New York's historical retrospective performance art extravaganzas have got nothing on the scene in St. Paul, Minnesota. From today's St. Paul Pioneer Press:

On a mild and clear night in September, their bodies covered only in blankets, Judith Howard and April Sellers climbed out of their upstairs window onto the roof of their home in St. Paul's Merriam Park. About 40 people watched from the backyard lawn, nearly all of them fellow artists — dancers, actors, singers and poets. There was a lot of laughter, a lot of wine, a lot of flirty energy. Many had been here before, for one or both of the women's previous performance parties, and some were still talking about what they did with strawberries.

So nobody flinched on this night, when the women shed their blankets and, to the screechy, plaintive bowings of a violinist perched on the lip of the window, began dancing in the buff. Their springy, synchronized leaps and abstract modernist gestures, made more precarious by the roof's pitch and elevation, came to a close when the women held apples aloft and bit into them. To enthusiastic applause, the roommates re-wrapped themselves in the blankets and climbed back into the house. Some people didn't leave the party until after sunrise.

...Sellers is soon moving out and back to the west side of the river, so the women are staging a retrospective of their entire house performance repertoire, along with a new piece, at what they promise will be their final party June 3.....They're calling the evening "House of Big Love."...in May 2005, Sellers and Howard performed "Rising Sap" in their backyard garden. The women dressed their grassy stage in lilacs and chocolate-covered strawberries and laid rose pedals along the walkway. Nearby, a phallus made of ice melted through the night. To the women, it's all an artistic experiment. "We don't know how to make a labyrinth, we don't know how to mosaic the ceiling, we don't know how to turn a room into a vagina," Sellers said.

...While St. Paul will lose a distinguishing artistic entity after the June 3 performance party, the women are already working on separate pieces that continue to push boundaries. In Howard's case, it's dance work driven by the grief of wartime death. Sellers has a work in progress called "V," a cultural exploration of the female sex organ, into which she plans to incorporate video of her gynecological exam.

This last performance will be the first one at which they charge admission. Their planned future works clearly have transactional potential. Video iPod marketing schemas loom.

TECHNORATI TAGS: ST. PAUL, MINNESOTA, PERFORMANCE ART, DANCE, JUDITH HOWARD, APRIL SELLERS, HOUSE OF BIG LOVE, iPOD