City Week

Big Planet, Small World

Ten years ago, the United Nations General Assembly approved an annual celebration based on the following statement: "Whereas recognition of inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace of the world ..." (Universal Declaration of Human Rights). It's a lesson you'd think we would have learned long, long ago, but humans have always been a little slow on the uptake when it comes to issues whose righteousness is glaringly obvious.

International Day of the World's Indigenous Peoples is celebrated worldwide; this Sunday, for the first time, Alianza Indígena Sin Fronteras is sponsoring a Tucson celebration in cooperation with other Indigenous organizations.

The celebration will open with a traditional Yaqui Deer Dancer ceremony and Tohono O'odham Blessing Singers; a series of presentations on issues vital to the local, national and international work of Indigenous peoples will follow, focusing on those issues critical to the Pascua Yaqui, Tohono O'odham, Cocopah and Gila River Indian communities.

Invited speakers include Peter Yocupicio, vice chairman of the Pascua Yaqui tribe; Henry Ramon, former vice chairman of the Tohono O'odham Nation; Dale Phillips, councilman for the Cocopah Nation; Brenda Robertson, councilwoman for the Gila River Indian community; and a representative from the Rigoberta Menchu Tum Foundation.

Live music, food and art are also a big part of the event, which is free and open to the public. For more information, call or visit derechoshumanosaz.net.

Gallery Rock

The header on the press release caught my eye--"Female artists to rock Flash Gallery," it proclaimed. But reading the first paragraph, my interest twisted into a sentiment best expressed as, "Who the hell wrote this crap?" Aside from the opening assertion, "It is a rare occasion for females to be in rock bands these days"--um, Blonde Redhead? Yo La Tengo? White Stripes? PJ Harvey? Sleater Kinney? Bikini Kill? Cat Power? Throwing Muses? Deerhoof? The Pixies? Sonic Youth? And that's just a fraction of the ones I actually like--there's the following ultra-painful sentence: "But who wants to be in rock bands when traveling around the country leads to not bathing for days and spending nights sleeping on strangers' floors?" The answer: musicians, that's who. And as for the capper--"Girls rock!"--most girls who actually do rock are ready to have that particular phrase relegated to the T-shirts of their 9-year-old sisters.

On to the important stuff, which is a trio of decent bands. They're not all fronted by women, as the press release stretched to suggest (not that it matters); in fact, only one of them is--Annie Holub's Pego Pego, which is, for the moment, a solo project. (Holub is a regular contributor to the Weekly.)

Nowhere Man is fronted by Vikas Pawas, whose work on Considered to Tears (which was written, produced and performed entirely by Pawas) won the band a 2004 TAMMIES Critics' Choice Award in the Best New Release category; and Albuquerque's Foma is led by ex Derelectrics' member Edward Burch.

For more information, call the number above.

An Urban Love Story

Described by The New York Times as "a movie star" who "lives at an elegant Fifth Avenue building" and is "singularly indifferent to his fans," Pale Male--a red-tailed hawk--was first seen in New York City's Central Park in 1991. Soon after, he took up residence on a ledge just a few floors above Mary Tyler Moore's apartment, and began to spawn both offspring and admirers.

The first red-tailed hawk known to have taken up residence in Manhattan--and a member of a species that normally nests in trees--Pale Male made his presence known to Manhattan's pigeons immediately. But although he ruled the skies, his real reign didn't begin until he met mate No. 1, also known as First Love. Between Chocolate, his second mate; Blue, his third mate; First Love (who returned four years after she initially left) and Lola, more than 25 chicks took their first breaths high above the Manhattan streets.

Frederic Lilien--who left Belgium at the age of 23 with dreams of becoming a documentary filmmaker--filmed the hawk over a six year period, then turned the footage into an extraordinary piece that nods not only to the resilience of nature, but to its claim on us--even in the middle of a concrete jungle. During the one-hour documentary, Pale Male hunts, mates, oversees the first flights of his chicks and--in a scene that one reviewer called "as exciting as a Star Wars battle"--defends his nest from hordes of marauding crows.

The Mason Audubon Center's outdoor screening of Pale Male is free, but space is limited and reservations are required.

Sexy Beast

The pure white for which Lipizzaners are known heralds long, proud bloodlines, which the Lipizzaners' U.S. publicity agents are happy to fill you in on: "His distant ancestors bore Ghengis Khan out of the wastes of Asia to conquer much of the then-known world ... patrolled, guarded and raided treasure-laden caves in the golden sands of the Saharas. Their masters were Bedouins, Tuaregs and riders from a dozen long-forgotten tribes. ... the result became the fabled Andalusian of ancient Spain."

After Spain rid itself of Moorish rule, they began to export the horses; notable stud farms were established in Italy, Denmark, then Austria, in the town of Lipizza. The Lipizzaners were ridden only by aristocracy and trained for battle--the gravity-defying leaps they display in a section of the performance called "Airs Above the Ground" once inspired terror in many a trembling foot soldier.

At the end of World War II--as they were preparing to flee Austria ahead of the advancing allied armies--Nazi commanders ordered all the Lipizzaners destroyed, but were thwarted by Austrians who painted over the Lipizzaners' white coats and set them afield with other, ordinary horses, thus hiding them until the danger had passed. All of which proves you'd have to be a Nazi not to love a Lipizzaner.

See for yourself when the Stallions perform next Thursday and Friday; tickets are $17.50-$24.50, available at all Ticketmaster outlets, by phone at 321-1000 or at the Convention Center Box Office. You can even take home your very own Lipizzaner--if you've got $17,000.