Weekend Event Planner

These are the 13 best things to do in Dallas this weekend

The events around Dallas this weekend will be literally and metaphorically all over the map. While most of them will be in Dallas proper, worthwhile happenings will also take place in Irving, Grand Prairie, Addison, and Arlington. Topics run the gamut from fashion to music to theater to art to comedy, with a little celebrity tennis thrown in to top things off.

Below are the best ways to spend your free time this weekend. Want more options? Lucky for you, we have a much longer list of the city's best events.

Thursday, September 12

Fashion Industry Gallery presents F.I.G Finale
To celebrate Fashion Industry Gallery’s 15th anniversary, this year’s FIG Finale will be a three-day event. Patrons will be able to experience fresh elements and shop from new vendors, including fashion, accessories, beauty, wellness, and decór. FIG Finale has partnered with Jackson, The Brand, and the American Heart Association, with $1 from the sale of each VIP ticket being donated.

Dallas Symphony Orchestra presents Beethoven Emperor Concerto
The season opener of the Dallas Symphony Orchestra's Classical Series will be Beethoven Emperor Concerto, conducted by Fabio Luisi and featuring Cliburn medalist Beatrice Rana. Selections for the concert, running through Sunday at Meyerson Symphony Center, include Strauss’ Alpine Symphony — featuring more than 100 musicians and meteorological sound effects — the Dallas premiere of Augusta Read Thomas’ Aureole, and Beethoven's Piano Concerto No. 5, "Emperor."

Dark Circles Contemporary Dance presents Pete: A New Dance Musical
Dark Circles Contemporary Dance will celebrate the opening of its 2019-20 season with its most ambitious work to date: Pete: A New Dance Musical. The original 90-minute production is inspired by J. M. Barrie’s iconic novel, Peter Pan, taking an adventurous, playful, and creative approach to not only explore the intersecting themes of childhood, freedom, and mortality, but to reflect on issues of race, gender, sexuality, and privilege. It will run at the Winspear Opera House through Sunday.

Deadmau5 in concert
Electronic music DJs are all the rage these days, but Deadmau5 was one of the earliest producers on the scene, releasing his first official album in 2005. He's gone on to dominate both the charts, with two albums reaching the top 10 on the Billboard 200, and music festivals around the world. This will be a relatively intimate visit, as he'll play two concerts — one Thursday and one Friday — at South Side Ballroom.

Improv Addison presents Nicole Byer
Anyone who's watched an episode of the baking show Nailed It! on Netflix is already familiar with the comic stylings of Nicole Byer, who hosts the show. The actress, comedian, and writer also has a sitcom loosely based on her life streaming on Facebook Watch called Loosely Exactly Nicole, and hosts a podcast called Why Won't You Date Me. She'll perform stand-up at Improv Addison through Saturday.

Friday, September 13

Mainstage Irving-Las Colinas presents The Royal Dilemma
The Royal Dilemma is a musical for the imagination to take flight. Travel to distant lands and bygone times, on a detective mission rubbing shoulders with kings and princes … and the magnifying glass is the powerful art of storytelling. Delve into the minds of the colorful characters, from the pauper to the king, from the priest to the thief — and hear the melody of human nature echoing across their stories. The production will run at Irving Arts Center through September 28.

Imprint Theatreworks presents First Impressions Mainstage Showcase
In the First Impressions Mainstage Showcase, Imprint Theatreworks aims to showcase local playwrights with three fully produced world premieres by local playwrights. The showcase, which will run over the next three weekends at Arts Mission Oak Cliff, starts off September 13-15 with PERAMBULATORY: preambleastory by Haley Nelson. It will be followed by The Rehearsal by Steven Young, running September 20-22, and The Best Woman by Shane Strawbridge, running September 27-29.

Saturday, September 14

Nasher Sculpture Center presents "Elmgreen & Dragset: Sculptures" opening day
"Elmgreen & Dragset: Sculptures" is an exhibition that will mark the first major museum presentation in the U.S. for the Scandinavian duo of Michael Elmgreen and Ingar Dragset, providing a long overdue look at the work of two of contemporary art’s most dynamic and multifaceted artists. They reinterpret familiar designs and spatial structures that surround us in our everyday lives with criticality and subversive wit. The exhibition will be on display through January 5, 2020.

Meyerson Symphony Center 30th Anniversary Open House
To celebrate the 30th anniversary of Meyerson Symphony Center, resident ensembles, small ensembles of Dallas Symphony musicians, and other organizations from the Dallas Arts District will perform short concerts throughout the day. The lobby of the hall will be filled with an instrument petting zoo, craft activities, organizational information, and fun for the whole family.

Lenny Kravitz in concert
Rocker Lenny Kravitz has always been unique, from his personal style to his brand of music that yielded a string of hits in the 1990s, including "It Ain't Over 'til It's Over," "Are You Gonna Go My Way," "Fly Away," and "American Woman." Now 55, he hasn't let age slow him down, continuing to release new music every few years, including 2018's Raise Vibration. He'll play at The Theatre at Grand Prairie.

Glen Hansard in concert with OHMME
Singer Glen Hansard was the unwitting start of a musical phenomenon when he, along with Markéta Irglová, starred in the 2007 film Once. The music the duo created was the basis for the Tony Award-winning 2012 musical Once, which is now on its third North American tour and has had productions around the world. Hansard will play at Granada Theater in support of his new album, This Wild Willing.

Sunday, September 15

Dirk Nowitzki Pro Celebrity Tennis Classic
Dirk Nowitzki is now retired from the Dallas Mavericks, but he will continue to be a big presence in Dallas. He'll pay homage to his first love, tennis, as he hosts the fourth annual Dirk Nowitzki Pro Celebrity Tennis Classic at SMU Tennis Center. Among the players joining Dirk will be Luka Dončić, Steve Nash, Devin Harris, J. J. Barea, Mark Knowles, Tommy Haas, John Isner, and Boris Kodjoe.

Arlington Museum of Art presents Keith Haring: "Against All Odds" closing day
Sunday is the final day to see Keith Haring: "Against All Odds” at the Arlington Museum of Art. The exhibition features more than 50 original works that serve to deconstruct the traditional view of Haring as an artist. Beyond his well-known graphic iconography, the exhibition also explores his use of mark-making as a metaphor and his desire to address weighty subjects such as consumerism, poverty, religious dogma, violence, racism, and AIDS.

The 4th Annual Dirk Nowitzki Pro Celebrity Tennis Classic will take place at SMU Tennis Center on September 15.

Photo by Danny Bollinger

The 4th Annual Dirk Nowitzki Pro Celebrity Tennis Classic will take place at SMU Tennis Center on September 15.

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Movie Review

Rose Byrne plays one stressed-out mom in If I Had Legs I'd Kick You

Photo courtesy of A24

Conan O'Brien and Rose Byrne in If I Had Legs I'd Kick You

Movie history is littered with depictions of stressed-out mothers who have breakdowns due to the pressure put on them by their children, spouses, or society in general. Recent examples include Hereditary, Tully, and Nightbitch, with each of them finding different ways to depict their main character’s struggles. Yet another put-upon mother goes through the wringer in the oddly-named If I Had Legs I’d Kick You.

When we meet Linda (Rose Byrne), she’s already in the middle of a huge ball of stress. Her daughter (Delaney Quinn) suffers from an unnamed illness that requires around-the-clock care and frequent doctor visitors. Her husband, Charles (Christian Slater), is a boat captain whose job keeps him away from home for long periods of time. And her job as a therapist requires her to hear other people’s problems, necessitating her seeing a fellow therapist (Conan O’Brien) on a daily basis.

Nearly everyone else she encounters in the movie adds to her anxiety, including Caroline (Danielle Macdonald), a new mother who’s constantly worried about her baby; Dr. Spring (Mary Bronstein), who constantly harps on Linda to get her daughter to eat; an officious parking attendant at the hospital; and a sneering desk clerk at the motel she and her daughter are forced to stay at after a plumbing disaster at home. Consequently, she dismisses James (A$AP Rocky), another motel worker, the one person who treats her with a modicum of kindness.

Written and directed by Bronstein, the film is a harrowing experience that somehow also manages to be darkly funny at times. Linda is dealing with way too much for one person to adequately handle, something that is compounded by the fact that nobody really listens to her, not even the therapist she’s paying to do so. Scenes bounce back and forth between Linda demonstrating righteous anger at what the world is throwing at her and crushing guilt over supposedly not doing enough for her child.

Bronstein depicts Linda’s journey in a number of interesting ways, some straightforward and others not so much. Bronstein makes liberal use of close-ups on Linda’s face, heightening the feeling that the world is closing in on her. The plumbing problem at her home results in a huge hole in the ceiling, which becomes the source of some unexplained phenomena, a choice that might have been unnecessary.

What’s most striking about the film is how hardly anyone is on Linda’s side. Since the film joins the story as it’s already in progress, the audience is left to guess as to how Linda has behaved in the past to garner such negative interactions from people who should be helping her. While she’s not a perfect person, she also doesn’t appear to be such a jerk that she should be treated with disdain everywhere she goes.

Byrne, who’s gravitated toward lighter roles in recent years, is an absolute marvel in this part. The more stress Linda feels, the more she becomes disheveled, and Byrne makes you feel every ounce of the character’s pain. O’Brien, who’s rarely had to play anyone but “Conan O’Brien” before, is surprisingly good, tamping down his comic sensibility to complement Byrne well. A$AP Rocky also makes a nice impression, elevating a character that’s a little underwritten.

The role of a mom is never an easy one, and that’s in the best of circumstances. If I Had Legs I’d Kick You - a title that is never explained yet still somehow fits - earns its stripes by demonstrating how the often thankless job of motherhood can become even more distressing when the mom in question is given little to no support.

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If I Had Legs I'd Kick You is now playing in select theaters.

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