- [Announcer] Funding for "Off 90" is provided in part by the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund and the citizens of Minnesota.

(loon calls) (light music) (jazzy music) - Cruising your way next, "Off 90."

Music artist Kevin Dobbe of Rochester, the history of ski jumping.

A town rebuilds after a tornado.

And a Mankato tattoo artist.

It's all coming up on your next stop, "Off 90."

(jazzy music) (jazzy music ends) (upbeat music) (upbeat music continues) Hi, I'm Barbara Keith.

Thanks for joining me on this trip "Off 90."

Kevin Dobbe is a Rochester musician and mixed media artist who joined forces with a dance choreographer to create a work that might be different from anything you've seen before.

We share the story in visuals of the "Ascend" project.

(uplifting orchestral music) - Hi, my name is Kevin Dobbe and I'm a music composer and a new media artist.

♪ I'm flying ♪ - I was trained primarily as a composer and as a musician, but my interests in media have developed over the last 20, 25 years.

So, I try to intermix those two things together.

- Hi, my name's Katie Cook and I am the executive director of the Rochester Ensemble of Dance.

And I was also the choreographer for "If Robots Can Dance," and "The Flying Piece" for our production of "Ascend."

(delicate orchestral music) - New media art is the combination of theater lighting combined with things such as 3D animation.

(futuristic music) Character generation, all those types of things and working them together to connect to a new theatrical whole.

(contemplative music) For me, if I want to learn in a particular area, the best way for me I found is to throw myself into a project.

(flowing music) - Kevin and I previously worked together in 2021 for a project titled "Stronger Together" where we merged dance and media and technology, and we were able to merge our art forms again.

We were able to use the motion capture process again, so I was able to capture movement that was shared on the screen and then also have dancers doing live choreography that was synchronized with characters that we had created as the robots.

(rhythmic music) - The fun part about motion capture suit is you can take any type of motion, assign it to a quote, unquote skeleton and then take that skeleton and put some sort of skin over the top of it.

Who doesn't like a robot, right?

I mean, so, they're fun.

You can have robots be happy and interesting or you can have them be menacing.

This project kind of went all over the place and at first, it got a little menacing and then we decided to lighten it up and have them be happy robots.

- The dancers primarily listened to the music, except for a couple of the pieces, primarily the robots piece, where there were specific moments that there was interaction between the robots on the screen and the dancers on stage.

So that piece, from a choreographic standpoint, it was the most challenging.

As a choreographer, I have a lot of experience so I was able to prepare the dancers for that, but even once we got to the tech rehearsal and we saw what those life-size robots looked like, well, that piece just proved to be a little more interactive than some of the others.

(futuristic music) - It was so fun to work with the choreographers because a choreographer in the dance world kind of is the director of that play.

That's what a choreographer does.

So, to a certain degree, I invaded their space.

I asked them, may I join you as a partner to visualize what this piece is about, and they were just all so open to sharing a joint vision of what it might be.

- I've enjoyed developing a partnership with Kevin throughout the years and collaborating with other artists.

So, overall, I just feel very thankful and proud of the opportunity to present a live performance that the audience enjoys.

I'm always super proud of the dancers for creating and being brave enough to step out on the stage.

- I think for a sound artist, you hear something inside your head and then you try to capture that, and the goal is to have it be as close to what you thought you were creating, and the same thing as with the visual technology.

In my mind, I think it will look this way when we get into the theater.

Did it look that way?

(uplifting music) I think any artist, as you get better at your craft, you're more able to do that.

It was challenging but it was also rewarding at the same time.

We didn't only approach this as to artists.

What really connected us, I think, is that it's about education and offering up that gift for the kids, the adults that are getting involved in this process.

- For me, the most exciting thing is always working with the kids in our community.

So, I'm an educator and I'm very passionate about providing opportunity to our area youth.

Several of the choreographers used to be my students, so it's really special for me to see them grow up and become choreographers and then touch the next generation with their knowledge and skills.

- Let's go.

Waltz.

Waltz.

Turn again twice.

Turn again twice.

Balance.

Balance.

- What's really fun for me is just providing an opportunity that local people haven't had before.

(contemplative music) (rhythmic music) The dancers don't always know what to expect when you're adding something new like the media.

So, they were really excited when they came to the theater and were able to view the technology for the first time, especially on the large screens, and they were able to feel immersed in it once they were dancing with it behind them.

The challenge was really for the choreographers to make sure that the movement was connected to the video in the way that they wanted.

- The intermediary of course, is the technology.

It has the potential of crashing and burning spectacularly and that is the tightrope doing new media arts that you're walking.

You have to feel fairly confident that what you're creating not only will be of interest to the audience, but also can be something that is safe such that during a performance, something traumatic doesn't happen.

- The most challenging is always bringing all the people together.

So, we had a cast of 46 people and a creative team of eight.

So, between all of the choreographers, the designers, the costume creators and the dancers, it took a lot of rehearsal time and scheduling organization and then the creative time between Kevin and the choreographers.

I had a choreographer who was passionate about bringing adult dancers into the mix.

So, we had an age range of seven through adult for this production and I think it was really meaningful for all of those participants.

And, of course, when you put all the hard work in behind the scenes, to see it all come together in a seamless production from start to finish, that was really exciting and fun and very rewarding.

(funky music) (jazzy music) - Ski jumping was invented in Norway, but it's not a stranger to southeast Minnesota.

Red Wing was the birthplace in the late 1800s of ski jumping in the United States.

The city was even host to two national ski jumping championships in the 1920s and '30s.

We visit the American Ski Jumping Hall of Fame in Red Wing.

(light country music) - Okay, back here we have a bunch of skis that we can show you that kind of the evolution of the early way back in the 1800s.

- We are at the American Ski Jumping Hall of Fame Museum in Red Wing, Minnesota.

We're in the St. James Hotel on the second floor.

We have a small collection of museum pieces, and we're here because of its history and because of its origins of the sport of ski jumping.

- We're a group of people trying to keep the history of the sport going.

We're happy to have visitors come in from all over the country and take a look and give 'em an idea of what ski jumping's all about here in the United States.

(old time music) - Red Wing is the home of ski jumping, which originated in the 1800s, specifically around 1885.

1887 actually held the first national championships for ski jumping.

It's a good question as to why it started here.

We know that immigrants from Norway came here that had already ski jumped, of course, in Norway, and they settled here in Red Wing.

The first national championships for ski jumping were here.

We know that for sure.

As you can see, we have the various pictures of the whole Aurora Ski Club back in the 1900s with the Norwegians and all the Americans mixed in together.

- The Hemmestveit brothers came from Norway, Telemark, Norway in the 1800s, brought the sport of ski jumping, and the excitement of the sport of ski jumping, that drew a lot of American young men.

Unfortunately, it was only men that competed at that time to the sport.

It was quite remarkable what these guys did because of the quality, the skis that they skied on, they were really just boards.

They were like barrel slats but then bent up, and with a rubber binder, you'd strap it onto your boots.

Sunday event in Red Wing on the monster ski jump on February 5th in 1911.

I mean you can imagine how they'd attract people.

Some of the pictures here, too, of the crowds that they got at the Aurora Ski Club National Championships in 1928.

I mean, the cars are just packed.

Everyone was awestruck, I think, when they got to see these people ski jumping, going a hundred feet or something through the air with just basically straps and boards on the end of their feet.

(gentle music) Theresa, the first woman to jump off Iron Mountain.

- [Jim] We have a big history here in Minnesota, especially with ski jumping in the Olympics.

- 1956, I mean.

- I know.

- How do you put your arms out like that?

Are you crazy?

- If you look at the history of the Olympic sports, we've got probably 50% of the Olympians were men from Minnesota or the Midwest area from Iron Mountain, Michigan, Ishpeming, Westby, Duluth.

Minneapolis has supplied a lot of the US ski team and Olympians over the last, well, for a long time.

- I placed 12th in the tryouts.

That's not good enough.

You won it.

- [Jim] Yeah, well, it happens.

- Yeah.

- [Olympic Announcer] Gregory Windsperger, USA.

- I grew up in Robbinsdale, Minnesota.

About a mile from my house was the ski jump at Theodore Wirth Park.

I began there in Minneapolis and I made the Olympic team for 1976 and went to Innsbruck, Austria and competed there on the 70 meter hill.

(light music) (crowd cheers) - Well, I grew up in Ely, Minnesota.

I enjoyed the thrill of speed and flying through the air.

I don't know.

It just was something that really got my heart going and made me feel alive in 40 below weather.

So, you know.

- [Greg] Ski jumping is an absolutely thrilling sport.

I loved every minute of it, especially when I had the good jumps.

- [Jim] For me, it's like being superman.

You know, you don't have a cape, you have skis, and you just fly and it's just, the air picks you up and takes you and lifts you and you can feel that rise, and it's an incredible feeling.

- [Greg] It's like as if someone has the back of your belt and is picking you up and you're just flying through the air.

It's exciting.

- Well, I skied in the '80s and '70s, and in fact, here's my old hat, official Lake Placid 1980 from the '80 Olympics.

It still fits.

I guess my head didn't get too big.

I dunno.

(light music) (bluesy music) - Taopi, Minnesota, with a population of under 100 people, was hit by a tornado in 2022 that destroyed half of the town.

Perhaps surprisingly, most of the people stayed and rebuilt their homes.

We take a look back at Taopi and a look forward.

- On the night of April 12th, we'd been listening to the weather reports because there was severe weather all around us.

The first thing we heard was really extremely hard rain.

(rain pours) I said, "That sounds like a train."

So, I heard the stereotypical sound of a train roaring through, and so, as we ran for the basement, when I was on the steps, we heard trees, big limbs coming through our garage roof.

(thunder crashes) It only lasted a few seconds.

It was gone in a minute.

- 30 seconds at the most, you know.

It was just there, and you could hear the trees breaking.

I heard 'em come through my garage roof.

- This is 10:40 in the evening.

So yeah, lots of people here.

Of course, we're already in bed.

- My sister called and said, "You gotta come down to my mother's house."

A tornado's hit it and the windows were all blown out and had part of the neighbor's roof was through her roof.

But it was a little tough getting there that night 'cause we couldn't get, our power was off, of course, after the storm went through.

Everything was dark.

- [Mary] As soon as I got outside, there were wires down everywhere.

I could see grain bins, you know, coming onto the highway I saw buildings completely down.

It was very obvious much of our town was gone.

- The first night, my goal was just to get my mother safe 'cause we had to get her out of the house.

She couldn't stay there 'cause it was raining.

There was water everywhere.

The next morning, it was basically to get the streets open, you know, and mostly just driving around, see if everybody was safe.

Nobody in town was actually hurt, which was amazing.

(gentle music) - I've been here my whole life.

We've had, you know, brushes with the tornado shed here and there and strong, you know, straight line winds, but nothing, nothing to compare with this at all.

- [Jim Kiefer] We had never been through anything like this.

Not half the town destroyed like we went through on April 12th.

When we went out the next morning to survey the damage, it was snowing.

It was windy and cold.

The next three days were terrible days.

First thing you have to do when you get up is try to get your roofs all sealed 'cause it was raining in their house and ours was just raining in the garages.

(gentle music) - Taopi is only like four blocks long, essentially, running along Highway 56.

The damage was in the western two blocks of our city.

Those two blocks almost entirely wiped out.

It took a path kind of at an angle toward the northeast and took almost everything in its sight.

But on my side of town, on this east side of town, we had lots of holes in the garage roof, but we were all warm and dry still inside our homes where everybody to the west of my house essentially was almost all displaced that night.

At least 40% of the town was destroyed.

We had about 10 homes lost to the tornado completely or they could save small portions of their house but essentially rebuilt their homes.

(gentle music) - We ate dinner and supper and breakfast out of a tent for two weeks 'cause we were here helping all the volunteers.

Half of the town had moved out.

They were in temporary housing, and the rest of us got back to eating supper at home.

- I think the best thing that I have seen, definitely community came together.

In the first week, we were feeding more than 200 people morning, lunch and an evening meal in that tent.

Our city only had a population of 67, so we had just tons of outpouring.

That was great to see.

It was just phenomenal.

(gentle music) Most of them said they had good insurance that was helping them out a lot, and the financial struggle comes in.

They got caught building when building costs were so expensive.

They got caught in a huge change in interest rate.

If they had a 2% mortgage a year ago, they're probably looking at a 6% mortgage at least now.

So, the cost, their losses will continue for them for quite a while.

- The biggest surprise to me was that everybody rebuilt here, which, for a town this size, it's kinda surprising.

I thought most of 'em would move to a bigger town or move where their family members were.

But everybody rebuilt here, which is good for the town.

- [Mary] They probably could have gone somewhere else, bought a house in another city, but they didn't.

Everybody who could come back did come back.

- I think they like small town living.

You know, we're pretty lenient here with our ordinances and I think they just really like small town living 'cause everybody come back, and I think they just want to be in a town under a hundred people, and we're talking about rebuilding our city hall.

That city hall was destroyed in the tornado and they're gonna rebuild this summer.

So, in a couple years the town could look very similar to what it looked like before.

Only, half of it'll be brand new.

(gentle music) (jazzy music) - Megan Hoogland is a tattoo artist in Mankato.

She got into the trade when few women were tattooing.

She specializes in black and white tattoos that look not unlike photographs.

We visit her shop and meet the other artists she works with, each with a style of their own.

- All right, here's a tour.

So, all of our rooms are private for customers.

So, this is Tom's room.

Tom, say hi.

(slow country music) This is Damien's room.

- Hey.

- This is the first room I tattooed in when I started here.

My name's Megan Hoogland, and I'm a tattoo artist in Mankato, Minnesota.

Mecca Tattoo is located in an old funeral home in downtown Mankato.

We have a really tight-knit group of artists that work really well together, and it's morphed into something completely different from when I started.

(slow country music) (tools buzz) (slow country music) - She is amazing, you know.

You've seen her work.

She can reproduce a photo and even just like, even when she's doing like geometric stuff or floral stuff, the way that she can just easily pieces stuff together, she makes it look so easy and flawless.

It's, she's just, yeah, she's amazing.

- It wasn't on my radar to become a tattoo artist.

Like, it wasn't even a thing for women to be tattooing when I started.

So, a friend of mine just asked if I'd consider doing an apprenticeship at a shop that had just opened, and I went and asked for an apprenticeship and they said yes.

My mom said it was fine if I did it for a while as long as I didn't do it forever 'cause that's how taboo it was when I started.

So, I knew maybe like six women in the whole United States that were tattooing.

And when I started, like, people would choose images off the wall to get tattooed.

It wasn't like a custom experience.

And then, eventually, like, I was always a black and gray, like, reproduction artist, like, doing portraits or landscapes, but that kind of tattooing didn't really exist back then.

So, when I like broke out of doing stuff on the wall and started doing like black and gray portraits and reproduction stuff, I feel like I found my niche.

So, I kind of made a name for myself that way.

- You excited?

- Yes.

Yes.

- What keeps me coming back to tattooing is the customers allowing me to, like, do what I wanna do.

Like, I'll take their ideas and morph it into something that I want to be doing, and they trust me.

- [Interviewer] What are you doing here today?

- Getting a tattoo of a calla lily.

My daughter just got the same one, so we're doing mother-daughter tattoos.

Calla lily is probably my favorite flower.

I just like how it's delicate yet strong.

If you hold the bloom, it's stronger than you think it is.

- [Interviewer] Yeah.

- So, I don't know.

It's kind of reflective of our relationship and just celebrating her graduating from grad school, as well.

- So, these are all the video game consoles that he grew up with and these are all the characters from all those video games like Super Mario and Zelda.

- [Interviewer] What inspired this tattoo?

- I just grew up playing these games and I loved them and wanted to, I don't know, put 'em on my leg and see 'em every day.

I have my son.

We started playing games together, too, now, so he gets pretty excited every time I go home, show a new character, new something on my leg.

- [Megan] I didn't really know what I was getting into.

I just thought it was cool to be a tattoo artist.

And then, when I started traveling and meeting other artists, that's when I realized that it was a legit art form and people were taking it to the next level really fast.

- I used to do auto body, and I really enjoyed, like, painting and airbrushing cars, pin striping, stuff like that.

So, more like the artistic side of it.

It just always struck my eye as something that was super cool as a kid.

So, to be able to put stuff like that on people permanently and have them walk around with it was even cooler for me.

(light music) - Our generation of tattoo artists actually shared information and we've all learned really, really fast each other's tricks and we all progressed really fast so it went from like bikers and sailors tattooing to like the art community tattooing.

(light music) - I taught myself the seven layer Flemish Technique which was like the old, old still lives and grisailles.

So, like, your underlying paintings are all in black and gray and then you're using really thin layers to build it up.

That's what gives them that depth and richness and a little more time consuming in the long run, but you get a better effect.

(contemplative music) - [Megan] It's gone from picking something off the wall to actually seeking out different artists for their style.

(contemplative music) And now, the motivation, it's anywhere from looking cool to having it be something that means something.

- Yeah.

It's good.

(speech drowned out by music) Yep.

I like it.

- We've reached the end of this trip.

Thanks for riding along.

See you next time "Off 90."

(upbeat music) (upbeat music continues) (upbeat music continues) (upbeat music fades) (light music) - [Announcer] Funding for "Off 90" is provided in part by the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund and the citizens of Minnesota.

(loon calls) (no audio) (no audio) (no audio)