Photo by Brian Allen.
FILM & TALK: Discuss graffiti and street art, then watch a screening of The Legend of Cool “Disco” Dan, from 6:30 p.m. to 8:45 p.m. tonight as part of the Smithsonian Associates program. The speaker is graffiti historian and author Roger Gastman, founder of pop culture magazine Swindle (with Shepard Fairey), who produced the Oscar-nominated Exit Through the Gift Shop (by Banksy). According to the Smithsonian, he will “focus on Washington’s home-grown graffiti scene.” Extra rich icing on this very pretty cake: The Disco Dan doc’s director Joseph Pattisall will hold a Q&A after the screening. Tickets are $20 for members, $25 for all you other schlubs. At the S. Dillon Ripley Center (1100 Jefferson Drive SW).
FILM: DC Shorts Festival is back for its 10th year, starting tonight and running through Sept. 29.
CIRCUS SYMPHONY: NSO Pops: Cirque de la Symphonie will take place tonight through September 22, featuring “acrobats, contortionists, jugglers, and strongmen” doing “astonishing feats uniquely choreographed to the music of Bizet, Saint-Saëns, Dvořák, Tchaikovsky, and others.” Cool! At the Kennedy Center (2700 F Street NW). $20-80.
MORE KENNEDY CENTER: “Local Dance Commissioning Project: The Meaning of Buck Dance,” directed by D.C. choreographer Emily Oleson, features Urban Artistry with Good Foot Dance Company and Baakari Wilder. It is being described as an investigation “into the origin of the term ‘buck dance,'” using as a basis a video shot by Thomas Edison back in 1894. At the Kennedy Center Millennium Stage. 6 p.m. Free. (Continues tomorrow.)
PET SHOP BOYS: On tour to promote their new album, which dropped on July 15, the Pet Shop Boys will bring their electro-synth-pop guilty pleasure Cold War dance music to the Music Center at Strathmore (5301 Tuckerman Lane, Bethesda) at 7 p.m. Tickets are $55-75.
LECTURE: “The Legacy of Martin Luther King Jr.” will be held, intriguingly, at the German Historical Institute (1607 New Hampshire Avenue NW) tonight from 5:30-8:30 p.m. The speaker will be historical scholar Clayborne Carson, a professor at Stanford University and director of the Martin Luther King, Jr., Research and Education Institute. This is part of the conference, “The Dream and Its Untold Stories: The March on Washington and Its Legacy,” happening at the GHI through Sept. 21. RSVP by calling (202) 387-3355.
DANCE: At 8 p.m., check out TranSoul at the Atlas Performing Arts Center (1333 H Street NE). Tickets are $30, $20 for students, educators or groups of 10 or more (per person in the group) or seniors.
MORE TALK: The Goethe-Institut and Wagner Society will host Juliet Bellow, assistant professor of Art History at American University, speaking on “Afterlives of the Artwork of the Future”, from 7:30-9:30 p.m. According to the GI website, “Gesamtkunstwerk – the ‘total artwork’ promoted by the composer Richard Wagner in the mid-nineteenth century profoundly affected the development of modern art.” Wagner is a complicated topic, whose genius and influence on music often marred by his equally strong association with anti-Semitism and German nationalism. So, this should be a fascinating evening. Bellow consulted on the National Gallery of Art Exhibit “Diaghilev and the Ballets Russes, 1909-1929: When Art Danced with Music,” which is on display through Oct. 6.
