As federal immigration operations continue across Minnesota, Twin Cities artists are responding to the chilling political climate by creating spaces for communal reclamation.

A Kenyan musician confronts the hollow promise of the American Dream. A St. Paul playwright sends a modern protagonist back to 1830s Alabama. And skating movement artists revive a sacred dance on Minneapolis ice.

The birth of a new Minneapolis band

If you listen to J.S. Ondara’s debut album “Tales of America (The Second Coming),” you’ll hear folk-infused melodies that grapple with what it means to make a home in a foreign land. 

Drawing on his experiences from Nairobi, Kenya to the American Midwest, Ondara captures both the wonder and disillusionment of the “American Dream,” often pushing back against emotional neutrality. 

This Friday at the Cedar Cultural Center, he will debut his new band, The Jet Stone Conspiracy, performing new material alongside selections from his albums “Tales of America,” “Tales of Isolation” and “Spanish Villager No. 3.” Inspired by the musical lineage of Bob Dylan, David Bowie and Ali Farka Touré, the concert offers a first look at his evolving sound. Get a preview here.

A journey from Rondo to 1830s Alabama

St. Paul playwright Rebecca Nichloson is bringing a multidisciplinary vision to the Red Eye Theater with “Mara, Queen of the World.” Follow a young girl (played by Ashembaga (Ashe) Jaafaru) as she is suddenly transported from modern-day St. Paul to an Alabama plantation in the 1830s. This two-act experimental performance combines oral storytelling, music, cinematography and dance. 

An African dance of resistance

Across the Twin Cities this week, The Great Northern Festival is bringing together artists and community leaders to explore creativity in a changing climate. 

Among this year’s highlights is “Tracing Sacred Steps,” a performance on ice that reimagines the ring shout, an 18th-century dance created by enslaved African Americans to reclaim their humanity. Hands clap a steady rhythm, knees bend and dancers circle one another as voices rise in call and response. 

Brownbody, a Twin Cities-based performing arts company, will reimagine this early form of resistance at Father Hennepin Bluff Park on Sunday. 

“I started working on this in 2019 but I feel like I got clarity shortly after George Floyd’s murder,” said Brownbody founder Deneane Richburg. “I was like, ‘okay, we have been here before. We have been here multiple times, but how did our ancestors process and work through this type of trauma?’ That’s when I started learning about ring shout.” 

At the center of the ring is an opening,  what Richburg describes as a “spiritual vortex, ” where one might “catch the spirit,” and where grief, rage and memory move through the body instead of remaining trapped inside. 

“There’s a deep, spiritual relationship between the body and the earth,” Richburg said. “You enter the ring when you have ‘caught the spirit,’ when you’ve manifested that connection with your ancestor and that deeper connection with yourself.” 

Two dancers from Brownbody’s apprenticeship program will also perform a solo and an improvised duet.

Richburg said the company’s training draws on W.E.B. Du Bois’ double consciousness theory, which suggests that African Americans see themselves through the lens of a white-dominated society. She uses dance to help release the racial trauma that this tension can create in the body. 

“Since 2013, we have been presenting professional artistic work on and off the ice to tell these stories, to honor our ancestors and our current realities,” she said. 

After the performances, the rink opens to the public for a skating party from 4 to 5 p.m.

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