New ENCORE! musical

The UA will present a song and dance musical celebrating the two most glorious words in the English language: musical comedy! Professor Richard Hanson, its founder and current director, created ENCORE! to feature freshmen musical theatre students by providing a platform where young artists can test themselves in preparation for professional careers in the theatre.

This high-spirited musical group has grown to be one of the School of Theatre Arts' best-loved touring ambassadors. The show starts tonight at 7:30 in the Theatre Arts building, Musical Theatre Studio, Room 125. The cost is $5 for all seats. For more information call the Fine Arts Box Office 621-1162.

Centennial hosts Hibiki

Sankai Juku is set to play Centennial Hall on Saturday night. Sankai Juku (translated as "the studio of mountain and sea") is an ambassador of the second generation of Japan's Butoh movement, created as an expression of humanitarian awareness by the country's postwar generation. The gestures of the Butoh style emanate with a sensibility previously restrained by centuries of the Kabuki and Noh traditions. In Hibiki, the performers present a dynamic interplay of large and small gestures and slow motion accompanied by a lyrical electronic score.

Sankai Juku and artistic director Ushio Amagatsu are part of the second generation of Butoh dancers in Japan. Led by Tatsumi Hijikata and Kazuo Ohno, who are world famous practitioners of Butoh, Japanese dancers rejected the traditional forms of Eastern and Western dance. They investigated a method of expression that would be appropriate to a new Japan and could reflect the body and feeling of their generation.

Butoh expresses the language of the body rather than a theoretical meaning of movement. Therefore each individual brings his own physical history and method of expression to the art form. Yet, Amagatsu shows his own vision through Sankai Juku. The white immobile face traditionally represents a thwarted human being, but the whitened face of the Butoh dancer is mobile and is in touch with innocence, wonder, fear and mortality. The power and inner beauty identified with Sankai Juku is from all elements surrounding humanity.

Ticket prices range from $12 to $34. For more information call the Centennial Hall Box Office at 621-3341.

Lecture on Indian art

A visiting artist lecture series celebrating the Arizona State Museum's new exhibit "Connections Across Generations: The Avery Collection of American Indian Paintings" begins this evening at 7:30.

San Juan Pueblo artist Geronima Montoya and her sons Paul and Robert will share the stories of their lives and art through slides, with time for audience questions afterward. There will also be a following reception, book signing and exhibition viewing at Arizona State Museum.

The event will be held in the CESL auditorium. Tickets are

$5 for ASM members, $8 for adults and students are free. For more information contact Lisa Falk at 626-2973.