Weekend Event Planner

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

Two of Dallas' most well-known venues will be in heavy use this weekend, with American Airlines Center hosting three straight nights of big-name concerts and Winspear Opera House somehow cramming five events into four days. There will also be a film festival, classical music, unique ballet, a dance festival, a harbinger of spring, a famous comedian, and more.

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, February 27

Best of Fests Film Festival
Film festivals based in Dallas, Fort Worth, and surrounding areas have joined forces to present the second edition of the Best of Fests. The one-of-a-kind event will include 11 feature films and 25 short films that either were popular with their audiences or represent their programming aesthetics. The festival will run through Sunday at Texas Theatre and Alamo Drafthouse Cedars.

Dallas Symphony Orchestra presents Music of Tchaikovsky & Jongen
Inspired by Lord Byron’s “dramatic poem,” Tchaikovsky’s brooding Manfred Symphony portrays the solitary hero searching for peace and redemption. Organ phenom Cameron Carpenter shows off the Lay Family Concert Organ with Jongen’s tour de force Symphonie concertante. The concert, which will be conducted by Kirill Karabits, will be performed three times through Sunday at Meyerson Symphony Center.

Verdigris Ensemble presents Dust Bowl
As part of AT&T Performing Arts Center's Elevator Project, Verdigris Ensemble will present Dust Bowl. Setting texts exclusively from newspaper articles, diaries, and first-hand oral accounts of survivors, Dust Bowl pieces together nearly a decade of human struggle, hopefulness, and perseverance in the face of constant catastrophe. The event will take place three times through Saturday at Hamon Hall inside Winspear Opera House.

Il Volo in concert
Italian operatic pop trio Il Volo, who call their style "popera," have won fans all over the world thanks to their unique style. Their versions of "O Sole Mio" and "Grande amore" reached the top of the classical charts in the United States, and four of their albums have reached the top 10 on the Billboard Classical charts. They'll perform at Winspear Opera House.

Friday, February 28

AT&T Performing Arts Center presents Jeanne Robertson
At 76 years young, Jeanne Robertson continues to charm audiences with her humorous observations about life around her. This former Miss North Carolina, standing tall at six-foot-two, has a vivacious personality, heart and sense of humor. Robertson, who tours nationally and appears regularly on the Grand Ole Opry, will perform at Winspear Opera House.

Ballets With a Twist presents Cocktail Hour: The Show
Drama, mystery, humor, romance — Cocktail Hour: The Show by Ballets With A Twist has it all. This acclaimed floorshow-to-stage experience reinvents the glamour and excitement of classic entertainment with an original mix of charismatic choreography, intoxicating music, and exquisite costume design. The performance will be at Eisemann Center for the Performing Arts in Richardson.

TITAS/Dance Unbound Festival
TITAS/Dance Unbound is starting a new tradition, a Festival of Dance celebrating the dancemakers living and working in North Texas. This “preview” is a prelude to a larger festival TITAS will be producing later this year. The event, taking place at Moody Performance Hall on Friday and Saturday, will feature four local dance companies: Texas Ballet Theater, Dallas Black Dance Theatre, Bruce Wood Dance, and B. Moore Dance.

Marc Anthony in concert
Marc Anthony has been breaking down the barrier between English language and Spanish language music for almost 30 years. He's only had a couple of bona fide hits — 1999's "I Need to Know" and 2000's "You Sang to Me" — and after an extended break from music-making, he's touring in support of his 2019 album, Opus. He'll perform at American Airlines Center.

Saturday, February 29

Dallas Arboretum and Botanical Garden presents Dallas Blooms: The Sounds of Spring
Dallas Blooms is one of the largest floral festivals in the Southwest, with over 100 varieties of spring-blooming bulbs exploding with color and 500,000 tulips, plus hundreds of thousands of other spring flowers. The six-week celebration also features tasting and cooking classes, live music and entertainment, children’s activities, wine and beer pairings, book signings and speakers, Easter events, and more. It will take place through April 12.

AT&T Performing Arts Center presents Paula Poundstone
Paula Poundstone is one of the country’s pre-eminent comedians, known for her smart, observational humor and legendary spontaneous wit. She is a popular panelist on NPR’s No. 1 show, the weekly comedy news quiz, Wait, Wait…Don’t Tell Me! Her weekly podcast for Maximum Fun, Nobody Listens to Paula Poundstone, is a comedy field guide to life. She'll perform at Winspear Opera House.

Chris Tucker in concert
Chris Tucker is an international award-winning actor and comedian best known for playing the role of Detective James Carter in the Rush Hour film series. He became a favorite on Russell Simmons’ HBO Def Comedy Jam in the 1990s and came to prominence in his first starring role, the 1995 film cult classic Friday starring alongside Ice Cube. He'll perform at The Theatre at Grand Prairie.

Eagles in concert
Eagles, with the lineup of Don Henley, Joe Walsh, Timothy B. Schmit, Deacon Frey, and Vince Gill, will come to Dallas as part of their limited Hotel California tour. Each night’s concert will feature them playing their iconic album Hotel California in its entirety, accompanied by an orchestra and choir. After an intermission, they'll return with an entire additional set of the band’s other greatest hits. They'll perform on both Saturday and Sunday at American Airlines Center. If you can't get in to either one of those concerts, they'll return for one more on March 17.

Sunday, March 1

Lightwire Theater presents The Ugly Duckling
Lined with electroluminescent wire, the beloved story of The Ugly Duckling plays out on stage through a cutting-edge blend of puppetry, technology and dance. With dazzling visuals, poignant choreography and the creative use of music ranging from classical to pop, this production brings this story into a new and brilliant light. The production will be at Winspear Opera House.

Eagles will play at American Airlines Center on February 29 and March 1.

Photo by George Holz

Eagles will play at American Airlines Center on February 29 and March 1.

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Movie Review

Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma gives horror a surreal twist

Photo courtesy of MUBI

Hannah Einbinder and Gillian Anderson in Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma.

The horror genre really ramped up in the 1970s and ‘80s, bringing with it a new subgenre - the slasher - that gave audiences new visuals of gore, but also a reliance on sexism and homophobia that would come to define the era. The new film Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma wrestles with that legacy in ways that are funny, thought-provoking, and downright strange.

Kris (Hannah Einbinder) is a queer filmmaker who has been hired to reboot the moldy IP that is the Camp Miasma franchise, one that was fresh in the 1970s but which numerous shlocky sequels have rendered irrelevant. In an attempt to get to know the property better, Kris has scored a meeting with the reclusive Billy (Gillian Anderson), the star of the original film who has shunned the public eye for decades.

Turns out that Billy lives deep in the woods at Camp Rivoli, which served as the location for the first film. As Kris tries to get to know Billy and convince her to be a part of the new film, she starts to fall under Billy’s spell and the lore of the franchise as a whole. That includes believing that the movie’s villain, Little Death - a transgender person who has an air conditioning vent as a head/mask - may not just be a character created for the movies.

Written and directed by Jane Schoenbrun (I Saw the TV Glow), the film at first feels like it’s going to go the straight-up comedy route, with comic explosions of blood, a strange fascination with candy brands, and a production design that does nothing to hide that the two main actors are on a movie set with painted backdrops. This is backed up by Kris’ phone conversations with her girlfriend, Mari (Jasmine Savoy Brown) and her agent (Sarah Sherman), as well as numerous other details.

But the film starts to go down the surreal route the longer Kris stays at the camp with Billy, especially when they sit down to watch the original Camp Miasma. An extended sequence shows a good amount of that film-within-the-film, demonstrating why Kris and Billy have a love/hate relationship with the property. For Kris, though, the lines between the film and the real world start to blur, and Schoenbrun uses a variety of out-there elements to drive the point home.

The final act of the film can barely be described as Kris goes deeper down the rabbit hole, with Schoenbrun using her film to comment on the horror genre as a whole, its treatment of women and LGBT people, the movie industry, and more. All the while the “camp” of Camp Miasma maintains a presence, with candy wrappers showing up everywhere and the tongue-in-cheek references to Little Death (the French term La petite mort, which means “the little death,” is a euphemism for orgasm).

Einbinder, an Emmy winner for Hacks, is the perfect person to inhabit her role. Her established real-life and fictional personas color everything she does in the film, with her enthusiasm and curiosity shining through. Anderson leans heavily into another reference - Norma Desmond from Sunset Boulevard - to create a character that is as mysterious as she is alluring. Supporting actors like Brown, Sherman, Patrick Fischler, Dylan Baker, and Eva Victor keep the movie at the right pitch all the way through.

While other films have made fun of horror movie tropes before, Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma finds a wholly unique way of doing so. It’s a funny and daring trip into the psyches of two women who may be victims of their own obsessions, and of the movies that made them that way.

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Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma is now playing in select theaters

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