McCaw Hall, tickets $20-$80 more ›

This is Week 3 of Pacific Northwest Ballet's Celebrate Seattle Festival, and the busiest one. There's the cunningly named Program A, Program B, and Program C, all highlighting the work of locally born or spent-some-time-here choreographers. Plus, one of our favorite good times, 10 Tiny Dances is performing One Tiny Dance in the lobby at intermissions. more ›

As we mentioned the other day, Seattlest was very excited for the PNB production of Carmina Burana, but we left a bit perplexed and frustrated. To start, we enjoyed Mark Morris' Pacific, a light and dreamy piece that found our thoughts wandering in a pleasant way about halfway through, befitting of a day spent listening to the ocean advance and retreat while pretending to read a book. It was a short and "limited" (to borrow from Seattlest Michael's summation) composition, but the perfect exemplar of Morris' work: seamless integration of ballet's technique and precision with the freedom and rule-free whimsy of modern dance. We love that he breaks ballet traditions by having group pieces with three men and one woman, all performing the same choreography (sure, later in Carmina Burana we have a woman with three men but stereotypically she's a harpy and they are pining for her), and the costumes were simple and perfectly suited to the choreography. more ›

THAT STARBUCKS "I WAS A CHILD SOLDIER" GUY: At twelve, Ishmael Beah found himself fleeing rebels, wandering from village to village. At thirteen, he was a soldier in Sierra Leone, hooked on drugs and capable of things he would never have imagined. Now, rehabilitated and living in the U.S., he tells his story in A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier, in an attempt to raise awareness of the child soldier phenomenon. more ›