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The Weekender: What You’re Doing and Why

Posted June 26th, 2009

This week: Dancing.

>>>Friday (and Saturday): Philly Tap Challenge! Jaye Allison’s all about bring the tap back. Today and tomorrow have classes for both students and teachers at West Philly’s Gwendolyn Bye Dance Center and Community Education Center. But at night are the showcases, baby. Hit up Arts Bank at 7:00 pm tonight for the amateur show, and the Philly Tap Idol Challenge – you go, you vote! And tomorrow you can catch the pros. $30-$35 for tix, showcases are tonight and Saturday, 7:00 pm, at Arts Bank, 601 South Broad Street, Philadelphia.

>>>Friday (late nite): Derrick May! Children, let me tell you about the 1980s, when the American economy was sliding into the toilet, manufacturing jobs were evaporating, and the face of industrial America was changing fast. Despite what American Apparel tries to tell you, it wasn’t that cool. But we needed something to see us through to the Clinton presidency, and that was music. The 1980s gave us aggressively political punk (we’re angry), maturing hip hop (let’s talk about the situation), and evolving out of disco, Chicago house and Detroit techno (let’s dance until dawn and love one another because there is no future). Derrick May is one of the gods of the latter, and there’s not much more to say than that. I am totally listening to “Strings of the Strings of Life” right now. Turn out to Arts Garage tonight, and watch a bunch of old heads stay up past their bedtimes. $20 (in advance only, they say), tonight, 9:00 pm to 3:30 am, at Arts Garage, 1516 Parrish Street, Philadelphia.

>>>Saturday: You need a breather.

>>>Sunday: Sundae! I’ve loved Sundae’s afternoon-through-night house party since I stumbled across it at the old Le Jardin when I first moved to Philly. And after Derrick May (and whatever the afterparty might be), you won’t be ready to do anything until Sunday afternoon anyway. This week features Rich Medina. Free, 4:00 pm to 2:00 am, The Piazza, North 2nd Street between Germantown and Laurel (where’s that? between Poplar and Girard), Philadelphia.

–Nicholas Gilewicz