Buffalo Rising Online

Leanne Schmidt, a Buffalo native and Buffalo Academy for Visual and Performance Arts graduate, will return home to Buffalo with her Brooklyn-based contemporary dance company, Leanne Schmidt and Company. Schmidt’s work, Wonderland, is a journey that invites the audience to share in each character's neuroses influenced by dreams, fantasies and life’s most intimate and personal moments. The work is a reflection of the choreographer’s personal journey and first hand experience with a family member’s struggle with mental illness and draws heavily on images and experiences based on this. The choreography’s athletic and humorous nature makes this work accessible and humorous to all ages and audiences either seasoned in dance, or not.

Don’t miss the Greatest Plant Sale of the year! Come down to the Gardens to choose from a wide variety of annuals, perennials, unique plants and shrubs to spruce up your garden, home or landscaping. Hard-to-find city size Composters (usually $89 and up) are featured at $53 onsite.

Why go somewhere else when you can get all your plants at the Botanical Gardens Great Plant Sale?

Highlights include: Colorful hanging baskets, annual and perennial planters, Bougaininvillea, Canna Lilies, Clivia, tropical plants, herbs and rare and unusual plants.

All are welcome to lend a hand in getting the Central Terminal area ready for the busy 2008 season. Rain or shine, work will focus primarily on cleaning up the grounds and working on the landscaping around the building. Gloves and work attire are recommended, and tools such as shovels and rakes are always appreciated. As in years past, free lunch and beverages will be provided for all volunteers.

Photo by Sara Etten

The American History Girls’ Club, designed for girls ages 6 to 12, crafts, activities, and a lesson surrounding one of the dolls from the popular American Girl® series.

The final session of the spring season, features the “Kirsten” American Girl® doll and a look at the year 1854 in America's history. Activities will include the following:

A museum-wide scavenger hunt that highlights artifacts related to several American Girl® dolls and their time periods.

Painting jewelry boxes in stencil patterns, a common decorative style in the mid-19th century.

Making chromatrope toys, which create colored optical illusions when turned.

Making butter from scratch.

Enjoying fresh buttermilk biscuits, locally-produced marmalade, and lemonade.

For more information contact the Buffalo and Erie County Historical Society at 716.873.9644 ext. 310.

The Buffalo Botanical Gardens presents the Bonsai Show. Bonsai masters and novices display their prized trees at their peak. Do not miss this once a year opportunity to see these meticulously manicured trees all in one place.

Buffalo in Bloom hosts their 4th Annual Spring Kick-Off in the lobby of City Hall and Niagara Square. Come celebreate the 2008 gardening season:

Meet other city gardeners and representatives of gardening organizations
Mingle with special invited guests - the “Bloomed” gardeners of 2007
Participate in a plant exchange - see instructions below
Sign-up to be a garden scout for 2008
Master Gardeners available to answer questions
Tour the Niagara Square flower beds maintained by Buffalo in Bloom volunteers
Enjoy light refreshments with fellow gardening enthusiasts
Have your soil pH tested $1/sample (bring a dry sample, click here for instructions on obtaining a soil sample)

Register your name for prize drawings for all attendees throughout the celebration. Free parking is available at the Turner Ramp next to City Hall (use W. Eagle Street entrance).

For more information please click here.

Peoples Park, the community gardens on Main Street between Jewett Avenue and Rodney Street, reopens for the 2008 season. Everyone is invited to enjoy outdoor activities in the green space and to participate in helping the gardens grow. Bubbles, kites, face painting, nature investigation, hot dogs and a flower sale will add to a day in the park. Please stop by with friends and family between 11:00 a.m. – 2:00 p.m. Peoples Park is the community spot to garden, gather and grow.

The Buffalo Rugby Club takes on the Syracuse Chargers.

Don't know what it is? Rugby is most often compared to a combination of football and soccer but this comparison does not do a sport with full contact and no pads any sort of justice. With no froward pass, no blocking and no stoppage in play, rugby is a contact sport junky's fantasy. Come on out and see why this is the fastest growing sport in the area.

Former Hell's Kitchen celebrity chef, Shayna Raichilson-Zadock requests the honor of your presence at the Grand Opening of Steel Crazy Cafe by Bohemian Hostess. Sweet crepes, hors d'oeuvres, and refreshing libations. It'll be a little crazy, and a whole lot of fun.

Please RSVP your attendance to 716.885.6125 or via email by Thursday, May 15.

Come check out British Sea Power and The Rosebuds at The Tralf!

Photo: British Sea Power

The Imaginary Line is an art exhibition that explores the idea of nation-dividing borders to understand the political, cultural, and sociological issues that arise from these boundaries, as well as explores borders as intangible delineations that can exist within the individual. It is a multi-venue, collaborative exhibition that will take place at Buffalo Arts Studio, El Museo and Hallwalls Contemporary Arts Center.

Buffalo Arts Studio will feature the work of the following artists from across North America: Peter Dykhius, Halifax, Nova Scotia; Paula Braswell, American born, now living in Toronto, Ontario; Shelley Niro, Brantford, Ontario, a member of the Six Nations, Mowhawk, Turtle Clan; and Leandro Soto, Cuban born, living in Arizona. Curated by Buffalo Arts Studio curator Brooke Fitzpatrick.

A public reception takes place tonight. The exhibition can be seen May 17 through August 9, 2008.

Shakti Lounge presents Casperous Vine bringing you award winning music from composer/multi-instrumentalist Paul Christopher Kozlowski; Eastern Europe, Balkan, Klezmer and American minimalism.

Retro At Large and The Stillwater present The White Party a springtime disco celebration 70's style with music by former Studio 54 DJ John Ceglia. Attendees should wear all white. The VIP Pre party starts at 7PM ($20-pre sale only) and includes food, 90min open bar and admission. The last VIP portion of the party sold out so get your tickets early.

Reminiscent of the do-it-yourself approach of the Riot Grrrl movement, this Spring two feminist provocateurs are taking their multimedia show on the road. Mary Billyou and Sabine Gruffat are hailing from Brooklyn, NY and Madison, WI to present The Free Translators touring east coast cities and towns with a program of radical videos and performances.

As the title suggests, The Free Translators’ video program is inspired by widely accessible texts. The artists perform in many of their own videos, sometimes enacting the news, dictating words written by the Marquis de Sade, or excerpting from Virginia Woolf’s anti-war essays. By re-interpreting the texts for the audience, the videos explore notions of identity and communication, re-imagining issues raised by feminist consciousness, the quality of attention today in the midst of multiple authorial references, and the diminished space of citizenship around the monologue of mass media.

In between video screenings, The Free Translators present two “Live Tactical Translations,” or, live multimedia experiments inspired by 1970s feminist art and Soviet avant-garde news troupes. Culling from their library of text, sound, and image, alter egos Miss Reading and Miss Recognition communicate through matching headsets and manipulate analog recordings as they educate audiences in their unique methods of reading and comprehension.

For only $5 you can experience five bands: Blue Rocket Trio, Think So Brain, Into Nothing, Contagious Woo, Product of Hostility.