If you can’t find something to do this weekend, you’re really not trying.
US Olympic Curling Trials, (photo by Doug Pensinger/Getty Images)
Men’s International Bonspiel: Chicago Curling Club: January 14-17,
555 Dundee Road, Northbrook
A bonspiel is a curling tournament, traditionally held outdoors on a frozen freshwater loch. The 
word comes from the Scots language and means league (or alliance or household) match (or game).
Well, you don’t need to fly to a freshwater loch. The Chicago Curling Club hosts a 32-team bonspiel with curlers from the principal clubs in Canada and the United States.
Curling, as you will recall from the winter Olympics or possibly Wide World of Sport back in the day, is played on carefully prepared ice. Two teams of four players take turns sliding heavy, polished granite stones down the ice towards the target (called the house).
Two sweepers with brooms accompany each rock to help direct the stones to their resting place. The complex nature of stone placement and shot selection has led some to refer to curling as “chess on ice.”
The Chicago Curling Club offers a “LEARN 2 CURL” program. It looks like the next session that has slots available is February 20th.
The Curling Winter Olympic gold medal games are February 26 for women and February 27 for men. So amaze your friends with the finer points of this great sport for people of all ages. Including ours!
Click here for their “Around Town” WGN video.
Theatre Zarko’s Sublime Beauty of Hands and Klown Kantos @ Next Theatre
Friday and Saturday at 7:30, Sunday at 3; Noyes Cultural Arts Center, 927 Noyes Street, Evanston
What is puppet symbolist theatre? Why is it playing in Evanston?
1. For over twenty years, puppet artist Michael Montenegro has been developing his unique style in the Evanston community both as a solo artist and as a collaborator with different theatre groups and commissioned projects, culminating in the recent formation of his own company, Theatre Zarko.
Puppet Symbolist Theatre expresses a strong visual point of view that plays with scale, metaphor, and integral live music and involves the exploration of puppetry as an innovative, developing art form.
2. This is part of Next Theatre’s “Dark Night” series. No, not the same as the Vampire/Werewolf movies. These Dark Nights occur when the Next Theatre doesn’t have a scheduled performance of one of their plays. The focus of the series will be on less traditional theater and more diverse performance arts including mime, puppetry, comedy/improv, music and other endeavors
A Room of Their Own: The Bloomsbury Artists in American Collections
January 15–March 14, Mary and Leigh Block Museum of Art, 40 Arts Circle Drive, Evanston
Vanessa Bell, Virginia Woolf, ca. 1912, oil on paper board.
Vanessa Bell, E. M. Forster, Roger Fry, John Maynard Keynes, Lytton Strachey, Virginia Woolf, and other artists and writers of the Bloomsbury group changed British culture as they brought art, literature, social thought, and domestic life into the modern age.
Explore their time, place and their lasting impact on our world through more than 150 paintings, works on paper, vintage small-press books, and decorative objects by Bell, Fry, Duncan Grant, and Dora Carrington, assembled from collections around the United States.
In addition to the exhibit there will be lectures, films, performance and book clubs all surrounding the Bloomsbury group. Click here for details.
January 17, 2010, 4:00 PM – MIC Nichols Concert Hall, 1490 Chicago Avenue, Evanston
In Tune with the African-American Experience
We really enjoyed the last MIC program about the immigrant experience. We’re excited about going this Sunday.
Apropos of the upcoming Martin Luther King holiday, this program will look at the significant 
cultural contributions of African Americans that developed despite the tragic history of slavery. In discussion, performance and film, you can experience the musical traditions created by hundreds of ethnic groups from West and sub-Saharan Africa.
4pm: Interview/Discussion
Rick Kogan of the Chicago Sun Times speaks with Brian Rice, director of the Brotherhood Chorale of the Apostolic Church of God. The Brotherhood Chorale was founded in 1969 with less than 30 members. Under the guidance of Brian Rice, the Chorale has build an impressive repertoire, and grown from approximately 60 men to an excess of 180 members.
5pm: Concert
The Brotherhood Chorale of the Apostolic Church of God
Martin Luther King Jr. Celebration Concert
6:30pm: Film Screening
“Jazz” A Film by Ken Burns, Episode I
A look at 19th century New Orleans, where the sound of marching bands, Italian opera, Caribbean rhythms, and minstrel shows fills the street with a diverse musical culture. Here, in the 1890′s, African-American musicians create a new music our of these ingredients by mixing ragtime syncopations and the soulful feeling of the blues. Soon after the start of the new century, people are calling it jazz.
Check out this video of Brotherhood Chorale. Ageless really digs choral music.
Ageless really digs choral music. Here’s a video.
