See Hear Do: Perspective Shift

"Love alone can make a human abandon his heart and home," writes Moniro Ravanipour — an author with some experience of having to leave home for love. Love of prose, specifically, as Ravanipour was forced to leave her home country of Iran 19 years ago to escape persecution for her writing.

But her story doesn't end there. On January 8, 2020, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps shot down a flight en route from Tehran to Kyiv. There were no survivors. Family members of those lost in the tragedy turned to Ravanipour for help, hoping she could teach them to write memoirs of their loved ones. The result was the book I Will Call You Once I Arrive in Kyiv.

This is a conversation with Ravanipour about said book, with fellow Iranian and current Black Mountain Institute City of Asylum Fellow Maryam Ala Amjadi. Learn how it was created and what that process meant for Ravanipour, both as a prolific writer and as a teacher.

Hidalgo, a local abstract artist and recent UNLV MFA graduate, is also the co-owner of Available Space Art Projects gallery. If his name sounds familiar, your intuition might be right: his public art has popped up around town.

For this exhibit, he merges digital photography and traditional painting, so it includes both photographs and paintings. All of which focus on a variety of themes: vision in the digital age, reality, personality, and the poetics of the mundane.

And the title? Hidalgo says his “lifelong project is to always be ‘goldmining’ the visual field for moments of unexpected visual poetry, to then enhance and distill these passages in intimately painted works.”

Las Vegas Sinfonietta is often the best of both worlds: showcasing talented musicians from Southern Nevada and around the world, featuring classical chestnuts and forward-thinking chamber music (with the occasional opera collab thrown in for good measure). For this January concert, LVS artistic director Taras Krysa and ensemble stick to the hits: The program highlights some assorted favorites, but — per the show’s name — mostly Mozart.

I’m not one for floating hotels, but the Sassy Seniors Cruise sounds too good to pass up. Some of the residents from the Magnolia Place Assisted Living agree — they spent all of 2017’s Four Old Broads (by Leslie Kimbell) trying to lock in a vacation. The 2019 sequel finally sees those lucky ladies setting sail for the Bahamas. And what might they encounter once aboard? Murder, topless bathing, and a drag queen sassier than any of them. Audiences get to enjoy it all … from the mainland.

I know what you’re thinking: Oh geez, another sin-themed diversion in Sin City, which is a total misnomer in this Corporate Vegas era, no thanks to the Nevada Gaming Control Board that … Okay, maybe it’s what I’m thinking. To be fair, Vegas City Opera likely won’t be taking the usual hackneyed approach to sin, excess, etc., during this 90-minute multidisciplinary program that will likely expand how one experiences opera. Among the highlights: the stage debut of composer David Del Tredici’s Dracula in total, starring soprano and VCO founder and executive director Ginger Land-van Buuren. 

Shows on Jan. 31 and Feb. 1.