Tomorrow @ Harris Theater for Music and Dance
Along with director-choreographer Carrie Hanson's penchant for issues-aware topicality (see last year's widely praised examination of the economic collapse, Stupormarket), the Seldoms are also known to toy with the environment of dance: past productions landed at the Morton Arboretum and the company's own South Side "industrial cathedral" garage. The Seldoms continue that site-tweaked spirit with This Is Not a Dance Concert, a mobile, interactive performance that roams through the Harris Theater lobby, behind the curtain, and back onstage. The debut event of the Seldom's tenth season, This features original music by composer Tim Daisy and costumes by designer Maria Pinto.
Coming Up
Today @ Music Box Theatre
Ti West's House of the Devil, an homage to the trashy occult-horror films of the early '80s, requires something rarely asked of contemporary horror-film audiences: patience. With period-perfect production design and a brilliant sense of timing, West slowly ratchets up the suspense in this tidy amalgam of familiar plot elements (a plucky coed takes a babysitting gig in a creepy house during a lunar eclipse; Satanic mayhem ensues) to nearly unbearable levels. Although you can see everything coming from several miles off (the title says it all), and even if the film can't fully deliver on the devilish climax it so skillfully builds up to, The House of the Devil is still a thing of beauty — and terror. West's latest, The Innkeepers, also screens; and the director appears in person for introdcutions and Q&A.
Today @ Reggies Rock Club
Even more so than most rock/pop countercultures, a lot of the truly radical-sounding metal is not aimed directly at the über-cultured connoisseur; it is a product and reflection of one's own identity and environment. Slow Southern Steel, directed by CT of celebrated sludge crew Rwake, sees this come alive vibrantly in the sub-Mason Dixon metal scene. The documentary showcases interviews and live footage from notables Eyehategod, Torche, Kylesa, Weedeater, Dark Castle, and Zoroaster, among others. These variously doomy, sludgy, and Southern-grooved bands ("Slayer dipped in syrup") eventually found acclaim beyond Dixie, but don't expect any fits of vapors: these are the kind of guys whose achievements tend to be commensurate with their lack of pretension.
Today @ Metro
Porcelain Raft is one-man band Mauro Remiddi's current moniker. The Italian-born, London-living anti-rock star crafts dreamy soundscapes that leave you swooning; but Remiddi was not always a lone lo-fi wolf. Teamed with Onyee Lo in 2001, he created the now defunct indie-pop group Sunny Day Sets Fire. Tonight, taking a break from his European tour with M83, Remiddi makes a state-side supporting appearance to showcase his debut full-length release, Strange Weekend, out January 24th via Secretly Canadian. For a mitten-size warm-up, click here to stream the latest album leak, "Unless You Speak From Your Heart." Chicago garage-glam trio Smith Westerns headline.
Today @ Maxwell Colette Gallery
Since the Occupy demonstrations began in downtown Chicago, street-art stickers have been prolific in the Loop, appearing on any flat surface possible. STUCK UP, at Maxwell Colette Gallery, tells a larger and longer story of street art and the sticker with work that goes back four decades, culled from curator DB Burkeman's own sticker collection. The heavyweights of the street-art movement are included (Shepard Fairey, Space Invader, Banksy); as are the heavyweights of the Pop Art movement (Andy Warhol, Keith Haring); along with the unknown street artists, whose "anonymous stickers [have been] peeled from the streets of NYC."
