Heart Beats from the ‘Polka Heartland’

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Dick Blau, Concertina Millie, Archival Inkjet print, 2014

His red shirt is emblazoned with a Polish falcon; hers in gauzy white is slightly askew. Bound together to the beat of Wisconsin’s state dance, they move forward on sneaker-clad feet in Polish Hop, one of many archival inkjet prints by photographer Dick Blau. The Museum of Wisconsin Art (MOWA) welcomes you to “Polka Heartland,” now-March 29.

As a Kansas City teen, I dared date a blue-collar boy born in Milwaukee. Before polka-launching us onto the 14,000-square-foot ballroom floor, he advised me to “hang on.” I did and he sweated it out.

Blau, a self-taught photographer and film professor at UW-Milwaukee, is both a Yale and Harvard graduate whose parents were involved in the arts. Some of his work at MOWA was printed by another photographer/writer of note, Tom Bamberger. Buddies for four decades, they have collaborated on many projects, including five books. It’s an artful partnership in life’s dance.

Dick Blau, The Squeezettes, Archival Inkjet print, 2014

The 30 images in MOWA’s Hyde Gallery were shot during 2013 in Wisconsin locations with names like Pulaski, Random Lake, Kewaskum and, of course, Milwaukee. Nine trips and many events later, the stage was set not only for this exhibition, but for a book (Polka Heartland: Photographs by Dick Blau) to be published by the Wisconsin Historical Society Press in the spring of 2015.

But is the polka culture really “unappreciated” and consigned to a space populated by people on the fringes of society? Blau speaks to this at MOWA on Thursday, Feb.12. Can he cut through the sos musztardowy on the kielbasa and get to the heart of things? “Teach me to dance,” says a dour writer to Zorba the Greek in the 1964 flick. “Teach me to dance.” The Museum of Wisconsin Art is in West Bend where the river bends.

Hang on.