Playlists

You’re not in Kansas anymore. It’s Tacoma, the home of D.A.S.H. Center for the Arts. They’re doing a new production of The Wiz, which will open tonight at Mt. Tahoma High School. The Wiz premiered on Broadway back in the mid ’70s. It was a large-scale, all-black musical based on the 1939 movie The Wizard of Oz, playing up the theme of personal empowerment. It was a huge success and won seven Tony Awards, including Best Musical. It was later made into a film by the same name. And now the theatrical version is in Tacoma, with 40 performers, some as young as 7. Expect a wonderful Wiz as jiving words and upbeat songs are a way of life for D.A.S.H. Through Feb. 1, 7:30 p.m. Thursday-Sunday, also 3:30 p.m.  Saturday-Sunday, $8-$12, 4634 S. 74th St., Tacoma, 253.572.3724.



You know Tacoma Symphony Orchestra Music Director Harvey Felder has one. It’s the big 120GB model, flawless and gleaming and radiating a strange liquid ethereal glow and couched in a beautiful custom tuxedo-designed biodegradable case loaded with musicals. Les Miserables, Cats, Mamma Mia, Wicked, A Chorus Line, Beauty and the Beast, and oh hell yes, Phantom of the Opera flicker as he spins his iPod wheel during breakfast and at the gym and while he yells at the oboe section. Therefore, I imagine he’ll nail Sunday’s concert when he, the Tacoma Symphony Orchestra, and charismatic young singers Teri Hansen and Nat Chandler perform close to a million hits from popular musicals. Seriously, the list is close to a million. The iPod and Felder — it just makes sense. Sunday, Jan. 25, 2:30 p.m., $10-$75, Pantages Theater, 901 Broadway, Tacoma, 253.272.7264.

Art(ifact)

There have been standard modes of dance; no doubt one or two have even taken hold, over the years, on the lazy-minded souls who find life easier when they can believe there’s only one correct way of doing things. But fighting them is a rebellion against lazy minds, not against a given form of dance. As little as two decades ago, if you wanted to enjoy dance as an art form, you could sit through a classical three-act ballet likely based on some form of fairy tale, or a wholly abstract modern ballet featuring barefoot dancers in monochrome leotards performing movements that, to the naked eye, looked mundanely obvious. What if you broke down the wall? Smashed it, in fact. Dance is probably the most flexible of all arts, and the one where expectations are most pleasurably violated. As with anything else you do in the theater, it helps if you have a good reason for violating them, much like an arts-based high school in Tacoma.

What if you rebuilt the wall, with high schoolers: musicians, dancers and visual artists from the Tacoma School of the Arts; introduced them to the work of avant-garde artists John Cage, Merce Cunningham, Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns; and then told these 60 open-minded students to develop four movements around the concept of walls and titled it Walls: A Performance Art Event? What would happen? Break boundaries as the four artists they studied did? Randomness? Weirdness? Want to find out?

[The Armory, Thursday, Jan. 22, 7:30-8:30 p.m., $5, South 11th and Yakima St., Tacoma, 253.571.7942]

Rear of House

I know what it isn’t. It’s not emo screamo metal, and it isn’t faddish Red Bull cocktails, and it certainly isn’t “Bromance” or “Howie Do It” or “Survivor XX: Small Depressing Washington Suburb.” It’s not Basquiat knockoffs or co-opted mass-marketed rave PR gimmicks or $200 Burning Man tickets.



It’s something else. It’s brewing in a downtown Tacoma space. It knocks us out of our cultural lethargy. It’s good. It makes us contemplate things we normally don’t enjoy contemplating and may cause those currently striving to cram culture into a moral and ethical straightjacket to jump-start their defibrillators. It’s Kulture Lab.



The über-art soiree will fill The Warehouse once again Saturday with an electromagnet of creative talent. Visual arts, performing arts, fashion and music surround the curious in an attempt to redefine what is beautiful.



Speaking of beauty, interior designer and artist Christy Reedy will contribute to the culture that is Kulture Lab.



WEEKLY VOLCANO: What are you showing at Kulture Lab?



CHRISTY REEDY: I will be showing the final two pieces from a four-part series (titled) Independent. They are stainless steel metal mesh screen and acrylic paint. They measure 5 feet wide by 2 feet long. They are outward pieces of my inner workings.



VOLCANO: What inspired you for this show?



REEDY: I have shown work at Kulture Lab and had a great response. When the opportunity arose again at their most recent venue I couldn’t pass it up!



VOLCANO: What is your earliest/favorite artistic memory?



REEDY: When I received two sets of 64 count crayons with the pencil sharpener built in the box for Christmas when I was 5. My thought was, “WOW! I can sure draw a lot of pictures for the fridge now!”



VOLCANO: What tools of the trade can’t you live without?



REEDY: I certainly can’t live without my metal shears and a sharp exact-o knife.



VOLCANO: What is one thing everyone should know how to do themselves?



REEDY: Everyone should know how to ride public transportation. I find it to be one of the most useful tools a person can have.



[The Warehouse, Kulture Lab, Saturday, Jan. 24, 7-11 p.m., $5, 1114 Court E, downtown Tacoma, myspace.com/culturelabart]