Can't Miss It: The Weekend
TOMTEN MIEVILLE: Verse Chapter Verse returns this Saturday with a strong double booking: China Miéville and Tomten. This is a peanut butter jelly situation: either ingredient delicious on its own, but explosively scrumptious together. Miéville is the author of Perdido Street Station, The City and the City, The Iron Council, Un Lun Dun, Kraken, among others, whereas Tomten is the recent EMP Sound-Off! winner that traffics in rollicking hashbar organ rave-ups and janglefunk break-downs. They will perform back to back to back (Tomten Miéville Tomten) for a rock and roll reading that will send you careening into the night.
Saturday 6:30 p.m. // Chop Suey // $5 (21+)
FOLK 4 LIFE: In case you didn't know, it's Memorial Day weekend, the traditional time to go on roadtrips, ride innertubes down a lazy river, and basically celebrate the arrival of summer (which we won't see for another two months). It's also Folklife, the 40-year-old free folk festival that holds court all over Seattle Center. Featuring over 7,000 diverse performers, participatory dances, and workshops (seriously: check the schedule) it's impossible to see it all. So here are just a few recommendations for your viewing, dancing, and singing pleasure. Friday: Spruce Street School Marimba Ensemble, The Bad Things, TangoFusion Dance Co + Diamante Sextet , Corespondents, Wheedles Groove , and Emerald City Trapeze Arts. Saturday: Raging Grannies, Picoso, Diminished Men, Orkestar Slivovica, Bucharest Drinking Team, and Ballard Sedentary Sousa Band. Sunday: The Tequila Mockingbird Orchestra, Sebastian Clark, Bryan John Appleby, and VamoLá! Drum & Dance Ensemble. Monday: Polka Dot Dot Dot, Abi Grace, The Mongrel Jews, and Orkestar Zirkonium.
Friday, Saturday, and Sunday 11:00 a.m. - 10:00 p.m.; Monday 11:00 a.m. - 9:00 p.m. // Seattle Center // FREE (Donations Accepted)
35MM OF 34D: All this weekend (and into next week), The Grand Illusion Cinema presents Strip, Strip Hooray!, a burlesque film series. Illusion curators worked with Something Weird video to pull the best prints from their archive of original 35mm burlesque material, the largest collection of its kind in the world. The series will include B-Girl Rhapsody, Midnight Frolics, Everybody's Girl, Dream Follies (featuring Lenny Bruce (!)), Merry Maids of the Gay Way, among others. Many of these prints haven't been screened in decades; come see them as they were intended: in the humming dark of the theater.
Friday through Thursday, June 2, Various Times // The Grand Illusion Cinema // $8
