Five Arty Things to Do This Weekend: Sept. 22-24

We’re going to narrow the proverbial playing field for you, so it’s not too big – so your agenda of fun won’t stumble like those Longhorns did, amirite? Especially if you’re taking a break after helping our Hurricane Harvey-racked neighbors, you lovely human, here’s an array of sweet diversions for your pleasure:

Bed, Erzsebet Bathori, and Beyond

1) If it bleeds, it leads, they say – and who are we to argue? We’re certainly not Erzsebet Bathori, the 16th century Hungarian countess who murdered hundreds of young women and bathed in their blood in order to sustain her youth and beauty. But Austin’s own Melissa Vogt is that red-handed countess, in this weekend’s return of the glamorous gorefest called Vampyress, newly revived by ethos and the Vortex and presented in a music-driven spectacle of nudity, violence, and a copious amount of wayward hemoglobin.

2) Those daring aerialists of Blue Lapis Light enjoy making gravity their bitch, to work a bit of current parlance, and never more stunningly than in Belonging, their latest height-scaling, light-hailing, flight-nailing extravaganza that’s wreaking kinetic beauty against the verticals of Seaholm Plaza over the next two weekends. Yes, Sally Jacques, your amazing dancers have made the sky worth watching again, no matter what Alex Jones’ mindwrecked acolytes may rant about chem trails and satellite surveillance.

3) No, not Crane Wife, music-lover – that was the album from Colin Meloy and the Decemberists, remember? The song cycle inspired by an old Japanese folktale? Indeed, but what we’re talking about here is a ’Trane wife: Turiya Alice Coltrane, to be precise: the second wife of legendary saxman John Coltrane; the renowned jazz harpist (!), composer, and swamini; the woman whose work is being celebrated with live performances by Gourisankar Karmakar, Indradeep Ghosh, the Andre Hayward Quintet, the St. James Missionary Baptist Church Mass Choir, Tara Bhattacharya Reed, and more – there among the treasures of the Blanton Museum’s current “Epic Tales from Ancient India” exhibition this Sunday.

4) Also on Sunday – but outdoors – and not just “outdoors,” but there on the Zilker Hillside so near Barton Springs Pool – it’s the Theorist Festival, a free multipartite dance and multimedia event from Amy Morrow and company, showcasing an interactive wonderment called “Because I Hate Technology” by global video maestro Jason Akira Somma … before the sun sinks low and the art-besotted public’s invited to slip into a little indulgence of 70-degree-Fahrenheit nightswimming.

5) But, ah, Whole Don just a second here, citizen: Those last two recos are for this Sunday, right? Before getting that far, to start things off on the right page, we reckon you could Friday Night yourself up some bookish joy by checking out a few Naked Girls Reading, as burlesque beauties Electra Mourning, Eve Vocative, Zaftigg von BonBon, and Dorianne Gray get au naturel and regale the gathered crowd with thrilling tales of science fiction at Inner Diva Studios. In five … four … three … two … one …