Saturday, February 4, 2023
Doors: 8:00 PM / Show: 9:00 PM
Center for Performing Arts
3754 Pleasant Ave, Minneapolis (Map)
Free (Registration requested)
Join us for a whimsical cabaret evening that’s part dance party; part variety show with special guests and surprises!
- Hosted by Laura Levinson and rafa kern
- Musical sets by Lawrence University’s Klezmommies
- Performances by Joey Glick, Sam Toot, Jake Shulman-Ment, Anat Spiegel, and more!
- Nosh, hot drinks, and original Judaica from the vendors of Southside Shtetl
About the hosts
Laura Levinson (they/them), who also goes by Or אור, is a performing artist, arts organizer, and healer who feels most at home in motion. They call on the magic of queer Jewish diaspora to remind us that love in transit still has its roots in the earth. We belong to the land – ani l’dodi v’dodi li. For the past year they served as Managing Artistic Director for Don’t You Feel It Too?, a public movement project transforming peoples’ relationships to body, land, and history through immersive art experiences. Or’s past workshops and performance projects have included “DUMPSTER FIRE: An Evening of Queer and Trans Performance” at Franconia Sculpture Park; “DOIKAYT: a performance-ritual of the diaspora” at Minnehaha Creek; and “Swimming Home,” co-created with Leila Awadallah and following the threads of diaspora, ancestry, body-as-homeland, and river water as divine anticolonial/borderless guide.
rafa kern
The name rafa, pronounced with a soft h like in human, is short for Rafael, with the name of God elided because Divinity is hard to see. Also because that’s just how it’s done in Brazil, where rafa is from. rafa is a Brazilian Jew who makes art to teach wisdom and learns wisdom to make art. He is working on his first novel and, with intrepid collaborators, adapting the Tower of Babel into something funky. He is also a Ph.D. Candidate at Stanford’s Graduate School of Education, where he tries to understand what people want when they study Torah, and how to give it to them.
Klezmommies
Featuring songs in Yiddish, English, Ladino, Hebrew, and Aramaic, The Klezmommies play music from across the Jewish Diaspora with chaos, charm, and chutzpah! Led by accordionist/vocalist Miri Verona, these nine no-goodniks from Lawrence University in Wisconsin straddle past and present to prophesize the future through the melodies of their foremommies. The band’s dearest joy is to play together, that our yearning for better times might invite the world to come.
Parking
Parking is available across the street in the Lake Country School lot (3755 Pleasant Ave) and on the street. Please consider carpooling.