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By Jeremy M. Barker Views (125) | Comments (0) | ( 0 votes)

Chock it up to poor organizational skills--it's been two weeks since Lara Paxton wrote me with some great news and ask me to make it public: the Aerialistas, Seattle's all-female aerial troupe, have received an invitation to appear at Madrid's Teatro Circo Price for the month-long run of their July cabaret, Pasion Sin Punales?, to perform their cupcake act. It's a huge deal because, as Paxton put it in an email, "we never thought we could book such a large group of girls!"

So apologies for the late notice. If you want to help support the Aerialistas, despite the fact they're not performing in Seattle, on June 19 at 7 p.m., they're holding a fundraiser at Hale's Palladium called "Cupcakes to Madrid" to help the girls raise "grocery and wine money" for their overseas adventure. Otherwise, enjoy the galley of photos of the lovely ladies of the Aerialistas.

By Jeremy M. Barker Views (934) | Comments (0) | ( 0 votes)

There's plenty of great things going on this weekend, from Salt Horse's opening tonight, to ArtAttack's production of Fat Pig (just extended!) and the Balagan's Trout Stanley, to the closing of Glengarry Glen Ross down at the Rep. But that said, there's a bunch of top-notch, one-time-only events this weekend to keep you busy.

Tonight, Feb. 26, is the SAM Remix down at the Seattle Art Museum (8 p.m.-midnight, tickets $10, $8 students) the bi-monthly art-and-performance bash that tries to bring in the under-30 crowd. SAM Remix almost always sports an awesome lineup of events, but tonight's lineup is exceptionally good for two reasons: First, KT Niehoff's Lingo Dance are installing themselves as human sculpture throughout the galleries. It's part of a three-month project the company is developing with ACT Theatre called A Glimmer of Hope or Skin or Light. The second is a new work from Mike Pham, half of Seattle's performance art darlings Helsinki Syndrome, called Soccer Practice. Expect something funny, odd, physical, and--quite probably--involving glitter.

Tomorrow night, Sat. Feb. 27, the Canoe Social Club above Theatre off Jackson is hosting what promises to be the sexiest fundraiser for Haitian relief yet, Hotties for Haiti (10:30 p.m., $15, 21+), an evening of performance by local burlesque and aerial performers including Tamara the Trapeze Lady, Lara Paxton, and Violet Tendencies. I've been told to expect nonstop striptease and table dancing, with your drool-slathered dollar bills destined to travel quickly from g-string to helping the people of Port-au-Prince.

And finally, I've saved the best for last: all weekend, the Seattle Chamber Players are hosting a stunning series of concerts called Icebreaker V: Songs of Love and War at On the Boards (tickets $18). Here's the deal: for the fifth year in a row, SCP is presenting a festival celebrating the best contemporary European chamber composers. Each of the five concerts features a different nation and deals with different themes, and to top it off, SCP is bringing in guest performers from around the globe, from Polish soprano Agata Zubel, to Denmark's FIGURA Ensemble.... (more)

By Jeremy M. Barker Views (993) | Comments (0) | ( 0 votes)

Tuesday night just past seven, I wandered into Ballard's Copper Gate, a 64-year-old Scandinavian bar on 24th Avenue NW. I'm no doubt late to this, but the Copper Gate's an odd but incredibly charming place: immaculate and well-lit, with a copper-topped bar built into a replica of a Viking boat, the relaxed, mostly middle-aged crowd of diners sat sipping wine and eating Scandinavian classics, surrounded by classy erotica. The walls are covered in places with vintage nudes and tame fetish shots that are somehow sexy but not dirty. It turns out that when new owners took over several years ago, they found the former owner's wife's stash of pictures, and took that as inspiration. A painting of a pretty young lass on the main wall, I was told by a helpful bar manager, has been there since the bar opened, and is supposedly the erotica-collecting woman herself back in the day.

The point is, as pretty much everyone who's written about it has noted, the Copper Gate, for all the naked ladies, is still the sort of place you could take your grandma (and I'm pretty sure there was one there). And much like the main bar, "the Pussy Room" in back is not nearly so dirty as it sounds. That said, you get to it by walking through a narrow, rounded passage painted deep red that leads to a room blocked off by red velvet curtains. Ahem. Pussy Room, indeed!... (more)