NOTE: “Today” and “tonight” refer to Friday, May 6.
The Rainforest Arts Center, 35 N. Forks Ave., in Forks will hots its first Contra Dance at 7 tonight.
The arts center is located in the middle of town, at the only stoplight.
The evening begins with an introductory workshop at 7 with the dance to follow at 7:30.
Organizers encourage dancers with experience to come lead the beginners.
Entry is by the suggested donation of $6.
The Powerhouse band will play and Sonya Kaufman will call.
Kaufman said she has been contra dancing for as long as she can remember, and is excited to spend this summer in Port Angeles as a wildland firefighter for Olympic National Park.
Then on Saturday, the dancing moves to the Black Diamond Community Hall, 1942 Black Diamond Road, Port Angeles, with a workshop at 7:30 p.m. and the dance beginning at 8 p.m.
During this round, musicians Ruthie Dornfeld and Forrest Gibson will perform with Kaufman calling once more.
Dornfeld, a fiddler, and Gibson, a guitarist, merge their New England and wild west backgrounds to create a dynamic musical team, organizers said.
Dornfeld, as a 15-year resident of Boston, was a mainstay of the thriving contra dance scene there while Gibson was playing blues guitar in a cabin in the woods in the wilds of Alaska. They met after moving to Seattle and have been performing together ever since.
Entry to Saturday’s event is by the suggested donation of $8 for adults and $4 for minors. Entry is also possibly with the equivalent in snacks to share during the break.
For more information, visit www.blackdiamonddance.org.
Carvers in Blyn
BLYN — Red Cedar Hall — the Jamestown S’Klallam tribe’s Community Center at 1033 Old Blyn Highway — will host the carvers who create the tribe’s modern totem poles from 2 p.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday.
Master Carver Dale Faulstich — joined by artisans Bud Turner, and Dusty Humphries — will present images of the process of creating the totem pole called “Why the Sun Always Shines in Sequim,” which was gifted to the city of Sequim in 2015.
The presentation also will include a pictorial history and discussion of the poles created for the tribe and the stories the totem poles tell.
Faulstich also will talk about some of the privately commissioned pieces of art he has created throughout the years.
This program is free and open to the public.
For more information about this event, contact the Jamestown Tribal Library at 360-681-4632.
PT Shorts
PORT TOWNSEND — Northwind Arts Center, 701 Water St., will host author Mia Alvar at 7:30 p.m. Saturday during a reading of her new book, In the Country, as part of the ongoing PT Shorts series.
PT Shorts is a free, monthly program featuring dramatic readings of contemporary literature, produced by Key City Public Theatre, presented by Northwind Arts Center and sponsored by the Port Townsend Arts Commission.
A second reading not attended by Alvar is set for 5:30 p.m. Sunday.
In the Country, a collection of short stories and Alvar’s first book, was published by Alfred A. Knopf in June 2015 and is now available in paperback.
The book earlier this year won the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize for Debut Fiction and the 2015 Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers Award.
Alvar’s stories vividly give voice to the women and men of the Filipino diaspora, organizers said.
There are stories about exiles, emigrants and wanderers uprooting their families from the Philippines to begin new lives in the Middle East, the United States and elsewhere.
Alvar was born in the Philippines and raised in Bahrain and the United States.
She graduated from Harvard College and the School of the Arts at Columbia University.
A former writer-in-residence at the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, she has received support from the Corporation of Yaddo, the Djerassi Resident Artists Program, the Blue Mountain Center for the Arts and the Sarah Lawrence Seminar for Writers.
Alvar’s work has been cited for distinction in The Best American Short Stories and published in One Story, The Missouri Review and the Cincinnati Review.
For more information, visit keycitypublictheatre.org.
