Annie Bartholomew, KTOO

This fall, the University of Alaska Southeast is opening up some of its Alaska Native language and Northwest Coast arts classes to the community at-large at reduced rates.  

UAS Chancellor Rick Caulfield said with few fluent speakers left, there’s an urgent need to create language learning opportunities.

“As a University I think we have an obligation certainly to provide the academic pathway for those who want to study the language and help create critical mass of more people who are speakers of the language or at least conversant in the language,” Caulfield said.

Regular students will study alongside community members taking advantage of the non-credit option.

“Often we’ll have individuals in the community, for example, who grew up understanding some Tlingit, the Tlingit language in their home, but have never had a chance to really study it,” Caulfield said. “Often they can add a lot to the instruction because they bring what they knew from growing up into the classroom and that benefits the students who are doing it for academic credit as well.”

Ishmael Hope (Ḵaagwáaskʼ) and Lance Twitchell (Du Aaní Kawdinook Xh’unei) will teach the evening Tlingit classes at beginning and intermediate levels.

Caulfield said the university also is working closely with Sealaska Heritage Institute to make Juneau and Southeast Alaska the center for Northwest Coast arts.

Abel Ryan is teaching Northwest Coast design classes. Lyle James (Xeetli.éesh) is teaching a drum-making course, in which students will work with pre-processed deer hide to create a wooden-framed drum.

Classes begin Monday. The reduced community rate is $75 per credit. Contact the UAS admissions office at 796-6100 or visit the campus One Stop to enroll.

More classes from UAS Artist in Residence Nicholas Galanin (Yéil Ya-Tseen) will be announced later this semester.

This month Juneau chefs Lionel Uddipa and Jacob Pickard represented Alaska at the Great American Seafood Cook-Off in New Orleans.

In a hotel room in New Orleans ahead of a national seafood cook-off, a pair of Juneau chefs were sweating.

“The rice wasn’t cooking as well as we wanted it to, our stock didn’t taste how we wanted it to,” Uddipa said. “Going into it, we’re, not gonna lie, pretty nervous.”

The rice is a key ingredient in one of Uddipa’s contest risotto. He calls it a lifestyle dish, a comfort food combining aspects from both sous chef Jacob Pickard’s Italian heritage, and his own Filipino roots.

“We eat rice 3 times a day, and we just didn’t want to just scoop rice onto a plate,” Uddipa said. “We wanted to give it some character.”

Together the chefs went through a dozen variations before settling on a plate that represented the seasonality of Alaska’s fisheries: alder smoked Bristol Bay king crab, skewered with a blueberry branches from Eaglecrest, and the risotto garnished with sea asparagus foraged with their toddlers.

In their hotel room the chefs stayed up until 2:30 in the morning workshopping their dishes — tweaking the vanilla ratio, counting out salmon roe — and practicing their presentation.

In front of television cameras and a live audience the following day, they had only 60 minutes to prepare seven plates.

Timing was key as they skewered the crab thighs, smoked the alder wood and made final counts of sea asparagus and salmon roe.

At first, his rice didn’t cook fast enough.

“Five minutes felt like 30 seconds,” recalls Uddipa, knowing if risotto sits out too long, it gets mushy.

Back in Juneau outside the restaurant Salt, Uddipa runs into another Juneau-famous chef: 10-year-old Denali Schijvens, who cooked his way to the White House and competed on Food Network’s Chopped Junior.

“I don’t think it really got to his head,” recalls the young cook. “I saw his face when he won (Uddipa laughs) it was happy, but it wasn’t — I’m-the-best-no-one’s-better-than-me face.”

The pair have been cooking together since Denali was 8, he considers Uddipa his mentor.

Like Denali, Uddipa grew up around food, helping out his aunt who owned Valley Restaurant. His cousins and siblings would play in the apartment building upstairs.

He says when the restaurant got busy, “We would just get a phone call from, like, my mom or my aunt and they’d be like, ‘We need help, we need you to come here and polish silverware, wash some dishes,’ and we were always stoked to do it.”

His advice for aspiring chefs like Denali?

“Be humble, and just be willing to learn, always try to improve from yesterday,” Uddipa said.

Uddipa said he still polishes silverware, helping out wherever he’s needed at Salt.

His teamwork with Pickard and creative spirit continues in Salt’s hot and humid kitchen.

Bacon lardon sizzles as Pickard slices grapefruit. It’s for tonight’s scallop special.

“It’s going to be a salad made out of shaved Brussel sprouts and zucchini with a grapefruit vinaigrette and champagne with whipped mascarpone and honey,” he said.

They’ve only been cooking together for eight months.

Long before the contest, Pickard started making their winning risotto’s signature ingredient, a black cod fish sauce stored in a downstairs prep kitchen.

“You need to make sure everyone’s at least 100 yards away,” Uddipa said. “And that you use a very large wooden spoon that you’re OK throwing away.”

He recommends plugging your nose.

But in very modest dabs in risotto, Pickard said the fish sauce adds another level of salty, oceany umami.

The winning dish will be on Salt’s menu of specials soon.

The Alaska Seafood Market Institute sponsored the chefs’ trip to the New Orleans and provided coaching support.

Juneau chef Beau Schooler won the same national competition in 2015.

Juneau chef Lionel Uddipa of Salt was crowned king at the 14th annual Great American Seafood Cook-Off in New Orleans. 

His winning dish was smoked Alaskan king crab with risotto prepared in fermented black cod fish sauce. The food was garnished by local sea asparagus and a blueberry branch foraged by Uddipa and sous chef Jacob Pickard before leaving Juneau.

In 2015  Juneau chef Beau Schooler and sous chef Travis Hotch of the Rookery Cafe took home the award for their nose-to-tail sockeye salmon dish.

Brothers and television hosts, Chris and Martin Kratt are known for their PBS Kids’ wildlife shows: “Kratts’ Creatures,” “Zoboomafoo” and now “Wild Kratts.”

The Kratts are in Alaska, anchoring the BBC and PBS’s prime-time “Wild Alaska Live” specials from the Mendenhall Glacier.

Last week, KTOO’s Annie Bartholomew caught up with the brothers and some of their biggest fans in Juneau.

At Eileen Begenyi’s house in Douglas, her kids are getting excited.

Seven-year-old Charlie Begenyi shows me a little of what he’s been working on: a picture of an octopus, a beaded orca, wrist band and a picture of the Wild Kratts. They’re gifts for Chris and Martin Kratt, who the family is going to see at a KTOO event at Thunder Mountain High School.

Four hundred tickets sold out in under 10 minutes.

Charlie says you can tell them apart by their colors, “Martin wears blue and Chris wears green, always.”

He doesn’t have a favorite, but his 5-year-old sister, Anna, says she does, “(I like) Martin because blue is kind of my favorite color, too, and he has blue eyes like me.”

“Wild Kratts” is a hybrid live-action and animated series that teaches kids about natural science and animals.

In their animated world, the Kratts access technology of the future, traveling the continents in their flying amphibious vehicle, the Tortuga, which is in the shape of a turtle. Resident inventor Aviva helps them along their journey.

“She makes so much cool inventions,” Anna says. Her favorite? “The fish cam, it’s like this fish camera that they use underwater to see such cool stuff.”

The most important technology is the brothers’ power suits they use to gain animals’ creature powers. Think cheetah speed or a chameleon camouflage.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3INz-4LUegU&t=19m39s

For their trip north as part of “Wild Alaska Live,” the Kratts created a special “Wild Kratts Alaska” show, where the animated Kratts get salmon-sized and follow a sockeye to her spawning ground.

Along the way they leap with orcas, dodge salmon sharks and escape danger from predators like grizzly bears, gray wolves and Steller sea lions.

At the sold out Juneau event, the Kratts previewed the new episode.

After the opening scene, the lights faded up to reveal Chris and Martin Kratt, in their signature blue and green. Joined onstage by a bald eagle and falcon from the Juneau Raptor Center, the Kratts opened the floor to questions.

Kids in the audience quizzed them on their favorite animals, scariest encounters and whether they’d considered doing shows about creatures like slugs, flamingos, house pets and more.

Backstage, Martin Kratt says Juneau’s kids gave them lots of good ideas.

“The animals that they think about, may not be the animals we’ve thought about,” he says. “We haven’t got to flamingos yet so obviously that would be a great power and a really odd and unusual creature.”

“Apparently we have to do an episode about puppy power,” he says laughing.

With more than 130 “Wild Kratts” episodes, the brothers say they’ve only scratched the surface of the creature world.

Season 5 is in the the works with 20 new episodes, including a Halloween special, in which they will get the creature powers of the vampire bat and tarantula.

Chris and Martin Kratt encouraged kids to go on creature adventures of their own. In the Tongass National Forest, they don’t have to go too far.

Watch Wild Kratts Alaska: Hero’s Journey on pbskids.org. The Kratts are hosting the second installment of “Wild Alaska Live” at 4 p.m. Wednesday with a repeat at 7 p.m. on Alaska Public Television. The third and final show is at 4 p.m. Sunday.

The programs will also stream live at pbs.org/wild-alaska-live.

More details on broadcast times in Juneau are posted here.

Under a purple ethereal light, a figure cloaked in black sheer fabric floats across stage and slinks around a folding chair.

Personifying the angel of death, Moscato Extatique begins peeling away layers of clothing, blurring the lines of gender expression.

It’s part of Mod Carousel’s newest show, Gilded, which is making its world premiere in Juneau, Alaska.

Gilded begins at 7 p.m. Friday, July 14, and at 7 and 10 p.m. Saturday, July 15, at the Rockwell Ballroom.

But this isn’t your grandmother’s cabaret. This is boylesque, where men perform sultry roles in a genre pioneered by women and inspired by burlesque.

One of founding members of the troupe Mod Carousel is from Alaska’s capital city, and has made a point to bring his art back to his home city.

For eight years, The Luminous Pariah has brought boylesque back to his hometown of Juneau.

Growing up in Southeast was both interesting and wonderful, he said, but he felt like culture was missing.

“I knew existed somewhere but didn’t know where it was, and felt like I need to leave Juneau to be part of that.”

He was introduced to boylesque in Seattle, where he found his conspirators and future husband.

“Coming back, I feel like I went out in the world, discovered a little gem, and then I’m kind of bringing it home and saying, ‘Here, look at this, look at this for a little while,’ and people seem to really enjoy that.”

The group travels with more than 300 pounds of luggage, costumes and props.

Most are custom sewn by The Luminous Pariah’s husband, Paris Original.

Since forming their collective in 2010, they’ve held residencies in London and Australia, garnered 5 million YouTube hits and performed in more than 50 countries.

The Luminous Pariah alone has headlined burlesque festivals in more than 18 countries.

Burlesque has a long history as a medium for political satire, parody and social commentary. Inspired by Lydia Thompson and the British Blondes, who first brought Victorian burlesque to America in the 1860s.

In their newest show Gilded, the group explores themes of gender expression, race and ethnicity, all in the classic burlesque format.

A performer enters the stage, establishes a story line and character through dance and physical movement. Eventually shedding layers of clothing to reveal a moral of the story that’s almost always comedic.

Even though the guys are taking their clothes off, they distinguish their work from strippers like Chippendales and “Magic Mike.”

Trojan Original said their audiences are diverse.

“I think a healthy amount of our audience thinks it’s going to be a strip show and is pleasantly surprised and then the other half thinks it’s definitely not going to be a strip show and they’re also pleasantly surprised. At the end of the day everyone’s pleasantly surprised.

The Luminous Pariah said the difference between burlesque and stripping is the intent and artistry behind these routines.

Stripping seeks to arouse the audience and is mostly about what the performer looks like underneath their clothes.

In burlesque, there are no limitations on body type. Performers serve to engage audience psychologically through humor, costumes, and clever reveals.

For members of Mod Carousel who grew up in the ballet tradition, burlesque offers an alternative to the rigid gender roles assigned to males.

“Men have a specific role in dance, especially in the classical world where you’re presenting the woman and being the strong masculine prince,” Moscato Extatique said. “Paris and I are not that man in burlesque, and burlesque is that place for us to be as effeminate or as masculine as we want.

The Luminous Pariah said he’s always felt somewhere in-between gender-wise, and as his persona he gets to present that onstage.

“When it comes down to it at the end of the road, do I have to be a lumberjack or do I have to be a princess?” he said.

With boylesque, he can be both at the same time and that’s both liberating and gratifying.

Editor’s note: A previous version of this story referred to performer The Luminous Pariah’s legal name. They have since asked to only be referred to by their stage name and we have honored that request and removed the legal name.

Story night at the Douglas Public Library played out like any other monthly family night: free food, some crafts, and a very special guest reading books. More than 100 adults, teenagers and children attended Juneau’s first Drag Queen Story Hour hosted by Gigi Monroe of Juneau. 

She introduces herself to the kids, and explains, “I’m a drag queen, and if you’ve never met a drag queen, this is what we look like. We like to play dress up and make people happy.”

The buxom Gigi Monroe is the creation of James Hoagland, a professional wig designer and producer of Juneau Pride’s sold out drag revue, Glitz. Covered in ruffles, rhinestones and glitter, some of the kids listening from the floor thought the drag queen reading childhood classics might have been royalty.

She’s known for her bedazzled costumes, lively impersonations of Dolly Parton and Liza Minelli among others, and even pyrotechnics.

But at the library, “It’s definitely more G-rated than what I usually do at a show,” Hoagland said.

He said the experience provides youth with a real life example of self-expression, so they may feel freer to express themselves.

The idea to bring drag queens to Juneau’s youth came from the Brooklyn Public Library whose Drag Queen Story Hour “captures the imagination and play of the gender fluidity in childhood and gives kids glamorous, positive, and unabashedly queer role models.” 

Heather Paige Burke saw a video from Brooklyn and asked her friend at the Juneau Public Library if it could happen here. Burke, who brought her husband and 2-year-old son, said Juneau celebrates many cultures, but others are lacking in visibility.

“So it’s great to have literally all colors of the rainbows. And as much as we can expose our children to that, the better,” Burke said. “Like, then you can see, anyone can be anything their heart tells them they should be and who they truly are.”

Amelia Jenkins, who works in youth services for the library, said there were a few raised eyebrows when they announced the event.

“We just let them know that the library is for everybody and families can decide for themselves whether this was right for them,” she said. “And they took that pretty well.” 

So far, there have been no formal complaints.

It took Hoagland about an hour-and-a-half to get ready for Drag Story Hour, about the same amount of time he spends preparing for the stage. He said drag, like other performance arts, is just trying to connect with people. In this case, very young people, and letting them know whoever they are is OK. No matter the audience, Hoagland’s goal is for them to let go and just have fun.

Family Night is funded through The Friends of the Juneau Public Libraries who pay for all programming expenses.