Let’s Go to the Hop!
Tucson Lindy Hop
7 p.m., Saturday, May 23
Armory Park
220 S. Sixth Ave.
990-0834
For more than 10 years, Armory Park has been the place to get your
lindy on at the Tucson Lindy Hop, and this Saturday, that monthly
tradition continues with big-band grooves provided by Tucson Swings!, a
14-piece band.
According to Tucson Lindy Hop member Alex Sanchez, a group of swing
dancers got together to take lessons in the mid-1990s. Once everyone in
the class improved, the group decided to rent Armory Park’s ballroom
one Saturday per month.
“We’ve just kept our monthly slot since then,” he says.
Sanchez says it’s difficult to pinpoint an average age of attending
dancers. He used to teach middle school and taught his sixth-grade
students the jitterbug; he gave them extra credit for attending the
swing dance. Over the years, high school dance clubs have attended,
too, he says.
“The UA has a swing-dance club that also supports the Armory Park
dance. At the other end of the spectrum, we had one couple in
attendance in their 90s who were visiting from out of state,” Sanchez
says.
The monthly dances will continue through the summer, with live bands
at every dance. Sanchez adds that if you’re feeling shy, the group
teaches a beginner jitterbug lesson before the dance “so that everyone
who attends the dance can do some basic steps for the night.”
“Once in a while, we get some outside dance instructors who come and
teach a lindy-hop lesson for those who have mastered the jitterbug and
want to move on into the more complicated steps,” Sanchez says.
This month’s live band, Tucson Swings!, is led by Frank Guldseth.
Sanchez says Guldseth only put together the band a few years ago.
“But it is one of the best big bands in Arizona, re-creating the
dance music of the ’30s and ’40s,” Sanchez says.
Admission is $15. —M.H.
Liquid Style
“Paint Your Fashion”
11 a.m. to 5 p.m., Tuesday, May 26
Kuzu Salon
1991 E. Ajo Way, Suite 161
624-7290; kuzusalon.com
About eight months ago, illustrator/fashion designer Mariko Burton
opened a studio and shop with her mother, sculptor Hazel Colditz, and
her sister, artist Laurel Burton, to showcase and sell their work.
The location, near Tucson Electric Park, is in an area that Mariko
Burton describes as “developing”—and an event is the works that
Burton hopes will bring new people to Kuzu, called “Paint Your
Fashion.”
The public is invited to bring fabric to the store and color it,
using spray paint, acrylics and dyes. (If you don’t have fabric to
bring, some will be available at the event.) Eventually, the painted
fabric will be turned into dresses, skirts and bags for Mariko Burton’s
fall fashion line.
Mariko Burton studied screen printing, weaving and fiber arts at
Pima Community College, and eventually figured out how to combine her
illustrations with her fiber-arts creations.
“I do a lot of screen printing on fabrics making my own patterns. I
like to make my own garments. I’m making my own weavings, and
eventually I want to weave my own garments,” she says. “But my work is
varied. … I’ve been sewing for a few years now, and I’m just trying
to combine all the different skills to come up with something different
in fashion.”
Using donated fabric goes with the name: “kuzu” is Japanese for
rubbish.
Mariko Burton says there is a current trend in fashion of designers
using hand-painted fabrics.
“In the fall, we’re planning on having a fashion show, and everyone
can come back and see the cool painting they did as a dress,” she
says.
The event is free, but those who donate fabric will receive a 10
percent discount off items currently on sale. —M.H.
A Plague Upon Man
Manufactured Landscapes
6 p.m., next Thursday, May 28
Tucson Museum of Art
140 N. Main Ave.
624-2333; tucsonmuseumofart.org
Post-apocalyptic landscapes, repetitious faceless industrial workers
and total environmental annihilation are subjects that Canadian
photographer Edward Burtynsky—with his large-scale landscape
shots illustrating the strange and changing relationship between
industry, man and nature—is famous for capturing.
The Tucson Museum of Art is showing a free screening of
Manufactured Landscapes, a documentary by Jennifer Baichwal,
which follows Burtynsky through China as his lenses capture the
country’s industrial revolution and the landscapes it has created.
Two of Burtynsky’s photographs are currently showing at the Tucson
Museum of Art as part of the Trouble in Paradise exhibit, which
looks at nature-based and human-caused disasters, according to Meredith
Hayes, the museum’s public relations director.
“These images are meant as metaphors to the dilemma of our modern
existence,” Burtynsky wrote in a statement to accompany the film. “They
search for a dialogue between attraction and repulsion, seduction and
fear. We are drawn by desire—a chance at good living, yet we are
consciously or unconsciously aware that the world is suffering for our
success.”
From miles of yellow, cookie-cutter buildings lined by miles of
yellow-shirted workers in cookie-cutter formations, to dusty, barren
roads carved from a gray hillside dam project, Burtynsky’s work
captures the magnitude of environmental impact and the industrial
revolution’s significance for man and nature.
The 90-minute film, first released in 2006, won Best Canadian
Feature at the Toronto Film Festival.
Hayes says Tucson Museum of Art felt it was important to show both
his work and the film. “We all live in the same world, and we’re
examining things that can happen to us if we don’t take care of our
environment.” —H.S.
Tappa Tappa Tappa!
National Tap Dance Day: “Sounds of the Soles of the Southwest”
7:30 p.m., Saturday, May 23; 3 p.m., Sunday, May 24
PCC Proscenium Theatre
2202 W. Anklam Road
743-1349; dancinc.biz
Tucson’s got too much sole for National Tap Dance Day: Tapping gets
a whole weekend here.
National Tap Dance Day, which started in 1990, is a way to celebrate
the rich cultural heritage of tap, according to Krystyna Parafinczuk, a
Pima Community College dance teacher and organizer of Tucson’s National
Tap Dance Day festivities.
On Saturday, Pima Community College hosts a tap and percussive
footwork performance titled Made in the U.S.A., which will
showcase the best tapping Tucson has to offer—and Tucson is home
to a few world-class tap celebrities, she says.
On Sunday, check out a free community performance with some of the
best professional and amateur dance talent in Tucson showing off
various cultures’ versions of tap.
“The groups that are out there working professionally—the
Mexican groups, Irish as well, cultural groups that have percussive
footwork: That’s the roots of tap,” says Parafinczuk. “… It’s all a
part of development of tap—the Irish, the black slaves when they
were freed mingling with jazz musicians, and it all just kind of
evolved. I wanted to make sure that component of the program was
included in the ‘Soles of the Southwest.'”
On Monday, bring the kids to Tucson Children’s Museum (200 S. Sixth
Ave.) between 1 and 4 p.m. to learn the history of tap, and to learn a
few tap steps. Monday night, head down to Club Congress (311 E.
Congress St.) for a Tap Jam. Everyone is welcome to tap, Parafinczuk
says. Beyond having great tap dancers getting down in the club,
organizers hope to have a tap contest.
Saturday’s show costs $15 in advance or $20 at the door, with
discounts. Sunday’s performance requires an RSVP.
—H.S.
This article appears in May 21-27, 2009.