Holidays Are Over, So Get Serious About Enjoying Your Leisure Time
The slacker days of January are over. No more three-day weekends, no more four-day workweeks to ease us into the new year. Cold, hard reality is here and, unless you get Presidents Day off, there are four months until our next holiday weekend.
That means cramming all your fun back into Friday nights and Saturdays and Sundays. We’ll ease you into it today with a listing of what’s going on in the Inland Northwest this short weekend.
Try something new
Here’s something you probably haven’t heard much before. The South Asia Cultural Association, which was formed last September, is sponsoring a Classical Music Concert from 7 to 9 p.m. Sunday at the COG at Gonzaga University.
Rick Henderson, a student of Ustad Ali Akbar Khan who established the Ali Akbar College of Music in Marin County, Calif., comes to Spokane with more than 10 years of education and experience in classical Indian music.
The featured instrument is the sarod, similar to a lute with two resonating chambers. It was introduced to the Western concert stage in 1955 by Ali Akbar Khan, now in Bangladesh.
Henderson will be accompanied by a tabla artist and a vocalist. The concert has been scheduled in honor of the festival of Pongal, or sugar cane harvest, celebrated in southern India.
Tickets are $8, $15 a couple. South Asian snacks will be served. Call Bilal Hashmi at 235-4627 for more information on the association.
No sunglasses allowed
In a combination of old and new, Lazer Vaudeville combines high-tech laser magic with the ancient art of vaudeville to create a one-of-a-kind production at the Panida Theater in Sandpoint tonight and Saturday.
Complete with strobe-light juggling, black light illusions, acrobatics, magic, lasers and comedy, Lazer Vaudeville is clean fun for all ages.
Alfonzo, a 7-foot fluorescent firebreathing dragon, is host of the show. The troupe includes Carter Brown, Randy Johnson and Cindy Marvell, all internationally known performers.
Tickets are $7, $5 for seniors and students 18 years and under, $3 for children 12 years and under. They’re available at Eve’s Leaves, Java Adagio (both in Sandpoint) and at the box office. Tonight’s show begins at 7:30, Saturday’s is a 2 p.m. matinee.
Be sure to be on time; the first 15 minutes is in black light and no latecomers will be admitted during that section of the show.
Unusual stuff
The Spokane Folklore Society never rests. It’s holding Contramania 16 from 7:30 to 11 p.m Saturday at the Corbin Community Center, W327 Cleveland.
The Traveling Lundbergs and Rick Rubin will perform on fiddle, guitar and drums. Calling and instruction will be by Dave Smith.
You don’t need to bring a partner and you don’t need to know how. All dances will be taught. Admission is $7, $4 for Folklore Society members. People under age 18 are free.
Dances are smoke-, drug- and alcohol-free.
Some visual and aural arts
Women Folk Productions presents a Cup-n-Saucer Event Saturday featuring Coeur d’Alene singersongwriter Andrea Custer and the Spokane group Northern Rose with Dani Elder. A visual arts gallery will be presented by artist Mykael Hawley.
The coffeehouse-style event begins at 7:30 p.m. at the Lakeside Center, 421 Lakeside, in Coeur d’Alene. Tickets, available at the door, are $8, $15 for two.
A memorial exhibit of paintings and drawings by the late Spokane artist and educator Herman Keys is on display at the Gonzaga University Ad Gallery, located in the basement of the Administration Building, through Feb. 10.
Keys, who died last August, spent a 50-year career producing realist images of the human condition. A reception will be held at the gallery from 5 to 9 p.m. Jan. 27.
Tenor Ryan Pennington, a senior music education major at Washington State University, will perform a vocal recital this afternoon on the WSU campus.
The 3:10 p.m. program in the Kimbrough Concert Hall will feature works by Thomas Arne, Richard Strauss and Jules Massenet. It’s free.
Rally time
Planned Parenthood of Spokane and Whitman County’s Clergy Advisory Committee are cosponsoring “Light the Way to Choice,” a 4 p.m. rally Sunday at St. Paul’s United Methodist Church, N1620 Monroe.
The event is a candlelight convocation for peace and a celebration of freedom of choice, conscience and religion marking the 22nd anniversary of Roe vs. Wade.
Sports-related
The WSU Cougars take on Oregon State at home Saturday in a Pac-10 men’s basketball game. Tip-off is at 1 p.m. at Beasley Coliseum in Pullman.
Reserved seats are $12, general admission tickets are $8 and $3 for youths. People 8 and younger and 65 and older get in free.
A few local rivals hit the basketball courts tonight. North Central and Shadle Park get the Groovy Shoes competition at the Spokane Coliseum starting at 4:30 p.m. Central Valley and University fight over Stinky Sneaker status beginning at 6:15 at CV.
Graduates are invited cheer on their alma mater. General admission is $4.
And, Silver Mountain holds the fourth-annual Mountain Gear Telemarking Race on Saturday near Kellogg. This race is open to telemarkers of all abilities. Call 325-9000 for more information.
On stage
The Cutter Theatre in Metaline Falls, Wash., is staging “Same Time Next Year” tonight and Saturday at 7:30 p.m. This long-running Broadway hit is about a once-a-year adulterous love affair which spans 25 years. Tickets are $5 and reservations are available by calling 446-4108.
“Winnie The Pooh” will be staged by Spokane Children’s Theatre Saturday through Feb. 4 at Spokane Civic Theatre. Tickets are $3 and are available the day of the performance only, one hour prior to the performance. Call 534-0737 for show times.
Later next week
As part of Spokane Community College’s Celebration of Abilities, comedienne Kathy Buckley will appear at 11:30 a.m. Wednesday in the Lair Auditorium.
The hearing-impaired comedienne was misdiagnosed as mentally retarded, survived cancer and was temporarily paralyzed from the waist down after being hit by a car.
Her humor is direct and honest, not to mention funny. “I was in a school for the mentally retarded for two years before they realized I had a hearing impairment,” she says. “And they called me slow.”
The show is free and open to the public.
xxxx Inside/outside Looking ahead: With the dawn of 1995, we’re another year closer to the millennium, which raises thoughts of apocalypse, judgment days and “The Rapture,” a littleseen, but much-discussed movie that reflects on such matters. Mimi Rogers plays a hedonistic Los Angeles telephone operator who is wracked by questions of morality and religion. She joins a sect that believes the end of the world is at hand and travels into the desert to await it. In the mood: Wintry weather may not last the normal duration, so those who are serious about playing in the snow need to head for the mountains while the white stuff is still fresh. Grab skis, sleds, snowshoes or whatever and head for your favorite high place.