Busy Weekend (Part 1)

Lots to do and see this weekend and we're talking Thursday through Sunday.

The Wesleyan Cello Ensemble, Julie-Ann Ribchinsky, music director, presents an evening of works for solo and different sized groups at 7 p.m. in Crowell Concert Hall. The event is free and open to the public.

The Buttonwood Tree presents "The Armchair Geographer" at 7 p.m., a discussion led by Claude Masse. This week is Part 2 of his look at "Great French Cathedrals."

Italian actor and playwright Marco Baliani brings his one-person show "Corpo di Stata. Il Delitto Mori: Una Generazione Divisa" to Wesleyan's CFA Cinema and the Outside the Box Theater Series at 8 p.m. Translated as "Body of the State. The Moro Affair: A Nation Divided", Balani looks at the 1978 kidnapping and subsequent assassination of the director of the Italian Christian Democratic Party by the terrorist organization Brigate Rosse (Reed Brigade.) He also delves into the effect that the terrorist act had on left wing groups in Italy. The program will be presented in Italian with English supertitles. For ticket information, call 860-685-3355 or go online to www.wesleyan.edu/cfa.

The Green Street Arts Center celebrates V-Day with 3 performances of Eve Ensler's "Vagina Monologues" Thursday through Saturday at 8 p.m. Produced in association with The Women and Families Center of Meriden, the play features a talented cast of local actresses including Desiree Fontaine from News Channel 8. If you have never experienced this play, it will make you laugh, cry, think and hope for a better future. For more information, call 685-7871 or go to www.greenstreetartscenter.org.

Friday's events begin at 12noon in Crowell Concert Hall with a presentation of Professor Alvin Lucier's "Glacier." During the course of a half-hour performance, cellist Lucy Strother (Wesleyan class of '11) slowly sweeps downward, tracking a graph of the mean mass balance of 30 glaciers over a 24-year period, from 1980 to 2004. The work was commissioned by "Feet to the Fire: Exploring Global Climate Change from Science to Art." The event is free and open to the public.

The Buttonwood Tree presents Thin Air at 7:30 p.m., an alternative jazz-poetry ensemble featuring J-Cherry (lyricist, vocals), Phil Bullaro (drums), Tetsufumi Ito (bass), Joan Roche (piano), Patrick Roche (lead guitar), and Bob Weiss (second guitar.) Also on the bill is violist Jessica Heller playing solo works by J.S.Bach and the poet Sympetalous. Call 347-4957 for more information.

Patricia Beaman and Hari Krishnan, two Artists-in-Residence at Wesleyan University, present "Goddess, Siren, Monster, and Liquid Shakti", they have collaborated on a suite of solo dances featuring iconic female figures from Greco-Roman and Hindu mythology. Juxtaposing the traditional forms and mythological subject matter of Baroque dance (Beaman) and Bharata Natyam (Krishnan) with modern movement and contemporary issues, they propel the classic stories of Venus, Armide, Scylla, and Ganga into the present. The event takes place at 8 p.m.in the CFA Theater. Go to www.wesleyan.edu/cfa for more information and tickets.

The Annie Sonnenblick Lecture at Wesleyan, an annual event sponsored by the parents of the late Ms. Sonnenblick, presents author Edward P. Jones at 8 p.m. in the CFA Cinema. Jones, critically praised for his excellent short stories, truly came into his own with "The Known World", a brilliant look at slavery and free black men who owned slaves (based on actual stories.) The complex novel, published in 2004, is filled with amazing characters, tragic events and great accomplishments. Jones' most recent book, "All Aunt Hagar's Children's" (2006), is a collection of newer short stories that looks at African American living in or around the Washington D.C. area. The reading is free and open to the public.