january 9
Festival of Chefs: Lick your lips and indulge your appetite when twenty chefs from some of South Florida's finest restaurants cross spatulas tonight at 6:00 p.m. at the Sky Lobby of International Place (100 SE Second St.) to benefit the Easter Seal Society. A media-celebrity panel -- including Channel 6's Jackie Nespral and Channel 10's Kristi Krueger -- will judge the dishes created by chefs from Tutti's in the Gables, Monty's Stone Crab Seafood House, Mayfair Grill, Cafe Beethoven, and Two Sisters, among others. There will be an open bar and a silent auction of luxury items donated by American Airlines and Royal Caribbean Cruise Lines, and artwork by Priester Glockner. Tickets cost $65. Call 325-0470.
Guttermouth: The Theatre (3339 N. Federal Hwy, Fort Lauderdale) trembles tonight with pile-driving, jack-hammering, warp-speed melodi-core of Southern California prank-punks Guttermouth. The band's scatologically focused lyrics and gale-force music whip their fans into a frenzy; their shows get all the more inventive when their lead vocalist Mark Adkins gets beat up on-stage, as the band continues. Guttermouth plays tunes from their third album Teri Yakimoto (on Nitro Records), while the Crumbs, Assorted Jelly Beans, and Discount open. Admission to this all-ages show is eight dollars. Doors open at 8:00 p.m. Call 954-565-1117.
friday
january 10
School's Out: The Naming Project: The Miami Light Project continues its performance series tonight and tomorrow night at 8:00 at the Colony Theater (1040 Lincoln Rd., Miami Beach) with a look at growing up gay. Under the direction of New York video artist Mary Ellen Strom, twelve young performers -- six from New York and six from Miami -- share their personal stories through compelling theatrical monologues and intimate video documentaries. The works present a portrait of youthful courage, as well as a chronicle of young queer culture. Tickets cost $18. Call 531-3747.
Stars of the Shanghai Acrobatic Theatre: Witness breathtaking acrobatic feats, outrageous stunts, and delightful magic tricks when this eighteen-member troupe transforms the Broward Center for the Performing Arts (201 SW Fifth St., Fort Lauderdale) into a traditional Chinese harvest festival tonight at 7:00 p.m. These acrobats will perform such stunts as balancing pyramids of wine glasses and lit candles on the bridges of their noses, juggling glass jars and large porcelain urns, and spinning fragile plates on the ends of long bamboo sticks (please, kids, don't try this at home unless your parents have lots of insurance). The Shanghai acrobats will also perform traditional dragon and lion dances and contort themselves into astounding shapes. Tickets cost $10, $15, and $23. Call 954-462-0222.
Gramercy International Contemporary Art Fair: As an alternative to recent overly commercial art megashows, Gramercy International hosts an innovative show at the Raleigh Hotel (1775 Collins Ave., Miami Beach). More than 35 galleries from New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, and throughout the rest of the world will participate, presenting works by younger emerging artists with prices beginning at $100. Admission is five dollars. The festival runs from noon to 8:00 p.m. today through Sunday, with a reception tonight at 8:00 p.m. (admission to the reception and fair is $15). Call 534-6300.
saturday
january 11
South Florida Folk Festival: Listen to some folk music under a canopy of 200-year-old cypress trees at the sixth-annual South Florida Folk Festival this weekend at Easterlin Park (1000 NW 38th St., Oakland Park). Performers include edgy and decidedly non-nostalgic singer Andrew Calhoun, impressive guitar plucker Sam Pacetti, and Boston's humorous, ragtime-blues folksters Cheap Champagne, plus Seminole Chief James Billie, singer-songwriter Rod McDonald, Canadian folk legend Penny Lang, Chicago's Small Potatoes, and Washington, D.C.'s Tom Prasada-Rao. The fest also includes a national songwriters' competition, folk dancing, local performers on two side stages, a children's stage, and a fire-ring song swap. Admission is eight dollars today, six dollars tomorrow (teens get in for five bucks, while kids under age thirteen get in free). The fest runs today from 11:00 a.m. to 10:00 p.m. and tomorrow from 11:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m. Call 954-938-0610.
Marvin Hamlisch: "I consider my bit as if the audience came over to my living room," Marvin Hamlisch has said, "and they're gonna get a taste of me." Let's hope they serve wine and crackers with Hamlisch when he performs today at 2:00 p.m. at Bailey Concert Hall (3501 SW Davie Rd., Davie). The composer of more than 30 film scores (including The Way We Were, Ice Castles, and Ordinary People) and two Broadway hits (A Chorus Line and They're Playing Our Song), he's known for his witty on-stage repartee. Tickets cost $40. Call 888-475-6884. Hamlisch will also perform tomorrow at 8:00 p.m. at the Aventura Turnberry Jewish Center (20400 NE 30th Ave., Aventura) in memory of his friend Maurice "Sonny" Goldsmith. Tickets cost $25, $50, and $100. Call 935-0666.
Redland Natural Arts Festival: Celebrate the arts while communing with nature at the twentieth-annual Redland Natural Arts Festival, taking place this weekend at the Fruit and Spice Park (24801 SW 187th Ave., Homestead). Handmade arts and crafts from around the world and exotic tropical plants will be available for purchase, and festgoers can also enjoy live Irish and American folk music and ethnic dancing, wildlife displays, fencing, tai chi, archery, kite flying, ultralight aircraft, canoeing, and sea kayaking. You say you want more? Okay, the Southern Cross Astronomical Society will provide telescopes for solar flare viewings, and kids can ride ponies. The festival runs today and tomorrow from 10:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. Admission is one dollar. Call 247-5727.
Il Trovatore: The Florida Grand Opera continues its season with Giuseppe Verdi's tale of murder, revenge, and ill-fated love in the midst of civil war tonight at 8:00 p.m. at Dade County Auditorium (2901 W. Flagler St, performed in Italian with projected English translations). Soprano Susan Foster and tenor Tonio di Paola star as Leonora and her beloved troubadour Manrico; baritone Christopher Robertson is Count di Luna, Manrico's bitter enemy and rival in love. Tickets range from $18 to $100. Performances continue January 14 and 17 at 8:00 p.m. and January 19 at 2:00 p.m. Call 854-7890.
School's Out: The Naming Project: See Friday.
Gramercy International Contemporary Art Fair: See Friday.
South Florida Folk Festival: See Saturday.
sunday
january 12
Algiers: During the past ten years, a number of successful French films have been remade into American hits, including those known as Three Men and a Baby and Point of No Return. Cinema Vortex features an early example of this trend with a screening of John Cromwell's hot-blooded 1938 romance, Algiers, a reworking of Julien Duvivier's Pepe Le Moko, released the previous year. (Come to think of it, Cromwell's own knockout The Prisoner of Zenda had a less-than-stellar redo in 1952.) Screening today at noon at the Alliance Cinema (927 Lincoln Rd., Miami Beach), this darkly atmospheric, beautifully photographed film stars Charles Boyer (in his most memorable role) as a crook on the lam from the French police, and Hedy Lamarr as the woman who steals his heart at the Casbah. Admission is four dollars. Call 531-8504.
Annie Get Your Gun: Considered Irving Berlin's most zesty and stylish musical, the pistol-packin' Annie Get Your Gun gave the world classic tunes such as "There's No Business Like Show Business" and "Anything You Can Do." Rita McKenzie and Glenn Yarbrough star in this production, running today at 3:00 and 7:00 p.m. at Bailey Concert Hall (3501 SW Davie Rd., Davie), as legendary sure-shot cowgirl Annie Oakley and her rootin'-tootin' love interest Frank Butler in this old-fashioned romance with a competitive twist -- the two met as members of Buffalo Bill's traveling show, and the rest, as they say, is history. Tickets cost $28 and $30. Call 888-475-6884.
Gramercy International Contemporary Art Fair: See Friday.
Marvin Hamlisch: See Saturday.
Redland Natural Arts Festival: See Saturday.
South Florida Folk Festival: See Saturday.
monday
january 13
Florida Philharmonic: The Philharmonic gets vocal when conductor James Judd leads the Philharmonic Chorus, the Florida's Singing Sons Boychoir, and several soloists as they perform Bach's Coffee Cantata no. 211 and Orff's Carmina Burana. The concerts are tonight at the Gusman Center for the Performing Arts (174 E. Flagler St.) and Wednesday at the Broward Center for the Performing Arts (201 SW Fifth St., Fort Lauderdale). Tickets range from $17 to $75. Both performances begin at 8:00 p.m. Call 930-1812.
tuesday
january 14
Defending the Caveman: The Broadway Series usually offers past hits from the Great White Way. But the series boasts a current Broadway production tonight at the Jackie Gleason Theater of the Performing Arts (1700 Washington Ave., Miami Beach). Rob Becker's Defending the Caveman, the longest-running one-man show on Broadway (with a record-breaking two-year run at the Helen Hayes Theatre), explores the gender gap and the origins of male and female behavior. Becker, who wrote and stars in the show, uses his relationship with his wife Erin and an imaginary relationship with a time-traveling Neanderthal, as well as his research in anthropology, sociology, and evolutionary psychology, for chuckle-inducing material. Tickets range in price from $17 and $32. Performances run Tuesday through Saturday at 8:00 p.m. and Sunday at 7:00 p.m., with 2:00 p.m. matinees on Saturday and Sunday, through January 19. Call 673-7300.
Itzhak Perlman, Samuel Sanders, and Pinchas Zuckerman: The strings sing tonight when thirteen-time Grammy Award-winning violinist Itzhak Perlman performs in a pair of classical concerts. Tonight at the Broward Center for the Performing Arts (201 SW Fifth St., Fort Lauderdale), pianist and long-time friend Samuel Sanders joins Perlman to perform works by Schumann, Brahms, Mozart, Foss, and Smetana. Conductor-violinist-violist Pinchas Zuckerman and musicians from the New World Symphony join Perlman tomorrow at the Dade County Auditorium (2901 W. Flagler St.) to perform an all-Mozart program, featuring Sinfonia Concertante and other works. Both concerts begin at 8:00 p.m. Tickets range in cost from $20 to $75. Call 532-3491.
Il Trovatore: See Saturday.
wednesday
january 15
Love Letters: Large- and small-screen stars Robert Wagner and Jill St. John star in A.R. Gurney Jr.'s critically acclaimed Love Letters, tonight only at 8:00 at the Colony Theater (1040 Lincoln Rd., Miami Beach). Both actors are certainly blasts from the past: St. John starred in a couple of Sinatra vehicles, including 1967's Tony Rome, before slinking around as Tiffany Case with Sean Connery in 1971's Diamonds Are Forever. While Wagner's filmography trails into the distance, he's probably best known for his starring role in the hit television show Hart to Hart. But neither has been resting on laurels these many years -- St. John has a series of cookbooks due out soon, and Wagner will star with Mike Myers and Elizabeth Hurley in the forthcoming feature film Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery. Tickets cost $38 and $43. Call 531-1711.
Porno for Pyros: The Cult of Perry Farrell drives on as his current project Porno for Pyros returns to South Florida for a concert tonight at 8:00 at Rezurrection Hall at Club Nu (245 22nd St., Miami Beach). Still touring behind 1995's Good God's Urge, the band made a sold-out stop in Fort Lauderdale in July that offered faithful, if sleepy, renditions of the multilayered, multicultural hippie-fest tunes on that album. In the world of alternative music, it seems some people can do no wrong. Rumor has it that Red Hot Chili Peppers guitarist and former Jane's Addiction bandmate Dave Navarro might join Farrell for a few songs tonight. Tickets cost $19. Call 535-1174.
Florida Philharmonic: See Monday.
Defending the Caveman: See Tuesday.
Itzhak Perlman, Samuel Sanders, and Pinchas Zuckerman: See Tuesday.
