Puerto Vallarta Scene

Puerto Vallarta Information & Events

ALOHA BALLET of POLYNESIAN DANCE » March 1

ALOHA
BALLET of POLYNESIAN DANCE

Aloha is the Hawaiian word used to greet and bless visitors, which could be translated roughly as beauty, peace, enjoyment, or you are blessed.

Aloha Polynesian Dance

The culture of Hawaii defines “Aloha Spirit” as a motivation that is expressed through joy, courtesy, friendliness and reasonableness, and not without considering other aspects such as serenity, sensuality and a healthy pride.

This spirit of Aloha will be shared in a dance concert at the Los Arcos Ampitheater on Saturday, March 1 at 8 pm. The performance is Free.

Troker » Malecón, 8pm, Friday, Feb 29

Troker on the MaleconTroker is a tapatío project presenting another side of jazz, a fusion of rhythms and hip hop, Funk, break beats, trip hop, lounge, drum and bass, and some Latin beats.

They participated in the Festival of Music in 2004 and 2005, the Puerto Vallarta Jazz Festival in 2004 and 2005, the May Cultural Festival, in the International Book Fair in Guadalajara 2005, and are very important part in the presentations at Paseo Chapultepec, also playing in the Zocalo of Mexico City and in the Auditorio Nacional, sharing the stage with major groups in the republic and important musicians at the international level….

Troker will play here in Puerto Vallarta on February 29 at 8 pm at the Los Arcos Ampitheater on the Malecón in a free concert as part of the Puerto Vallarta Wine Fest.

TROKER WEBSITE

Narcocorrido Music » Biting the Bullet

The Savage Silencing of Mexico’s Musicians
Killings Bear Hallmarks Of Drug Cartel Hitmen

By Manuel Roig-Franzia
Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, December 26, 2007

MORELIA, Mexico — Sergio Gómez roared into town in a big SUV, entourage in tow, pressed suits, fancy cowboy boots.

Everything about him said superstar. He had an international following, an impish smile that drove the women wild and a star on the walk of fame in Las Vegas. More than 20,000 fans swarmed the parking lot of this colonial city’s soccer stadium to dance and hear him sing romantic “Duranguense grupero” pop songs backed by a driving drumbeat.

After the show, in the small hours of Dec. 2, Sergio Gomez was kidnapped. Police found his body the next day. He’d been strangled and beaten. His face — a face that graced album covers and made teenage girls blush — was disfigured by burn marks.

Sergio Gomez, 34, was the latest of a dozen pop musicians to have been killed in the past year in Mexico. Nearly every one of the slayings bore the hallmarks of the drug cartel hitmen blamed for 4,000 deaths in the country in the past two years.

But the savage murder of Sergio Gomez — one of Mexico’s hottest singers, a headliner whose band, K-Paz de la Sierra, commanded $100,000 a show, twice the rate of other top bands — was different. It has set off an unprecedented chain reaction in which at least half a dozen bands have canceled concert tours. Popular bands, such as the Duranguense act Patrulla 81, which backed out of four major shows, are terrified of coming to Morelia and the surrounding state of Michoacan.

“All this is very dark for us,” José Angel Medina, Patrulla 81’s lead singer, said in an interview. “We’re very worried. Very scared.”

[Read more…]

Citlaltépetl » Mexico’s Writers’ Safe House

In Mexico City, a refuge for world’s writers
Haven from persecution gives chance at better life

by Chris Hawley
Republic Mexico City Bureau
Feb. 24, 2008 12:00 AM

MEXICO CITY – When the paramilitaries burst through his door, beat him and pointed a Kalashnikov rifle at his chest, poet Xhevdet Bajraj knew it was time to get as far from Kosovo as possible.

It was 1999, NATO bombs were falling on the province, and Yugoslav troops were fighting pitched battles with ethnic Albanian guerrillas. Serbian paramilitaries were torching homes and locking up anyone who might be perceived as a leader – even semifamous poets. Bajraj joined the thousands of refugees streaming into Albania.

Then came an invitation from a most unlikely place. Mexico City had just opened a safe house for persecuted writers, one of several social projects launched by the capital’s new, liberal government. Bajraj and his family were welcome to come, city officials said.

And so, shell-shocked and tired, carrying nothing but two packs of cigarettes, Bajraj, his wife and two sons became the first of a string of writers and their families given shelter in the Citlaltepetl Refuge House, a renovated mansion in a leafy neighborhood of the world’s second-largest city.

“I feel like I was reborn in that house,” Bajraj said. Now a naturalized Mexican citizen, he lives nearby and teaches poetry at a Mexico City university.

Since opening in 1999, the refuge has housed writers under threat in Myanmar, Egypt, Chad, Algeria and Serbia. The refuge has room for one or two families at a time and is now in talks to host a writer from Iraq, director Philippe Olle-Laprune said.

They’re part of a long tradition of writers who have found refuge in Mexico City, from Colombian Nobel Prize winner Gabriel Garcia Marquez to American Beat writer William S. Burroughs, a fugitive from U.S. drug charges.

“We have a history of taking in these kinds of people, and they have enriched us as a city,” said Isabel Molina, director of cultural relations for Mayor Marcelo Ebrard.
» Read the Complete Story from the Arizona Republic

MORE INFORMATION:

EXPRESSION FROM PRISON

“EXPRESSION FROM PRISON”

Puerto Vallarta Jail Artists

From February 27 to March 6, 2008, in the main courtyard of the Presidencia, a group of prisoners from the CEINJURE North Coast prison will exhibit a wide variety of crafts, poetry, paintings and writing that range “from magic to the limits of love and madness.” “This is a revolt against the greyness of their existence” by a large variety of men detained for a wide range of reasons.

This is not a normal art exhibit.

[Read more…]

The Kinsey Sicks » Club Manana » February & March, 2008

The Kinsey Sicks return to Club Mañana for only three weeks this season.

Kinsey Sicks

The lovely and entertaining Kinsey Sicks return to Club Mañana and Puerto Vallarta:

Condoleezzapalooza » February 25, 27, 29, March 2
Wake the Fuck Up America! » March 3, 5, 7, 9, 10, 12, 14 y 16

WORLD PREMIERE in PUERTO VALLARTA:

THE KINSEY SICKS IN “WAKE THE FUCK UP AMERICA!” The Kinseys gals are now morning news show anchorwomen and you’re invited to be part of their studio audience.

All shows are at 9 pm and are “sure to offend.”

[Read more…]