ARTS RADAR: Seeking Cerebral Artistic Life Beyond Comic-Con

Costumes are not required, but Spock logic suggests Vulcan ears pointing to the Embarcadero as the San Diego Symphony complements Comic-Con International. The tribute starts with Pokémon: Symphonic Evolution, and ends with the score to “Star Trek: Into Darkness,” Saturday, July 11, at Embarcadero Marina Park South.  (sandiegostory.com)

You have a life. You chose not to sleep outside the Spreckels Theatre for the chance of getting a ticket to one of Conan O’Brian’s four live shows taped for broadcast as part of Comic-Con. Captain, a wise alternative is to DVR the show, a remarkable invention, and rent a kayak or swim over to the Embarcadero to get some exercise and hear the Star Trek score.

Scratch that. Liberty Station is a short drive from downtown and a world away.

Rising star performer and dance maker Jaime Nixon presents Things I forgot @ Birth, a dance premiere at the White Box, July 11. NTC at Liberty Station. Adjacent to Dance Place. One night. Two shows: 4 pm and 8 pm.  Nixon won the Best Ensemble Performance Award at the 5^th annual San Diego Young Choreographers Showcase & Prize in Feb. He surrounds himself with some of San Diego’s best dancers. Check out his promo video to get a taste of his Saturday show. Mmm sunflowers.

“Hours can be centuries,” said alien Vanna to Capt. James T. Kirk in “Star Trek: The Cloud Miners,” (1969). So days can be a lot, right? No. Auditions for the Trolley Dances are fast approaching, July 19. Choreographers are looking for dancers who want to get wet and dance all day for two weekends in a row. You’ll get more insight from my interview with choreographer Stephan Koplowitz in the Sept. issue of Dance Teacher Magazine.

The Spreckels stage crew will work overtime to clean out Conan’s massive set up to make room for a divergent shaking of the rafters – SACRA-PROFANA, San Diego’s favorite professional choir, along with 100 talented high school vocalists. July 19.

If Comic-Con ain’t your cup-o-tea this week, there’s always a beer fest or surf contest. Some may prefer true athletics like Over the Line. No? The Music Man opens at Moonlight Amphitheater July 15. Twelfth Night runs to July 26 at the Lowell Davies Festival Theatre. Kiss Me, Kate is extended to Aug. 9 at The Old Globe Theatre’s Prebys Center. (Welton Jones of sandiegostory.com gives it a positive review).

Those still aching for some teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles can swing back to NTC. Cartoonist Kevin Eastman‘s drawings are on exhibit at the San Diego Comic Art Gallery. Admission Free.

Or head east. Eternally Bad opens at Moxie Theatre on El Cajon Blvd. Based on the irreverent book by Trina Robbins, a comics artist and writer, the gritty show celebrates mythical women. Blues phenom Candye Kane wrote the score. Javier Velasco is director-writer.  He’s also artistic director for San Diego Ballet and made a ballet based on the book before this stage work. He and friend Steve Gunderson just finished their show about singer-songwriter Harry Nilsson at the San Diego Rep and are back for this run through Aug. 2.

“Live long and prosper,” Spock said in season 2, episode 1, 1968, and rest up for the International Fringe Festival that runs July 23 through Aug. 2. Avant-garde theater, dance, music, buskers, and people watching- get busy planning your schedule. Participants are not reviewed, juried, or censored. Of the accepted artists, 50 percent are local. Artists get 100 percent of ticket sales.

On my Fringe radar so far: Blurred, Ruffled, Unglued, with City College Collective. 120 Years: Betzi Roe & Manuel Alcántara (in San Diego and Tijuana). Hip Hop cabHooray, by Melissa Adao. Tears of the Knife, Bodhi Tree Concerts. Illegible, bk SOUL/Collective Purpose. Reverberate, Blythe Barton Dance. Whispering Directions, somebodies dance theater, with Gina Bolles Sorensen & Kyle Sorensen.

“We took ‘Eyes East’ – recently at Bread & Salt with The PGK Project – and expanded it into a full-length work. It’s our way of processing what we witnessed, lived, and danced in Israel last year. It’s one big dance with ten powerful dancers and two thousand toy soldiers” says Ms. Bolles Sorensen. Here’s a teaser video. Start scrolling through the list of entries now.

If you must blast out of town, consider nci, national choreographers initiative. Molly Lynch, artistic director. Irvine Barclay Theatre.

Leaping light years ahead: The PGK Dance Project brings For the First Time to the Lyceum Theater main stage Sept. 18 & 19. The concert of 10 dance works by PGK director Peter Kalivas, Kevin Jenkins, and Blythe Barton Dance, as well as “Beginning to End,” a work commissioned for Diversionary’s Dance/Theatre, inspired by the scene from the operetta “Sextet.” Closing the show is Sean Curran’s 18-minute “Folk Dance for the Future,” a collision of Irish Folk, modern dance, gay, ethnically mixed, and straight couples leaping in Scottish kilts.