Whats-Happening: Page 439

We Are Whiteaker

A selection of residents who make the neighborhood, well, the best

Culture

They grow up so fast. The Whiteaker Block Party turns 10 this year and it’s bound to be one for the books — more than 120 years after Oregon’s first governor, John Whiteaker, procured 10 blocks in the neighborhood. To celebrate, EW pays homage to some of the people who keep the Whiteaker weird, whimsical, wayward and wonderful, as well as offering some tips to squeezing the most out of your block party experience. Here’s to the next 10 years.   Continue reading →

The Eugene Ballet Company (EBC) has received a $200,000 grant from the Richard P. Haugland Foundation

Dance
Lane Community College student Tristan Giannini performs a repertory piece by Merce Cunningham.

Hear ye, hear ye: EW’s annual dance issue is slated for September and we want your dance listings including date, time, location, cost and genre. Please send dance listings to alex@eugeneweekly.com with “Dance Listings” in the email subject line by Aug. 15. The Eugene Ballet Company (EBC) has received a $200,000 grant from the Richard P. Haugland Foundation, as well as $40,000 from the Hult Endowment, to create a new work: Move over Elsa, here comes The Snow Queen — premiering April 2017.  Continue reading →

Bring Me the Head of Ricky Baker!

Two outcasts head into the New Zealand outback in Taika Waititi’s charming Hunt for the Wilderpeople

Film
Julian Dennison and Sam Neill in Hunt For The Wilderpeople

Hunt for the Wilderpeople by Taika Waititi is about an unlikely pair of outcasts who scamper into the New Zealand backcountry to escape the bumbling clutches of a nationwide manhunt. The film is derivative, predictable, grandiose and utterly sentimental. It is also smart, funny, big-hearted and disarmingly adorable, and it juggles these absurd qualities with dexterity and a winking charm that is almost impossible to deny. Continue reading →

Progressive Poptimists

Stockholm’s Miike Snow

Music
Miike Snow

Bloodshy & Avant, the production duo that takes up two-thirds of Stockholm’s Miike Snow, are known as some of the most forward-thinking producers in pop.  Their songs with Britney Spears — including the epochal “Toxic” and the Bridesmaids-immortalized “I’ve Just Begun” — are still head-scratchers even in today’s postmodern pop landscape. One would think that in their own band, free of the commercial expectations of writing for the world’s biggest stars, Bloodshy & Avant would let their ideas go completely off the chain.  Continue reading →

Back Beat

Music

Pickathon continues to be the best indie music festival under Oregon skies at Happy Valley’s Pendarvis Farm Aug. 5-7. This year’s lineup is a mixture of familiar names like Jeff Tweedy, Wolf Parade, Mac DeMarco, Thee Oh Sees and Thao & The Get Down Stay Down with rising stars — My Bubba, Blossom, Alvvays and Joseph. Continue reading →

Freedom Versus Bondage

VLT presents the not-so-oddball You Can’t Take It with You

Theater

Central to the comic tension of You Can’t Take It With You is a fairly routine dichotomy that, perhaps by its very nature, remains forever unresolved, and which best might be summed up thus: freedom versus bondage. Of course, freedom and bondage have been at war since before Socrates whispered in Plato’s ear and Jesus put a shellacking on the Pharisees, but in this country we like to imagine capitalism invented the eternal conflict between vile materialism and spiritual liberation — in other words, Wall Street versus Main Street. Continue reading →

Breaking Vows Beneath the Stars

Free Shakespeare in the Park brings Love’s Labour’s Lost to Amazon Park

Theater
Lydia reynolds (left), Stephanie McCall and Isabella Lay in Love’s Labour’s Lost.

The passion of a young scholar knows no bounds. In the pursuit of knowledge, the King of Navarre and his best friends swear a sacred vow to renounce sleep, wine and even women for three years as they engage solely in educating themselves.  Then the witty Princess of France and her ladies in waiting arrive at the court of Navarre to negotiate a land dispute. Mayhem ensues. Continue reading →

ArtsHound

Visual Arts

Farewell New Zone: The New Zone Gallery opens August’s First Friday ArtWalk with its final show at its downtown location on Broadway (which it has called home for 10 years) with pieces from more than 70 artists, as well as a featured collection — Muses, Dreams and Wanderings — by artist Tom Capri. The come-one, come-all attitude of the gallery and its members has been a bright spot on Eugene’s arts horizon with beloved annual shows like the Salon du People. Continue reading →