Moisture Festival
The third annual Moisture Festival proves that circuses aren’t just for kids. Be entertained by risk-taking aerialists and absurd clowns (including recently inducted Clown Hall of Famer Avner the Eccentric) while sipping on the local brew at Hale’s Palladium, this year featuring a delightful new addition: a traveling theater named “The Liberty” located in Fremont Studios and hosting two burlesque shows (11 p.m. Fridays). Returning local acts include the Flordigan Can Can Girls (pictured), still kicking strong, and the daring Aerialistas who defy the laws of gravity over and over again. Baby Gramps still sets the gold standard for local musical oddballs, and Madman Frank Olivier from San Francisco will push the envelope as he did on the Johnny Carson show years ago. Hale’s Palladium, 4301 Leary Way N.W., 800-838-3006, www.brownpapertickets.com, www.moisturefestival.com. $10-$20. Opens 7:30 p.m. Tues. March 21; various times Wed.-Sun. Ends Sun. April 9. KELLIE HWANG
Pat Graney Company
If anything, Graney’s The Vivian girls, incorporating the work of “outsider artist” Henry Darger, is even stranger now than when it premiered here in 2004. The connections between the girls/women on stage and the projected images floating behind them are tighter, echoing gestures and relationships, and the details, like the tiny penises stitched to the crotch of their costumes and the rhythm of the shifting projections, are more legible this time around. Graney has created a movement equivalent to Darger’s ominous world, where a meadow can become a battlefield and his heroines keep their sweet nature intact despite all travail—schoolgirls in pinafores, living through a holocaust. Broadway Performance Hall, 1625 Broadway Ave., 206-325-6500, www.ticketwindow online.com. $18-$22. 8 p.m. Thurs. March 16-Sat. March 18. SANDRA KURTZ
Mark Salman
I was able to attend exactly one evening in Salman’s all-Liszt piano recital series last season, and his way with this music was so colorful and explosive (especially his unforgettable performance of Liszt’s transcription of Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony) that it made me feel even worse about having missed the other seven recitals. Liszt and Beethoven come together again on his program (to inaugurate Haller Lake’s new grand piano), alongside Chopin’s Ballade No. 4 and Schubert’s Sonata in A. Haller Lake United Methodist Church, 13055 First Ave. N.E., 206-362-5383. $10 suggested donation. 7:30 p.m. Fri. March 17. GAVIN BORCHERT
