Entertainment

🌝 Lunar fest | Spooky burlesque | Tiki jazzotica | Cosmic concert | Alt-farm market | Desert stoners | Sinful songs

Andrew Kiraly

29 Jan 2025 — 8 min read

Act your age: Talk about growing pains. The Tony-crowned new musical Kimberly Akimbo follows 16-year-old Kimberly, whose rare genetic condition has her aging way faster than her maturity level – but the tuneful life lessons apply no matter how much gray you're sporting. Take teen angst to zany new horizons Feb. 4-9 at The Smith Center.

LET'S GET TWISTED and revel in this week's happenings that have just a little quirk, a little kink, a little oomph, a little twist: burlesque with gothy glam notes, jazz with exotic tiki vibes, farmers markets with vintage flair, opera with a touch of evil. Whatever the angle, this week's List takes a turn for the better. Cheers! – Andrew Kiraly 🤍

Farmers Market

Local growers and makers turn this alt-market into a fresh Sunday hang.

Feb. 2 ✦ Area 15

➤ Also: A new Grocery Outlet unveils its dynamite discounts Jan. 30 ✦ Explore the newly-minted Chuckwalla National Monument on this 4x4 desert history trek Jan. 30 ✦ Strength and Clarity Jan. 31 pairs farmers market finds with free fitness at Cornerstone Park ✦ Downtown Summerlin's Farmers Market Jan. 31 brings the fresh west Saturday mornings ✦ High Roller Blooms Jan. 31 showcases Lolita Develay's solo exhibition Nuwu Art Gallery ✦ Folk artist Jamie Zepeda shares nicho box secrets Jan. 31 at Winchester Dondero ✦ Rita Deanin Abbey Museum Feb. 1 goes kid-friendly with free scavenger hunts and art exploration ✦ Get slanted at this Learn Italics Calligraphy workshop Jan. 31 at Windmill Library.▼

All That Jazz

Balanchine meets Stravinsky in this peppy triple song-and-dance bill.

Feb. 1-2 ✦ The Smith Center

➤ Also: Seth Robichaux brings classic cabaret sparkle to Ten/Ten Show Jan. 29 at The Composers Room ✦ East African guitar virtuoso Raphaël Feuillâtre pulls your strings Jan. 31 at UNLV ✦ Being bad sounds sooo good at Vegas City Opera's 7 Sins So Deadly Jan. 31-Feb. 1 at Charleston Heights Arts Center ✦ Gospel Fest Feb. 1 rings in Black History Month with soul-lifting sounds at Water Street Plaza ✦ It's a moving celebration of Black dance legacies Feb. 1 at Summerlin Library ✦ Femmes of Rock Feb. 1 shred classical conventions with violin-powered anthems at Myron's ✦ Hmmm ... Crash Test Dummies bring '90s nostalgia Feb. 1 to the Westgate ✦ Dixie Flats Feb. 1 serves up hot jazz gumbo at Windmill Library ✦ You'll be animated by the sounds of Cowboy Bebop Live Feb. 5 at House of Blues.▼

Spring Festival

Get hissy at this Lunar New Year bash with music, vendors, and festive eats.

Feb. 2 ✦ Desert Breeze Park

➤ Also: Take a moonstruck stroll through a garden of Asian delights at the Bellagio Conservatory and Botanical Garden through March 1 ✦ The Year of the Snake slithers into Summerlin at the Lunar New Year Parade Jan. 29 ✦ National Book Award finalist 'Pemi Aguda spins supernatural tales Jan. 29 at The Beverly Theater ✦ Local artists of all scales interpret the Year of the Snake Jan. 30 at the Historic Fifth Street School ✦ Gladys Knight's brother Bubba Knight shares seven decades of soul stories Jan. 31 at West Charleston Library ✦ Taverna Costera rings in the Lunar New Year Feb. 1 with red envelopes and revelry ✦ Hawaiian cultural masters share island wisdom Jan. 31-Feb. 2 at Super Summer Theatre Studios ✦ Stardust Feb. 1 takes your ears to the edge of space at the Historic Fifth Street School ✦ Enter beast mode at this dragon-fueled Downtown Lunar New Year Parade Feb. 1 on Fremont Street ✦ Love thyself as Dray Gardner leads this all-levels yoga journey Feb. 3 at The Space.▼

Planet Desert Rock Weekend

Crank up the amps with three nights of heavy hitters from around the globe.

Jan. 30-Feb. 2 ✦ Vamp'd / The Usual Place

➤ Also: Lujuria Jan. 29 brings curvy, kitschy spookiness to The Usual Place ✦ Las Vegas Bellas Jan. 29 serve up doo-wop and Motown sweetness at the Italian American Club ✦ Rita Lim gets jazzy with her newly dropped album Jan. 30 at Maxan Jazz ✦ Dream 2 Dream rides the vaporwave Jan. 31 at The Griffin ✦ Cold Cave brings the darkness with Kontravoid Feb. 1 at Fremont Country Club ✦ Arizona vamp-punks Calabrese sink their fangs into The Griffin Feb. 1 ✦ DIG! XX Feb. 1 expands this legendary rock doc's wild ride at The Beverly Theater ✦ Ray Volpe lasers up DLVEC for his Volpeverse tour Feb. 1.▼

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THE CH33SE 🧀

🥯 The Dish List

Chile's hilly wine regions come alive at this terroir tour Jan. 29 at Wineaux ✦ Kirin Ichiban pours Lunar New Year libations Jan. 29 in Downtown Summerlin ✦ Bagelmania's Backroom Comedy Jan. 30 serves laughs with a side of lox ✦ Sip away seasonal chills at the Winter Sangria Party Jan. 31 at Boulder Dam Brewing Co. ✦ Henderson's Booze District goes full dumpling diplomacy with Asian food trucks and "Red Envelope" cocktails Feb. 1 ✦ Piff the Magic Dragon conjures birthday fun at Hofbrauhaus' 21st anniversary Jan. 31 ✦ Competitive carb-scarfers engage in a shmear campaign Feb. 1 at The Siegel's Bagelmania World Bagel Eating Championship ✦ It's a brunchy pajama jam at DW Bistro Feb. 1-2 ✦ Delilah's Lunar New Year bash goes full Far East fantasy with Chef Angie Mar Feb. 2 at Wynn Las Vegas ✦ Istorya spills the tea (and the adobo) on Filipino food history Feb. 4 at Palate ✦ Napa royalty Faust and Flowers duke it out for your wine love Feb. 8 at Rio's Wine Cellar.▼

🎸

Band aid: The promotional blurbage and preview reel for DIG! XX – a freshly remixed re-release of the cult 2004 music doc – plays up the destructive antics and wastoid hijinks of two rising indie bands on an ill-fated tour together, but this film is far more than a tale of rock 'n' roll mayhem. I hella recommend checking out the modern classic Feb. 1 at The Beverly Theater for what it really is: a psychologically fraught and frequently poignant philosophical brawl between the merits of calculated ambition vs. natural talent. In this corner: The Dandy Warhols, with their polished buzzsaw power-pop and tryhard drive for rock stardom that belies a certain cautious inertness in their sound. Ever beneath their envious gaze, however, are their tourmates The Brian Jonestown Massacre, a gaggle of druggily merry, undisciplined washouts whose mystifying ability to effortlessly spin gorgeous and delphic retro-psychedelia exasperates and ultimately infuriates the Warhols. Whether you're rooting for the practiced would-be pop stars or the beautiful losers, the high-tension tour that drives the narrative of DIG! XX is a gripping trip.

📖 Lit Fires

Ah, it's back: the dyspeptic reflux of impotent rage from ticking through the daily headlines chronicling our democracy being dismantled at 2.5x. Feel like you have no control? What you can control are words and meanings – typically a juicy societal chokepoint that Orwellian regimes just looove to take over. Strengthen your semantic grip on reality at these lit-powered happenings: Nigerian novelist and short-story writer ‘Pemi Aguda reads from her collection Ghostroots, horror-tinged tales of fraught family relationships, Jan. 29 at The Beverly Theater ✦ Get an earful of young local lit talent on the rise at the Nevada Poetry Out Loud Competition Jan. 30 at the West Charleston Library ✦ The ever-burgeoning talents of UNLV's Neon Lit creative cartel take the stage Jan. 31 at The Beverly's Segue with a mix of prose and verse ✦ An aspiring scribbler yourself? Ditch the Microsoft Word for a spell and get handsy with your work at the Learn Italics Calligraphy workshop Jan. 31 put on by the Las Vegas Scribes. Hell, as long as we're going back to the Stone Age, we might as well learn to scrawl on our cave walls with a bit of flair.

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🗿 Sonic Exotica

The Golden Tiki's rummy volcanic cavern vibe rumbles with an aural eruption Jan. 30 when Mr. Ho's Orchestrotica Quintet brings their jingly, tingly, buttery chamber jazzotica to the club. The show is rare for its intimacy – and intimate due to the rarity of free seats, which you can score here if they're not already snatched up by sonically hungry swingers.

🏃‍♀️ Feets of Strength

I love me a nice, long, leisurely, meditative jog (on the treadmill, jacked into YouTube) but, wow, the folks legging up for Jackpot Ultras Feb. 14-16 at Cornerstone Park are in a different athletic phylum altogether. This pack of competitive runs culminates in a 😱 100-mile ultramarathon that could take up to 32 hours to compete. But no Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner here; the tight loop around Cornerstone's 31-acre pond allows for hi-bye socializing with fellow huffers.