Tucson Weekly: City Week (November 19

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Thursday 19

ORBS OF DESIRE. "As a girl, when I watched men pass the pigskin, pitch the curve ball, perfect the jumpshot, I understood that they were playing war," writes Nanci Kincaid in her new book, Balls. "What I didn't understand was that it wasn't just a stupid ball they held in their hands, but the whole world being tossed about from man to man--like a game of keep away. From me."
City Week Balls tells the story of Mac Gibbs, who has risen from college star to head coach of a prestigious college team in Alabama, where football is religion. But while Mac's eyes are turned toward gridiron greatness, his wife Dixie--and the other women in his life--have their own perceptions of the sports field in a book Library Journal calls "another touchdown" by Kincaid.
The author will read from and sign copies of Balls from 7 to 8:30 p.m. at The Book Mark, 5001 E. Speedway. For information, call 881-6350.
GLASS MENAGERIE. Philabaum Contemporary Art Glass Gallery scores another victory on the translucent scene with Vase or Vaaz, Questioning the Vessel. The lush exhibit details the transformation of utilitarian vessels in fine-art glass, through the visions of glass masters including Sonja Blomdahl, John Leighton, Christopher Morrison and Carole Perry.
Vase or Vaaz runs through January 23 in the Philabaum Gallery, 711 S. Sixth Ave. Hours are 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday. Call 884-7404 for information.

Friday 20

MOVEABLE MAP. Orts Theatre of Dance celebrates downtown's funky culture with Bridging Worlds--Urban Topography.
At its concrete core, Tucson is a mixture of communities, with businesses, arts, politics and the homeless populating a bustling landscape. Orts vividly portrays that blend in Urban Gaits, a work combining multiple-screen projected video images with live dance and original music.
The second piece, Bridging Worlds, is a collaborative work created by Capoeira teacher Dondi Marble, choreographed by Anne Bunker, and composed by Chuck Koesters. This premier work combines the intense dance/fight of the Afro-Brazilian martial art known as Capoeira with the fluidity of the single-point trapeze, and the physicality of modern dance.
Performances are 8 p.m. today and Saturday in the PCC Proscenium Theatre, 2202 W. Anklam Road. Advance tickets are $10, $8 for seniors and students, available at Antigone Books, Bentley's House of Coffee and Tea, Silverbell Trading, or by calling 624-3799. Tickets are $2 more at the door.
ART MART. Like it or not, the season o' joy is just around the corner. Luckily, the TMA lets you get a creative jumpstart on mass consumption with its 17th-annual Holiday Craft Market.
Goods made by a passel of the Southwest's best artists will be on the block, including jewelry, textiles, metals, wood, watercolors, multimedia, pottery and furniture.
The market runs from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. today through Sunday at the TMA, 140 N. Main Ave. Admission is free. For information, call 624-2333.
RIGHTS ILLUMINATED. December will mark the 50th anniversary of the UN's Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Even today, the notion remains embattled. But to highlight its continuing importance, Access Tucson, Free Speech TV and Pan Left Productions are sponsoring Just Solutions: Campaigns for Human Rights, a free film and video festival at The Screening Room.
These independently produced works take a big look at such ongoing issues as the personal toll of economic globalization, mass incarceration, regional conflict and political repression.
Showing today are Poverty Outlaw at 8 p.m.; and Dirty Secrets, Jennifer, Everardo and the CIA in Guatemala at 10 p.m. Showing tomorrow are A Pig's Tale, The Last Graduation: The Rise and Fall of College Programs in Prison at 7 p.m.; and McLibel: Two Worlds Collide, Forsaken Cries and Voices of the Morning at 9:30 p.m.
The Screening Room is at 127 E. Congress St. Call 624-9833 for information.

Saturday 21

HOMEGROWN FESTIVITIES. Native Seeds/SEARCH lends the holidays an earthy touch with an open house in their Fourth Avenue retail shop.
The charming little outpost stocks gifts you simply can't find anywhere else, from desert foods, crafts and baskets from traditional farming communities, to Native American cassettes and beautiful wood carvings by Tarahumara folk artist Bernardo Villalobos.
All the proceeds help NS/S in its goal of conserving the traditional crops, seeds and farming methods that have sustained native peoples throughout the southwestern United States and northern Mexico.
Open house hours are 1 to 9 p.m. at NS/S, 526 N. Fourth Ave. For details, call 622-5561.
CELTS A-KILTER. Kick up your heels, toss back your head, and have a Celtic good time when the Harp & Shamrock hosts The Green Gig, with funds going to the St. Patrick's Day Parade and Festival in March.
Today's Emerald Isle action will include dancing, plenty of traditional and popular songs, and an auction of Irish specialty items. And Irish (or Celtic-inspired) musicians are welcome to join the jam.
The Green Gig begins at 7 p.m. in the Harp & Shamrock, 7002 E. Golf Links Road. Admission is free. Call 790-7677 for information.

Sunday 22

LITERARY OUTPOST. It sounds like a highly unlikely combination--a delightful little bookstore on a working cattle ranch smack in the middle of outback Arizona. But that's the remarkable truth behind the long-lived Singing Wind Bookshop near Benson.
Today, the bookshop hosts its annual Thanksgiving Fiesta. This year's theme is the "Spirit of Adventure," and that notion is duly captured by a top-shelf roster of readers including Ed Sweeney, W. Lane Rogers, Harriet Rochlin, Phyllis de la Garza, Katie Lee, Winona Holloway, Peter Iverson, Bunny Fontana, Patrick Jennings and John Duncklee.
That's in addition to refreshments, musical interludes by the Sirocco Wind Quintet and Calexico, and "auditory moments" selected from tapes of The Glowing Heart of the World: Lawrence Clark Powell's Literary Guidebook to the Southwest.
The free fiesta is 1 p.m. at the Singing Wind Bookshop. Take I-10 east to Exit 304. Travel 2-1/2 miles north on Ocotillo Road to Singing Wind Road, then east for 1/2 mile. For information, call (520) 586-2425.
EQUINE PURSUITS. Hitch up yer varmints and head on down to an equine extravaganza hosted by An Oasis School of Horsemanship.
The fair will include pony rides and demonstrations, speakers, and lots of horse accouterments for sale. There will also be music, souvenirs and refreshments. Proceeds will go towards horseback-riding scholarships, allowing kids to attend the excellent Oasis School. This non-profit outfit is open to all youngsters interested in horse riding, regardless of their ability to pay.
The fair runs from 11:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. at the Oasis School, 9849 N. St. Patrick Road. Advance tickets are $5, available by calling 744-0112. Admission is $7 at the door, free for children.
YOUNG MASTERS. Help the Tucson Philharmonia Youth Orchestra celebrate 22 rapturous years on the musical scene with their Fall Showcase Concert.
The evening will include a Mozart concerto by clarinet soloist Shanti Raval, silver medalist at this year's TPYO solo competition. The orchestra will also perform works by Bernstein, Dvorak and Harriman.
Show time is 3 p.m. in the TCC Music Hall, 260 S. Church Ave. Tickets are $8.25, $5.25 for seniors and students, and are available at the Dillard's box office or at the door. For information, call 326-2793.

Monday 23

CULTURAL REMNANTS. The TMA has culled the best works from 24 privately and publicly owned holdings for Tucson Collects: Tribal Rugs from Arizona Collections. This stunning exhibit includes more than 100 lush, hand-woven rugs, bags, tents and other objects from such far-flung places as Turkey, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Iran, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Afghanistan and Tibet.
To help viewers follow this global tapestry, the museum provides photos of Turkey and Central Asia illuminating the backgrounds of particular weavings, and how they're made.
The exhibit also includes 36 pieces of Turkmen jewelry from the Marshall and Marilyn R. Wolf collection. They range from hair pendants and bracelets to necklaces and hats made from precious metals and gems.
To accent the whole affair, the museum has erected a black tent of woven camel hair in the lower galleries; it's characteristic of portable dwellings used by nomads in Iran, Egypt, North Africa and Turkey.
Tucson Collects runs through January 3 in the TMA, 140 N. Main Ave. Hours are 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday through Saturday, noon to 4 p.m. Sunday. Admission is $2, $1 for seniors and students. For information, call 624-2333.

Tuesday 24

SIBLING SWINGERS. The cage consists of two sisters and the "remains of a third" holed up in a Holiday Inn for a weekend under the Florida sun. That's where they reluctantly enter an enclosure of last resort, in The Invisible Theatre's production of The Batting Cage, by Joan Ackermann.
This heart-breaking comedy follows Julianna and Wilson, a pair of siblings savoring their last-ditch effort to connect with the human race, and with each other. The Batting Cage premiered at the 1996 Humana Festival, and opened at The Vineyard Theatre in New York in 1997. According to Jon Jory of Actors Theatre of Louisville, "Joan Ackermann shows the comedy in the heart of depression, as the characters learn they have to step up to the plate!"
Show time is 7:30 p.m. in The Invisible Theatre, 1400 N. First Ave. Performances continue at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday through Thursday, 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday, and 2 and 7:30 p.m. Sunday, through December 6. There will be no performance on Thanksgiving. Tickets range from $14 to $17.50, and are available at the theatre box office, or by calling 882-9721.
VISIONARY ITCH. The works of more than 53 artists--at least one from every state in the country--are on display in Colorprint USA, a national exhibit now in the UA Union Gallery.
The show spans a range of subjects from mystical to traditional treatments of landscapes and figures. It's also heavily spiced with satire and social commentary. Those elements combine into a powerful, satirical commentary, and a celebration of the vitality and variety in the printmaker's art. Media include everything from lithography and woodcutting to etching and screenprint.
The exhibit is the brainchild of its director, Lynwood Kreneck, and results from a massive portfolio exchange among artists across the United States, who then arranged them into simultaneous shows. But Kreneck felt the accumulated talent deserved more exposure.
"Having conceived the idea to open 50 print shows on the same weekend, I just couldn't give up on the project," Kreneck says. "It was an itch that had to be scratched."
The exhibit runs through December 16, in the Student Union, north of the main mall. UA Hours are 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday through Friday. Call 621-6142 for information.

Wednesday 25

LIGHT YEARS. The UA Flandrau Science Center Planetarium takes folks to galaxies far, far away with The Invisible Universe. This all-ages show gives audiences a glimpse of how the universe appears in the non-visible spectrum. Astronomers regularly take pictures of objects in the sky beyond the visible light spectrum, but also in the radio, infrared, x-ray and gamma ray spectrums. This celestial sleuthing uncovers the mysteries of supernovae, black holes, quasars, and our own Milky Way galaxy.
Show times are 7:30 p.m. Wednesday through Friday, 2:30 and 7:30 p.m. Saturday, and 2:30 p.m. Sunday. Admission is $5, $4.50 for seniors, students and military, $4 for children ages 13 and under. For details, call 621-4515.
INTERNAL ICONS. Marietta Patricia Leis, Donna McGinnis and Lynn O'Brien unleash a trio of perspectives in a new collaborative show at the PCC West Campus.
Leis exhibits a poignant tribute to the gifted daughter of famous Venetian painter Jacopo Tintoretto through iconographic portraits and landscapes of Venice. The Marietta Robusti Tintoretto Story reveals the life of the 16th-century female artist through haunting oil paintings.
McGinnis' graphite and pencil drawings imbue common objects with a sense of mystery and beauty. Working in a large format, she reveals new perspectives and the "grandness within all things."
The sensual merges with the conceptual in Lynn O'Brien's densely layered acrylic paintings. She combines thoughts and emotions to create collages of themes related to fertility and the fragile and finite nature of life.
The exhibit runs through December 10 in the PCC Art Gallery, 2202 W. Anklam Road. Hours are 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday, 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. Tuesday. Call 206-6942 for information.

City Week includes events selected by Calendar Editor Tim Vanderpool. Event information is accurate as of press time. The Weekly recommends calling event organizers to check for last-minute changes in location, time, price, etc. To have material considered, please send complete information at least 11 days prior to the Thursday issue date to: Tucson Weekly, P.O. Box 2429, Tucson, Arizona 85702, or fax information to 792-2096, or email us at listings@tucsonweekly.com.

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