun, 20 Dec 2020 05:00:00 GMT

DULUTH — Earlier this week, Sean M. Sullivan found himself in the unusual position of being a professional ballet dancer sitting in a chair telling a story with words.

Sullivan, in his second season with the Minnesota Ballet, is Uncle Drosselmeyer in the company’s new “Nutcracker Suite: A Duluth Tale.” He’s the character charged with setting the scene: a visiting uncle with a story about a young woman he met at the train station, Clara, and her favored nutcracker doll. Meanwhile, a handful of children dressed in holiday best gather, eager, in front of the fireplace.

“It was a little out of my comfort zone, but a good experience,” said Sullivan, who has roots in Irish dance.

The take on the traditional tale was choreographed for screen by artistic director Karl von Rabenau. A full version is available for download from the Minnesota Ballet; a shortened version will play at 7 p.m. Monday, Dec. 21, on CBS3 in Duluth.

But before the cameras rolled Monday in the Carriage House on the Congdon Estate, Sullivan passed off his Fitbit to executive director Kelli Latuska — saving his scene, set in the late 1800s, from a piece of anachronistic technology.

A new 'Nutcracker'

With von Rabenau’s new “Nutcracker,” the city is the stage — or at least picturesque spots at the Duluth Depot and Glensheen. Social media shows dancers (with scarves as masks) as people passing at the Lake Superior Railroad Museum. A makeshift floor was added to the festively decorated Great Hall. And on Dec. 11, the Carriage House at Glensheen became a destination for a world traveling uncle.

“I wanted to make this a collaboration,” von Rabenau said.

This goes beyond extending the stage. Among the options for viewing is a Nutcracker Sweets Box, which includes dinner for four from The Boathouse, with drinks and popcorn from Duluth Candy Co., in addition to a souvenir.

This is von Rabenau’s first time choreographing “The Nutcracker.” He has reimagined all the divertissements — a shift a lot of companies around the country are making to undo the racial stereotypes that have played on stages, specifically with the Tea Dance.

A columnist for the Los Angeles Times described young dancers, mostly white, who told her that the dance nicknamed “Chinese” had helped them learn about other cultures.

“What I saw them learning,” according to Jennifer Fischer, “was how to flatten anyone of Asian descent into a cartoon.”

It’s a conversation that has been going on for 30 years, von Rabenau said.

“Here we have room to make it more local to Duluth,” he said. There will, for instance, be lumberjacks. Some fan favorites remain, including a slew of gingerbread.

An artistic outlet

The Minnesota Ballet’s performance season ended early last year. The company postponed the finale, “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” which was originally scheduled for March. It’s now on the calendar for early 2021, but it isn’t a sure thing.

According to Latuska, the dancers and staff were recently in social bubbles to avoid COVID-19 exposure going into recording the production. The dancers opened their season in mid-November, sometimes synching up with new dance partners for the first time.

“I think it’s a magnificent opportunity for us as artists to have an outlet again, and even better for the community, which has been starved of art and general entertainment opportunities,” Sullivan said.

In a normal year, the dancers would have begun rehearsing on stage this week, then adding costumes and tech.

As is, Duluth videography company Danger Bird Productions wrapped its recording of “Nutcracker Suite” on Dec. 11.

This style of production has offered the dancers the chance to perfect what viewers will see. (Though there is some second-guessing about whether it could have been better, Sullivan said.) Onstage, there is only one shot to get it right.

“Once it’s done, it’s done,” he said.

How to watch

What: Minnesota Ballet's "Nutcracker Suite: A Duluth Tale"

Where: Available for download from minnesotaballet.org; also airing at 7 p.m. Monday, Dec. 21, on CBS3-TV in Duluth

Tickets: Start at $20 for download

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Gardener saves space by growing tomatoes vertically

Peter Passi — Sat, 29 Aug 2020 12:00:00 GMT

DULUTH — This is the first year Emily Ford, head gardener for historic museum Glensheen Mansion in Duluth, has made the switch to growing tomatoes vertically, and she's hooked.

"One of the goals that I have here is to kind of pack a lot of food in a really small space, " said Ford, noting that she had drawn inspiration from some of the techniques used in the greenhouses of Bay Produce in Superior, Wis.

"I asked a few people around, a couple farmers, 'Can you do that outside?' And they're like, 'I'm sure you could.' So, I gave it a go this year," she said.

While some gardeners construct frames and train tomatoes to grow up strings attached to them, Ford opted for the flexibility of stakes as she tried a new technique.

"I didn't want to build a whole infrastructure and then not like what I did," she said.

But Ford hasn't been disappointed. Some of her tomatoes are now topping 6 feet in height. To provide needed support, she has cobbled together stake extensions "MacGyver-style," as she puts it. Ford said she uses zip ties to attach additional lengths of wood. She also uses the same plastic ties to train the vines and keep them climbing upward.

In order to grow tomatoes vertically, it's important to start with the right variety. Look for vining plants, classified as indeterminate.

That's a good starting point, but Ford points out that you'll also need to learn how to properly prune your tomatoes as they grow if you hope to keep them under control. That means removing the suckers from the vines.

Left unchecked, a sucker will turn into a whole new vine, with leaves and fruit growing in a whole new direction. This can destabilize a tomato plant, cause it to break and make it less productive, as the plant's resources are stretched out further and further.

Once you learn the drill, suckers are pretty easy to recognize. There's a main vine that grows upward, alternating between branches of leaves and branches of flowers/fruit. But the plant often wants to send out an additional shoot of growth from the crotch of the leaf stem. Watch for those and pinch them off. If you miss one or two, you can still come back and remove them even if they are several inches long without compromising the health of the tomato.

Besides making for a more tidy and productive garden, Ford said training tomatoes to grow vertically seems to offer another advantage.

When allowing tomatoes to do their own thing, she said her overgrown and tangled tomatoes would often become diseased, "because they need so much air flow."

"So, this really opened up the air flow quite a bit," she said. Even though Ford said she has had some blight and disease surface on lower leaves of the climbing plants, she has been able to remove those branches as they yellowed, and the remaining vines have remained healthy and productive.

The whole process of growing tomatoes in this fashion has focused Ford's care, too. And that, she says, may arguably be the greatest benefit.

"I think that this version of growing for me, because I have to prune every week, forces me to pay way more attention to what's happening with my tomatoes," she said. "I had a botanist buddy who said the most sought-after attribute for any botanist is the attribute of observation. It will take you from the world's worst gardener to the world's best."

Ford said that the crowd-favorite tomato in the Glensheen gardens this year has been the Indigo Cherry Drop. They're about an inch in diameter and grow in tight productive clusters — black on top and red/green on the bottom.

Besides being visually striking, the Indigo packs plenty of flavor punch, with a bit more acidity and a hint less sweetness that can make a nice counterpoint to goat or feta cheese in a salad, she said.

In all, about three dozen tomato plants are growing at Glensheen this summer, but Ford said little fruit ever goes to waste, as she is able to share them with hungry fellow staff members.

She stressed the importance of gardeners having patience with themselves, as there is a learning curve with vertical gardening.

"You need to keep trying if your structure fails. Just be creative with it and take notes. That's the other thing I tell people when they try something new. Keep notes, man, because next year you're likely to forget. The winter's so long."

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