Weekend Event Planner

Festivals top the 15 best things to do in Dallas this weekend

Mid-May is prime festival season in and around Dallas, and three more will be held this weekend, if you can stand the heat. Other choices include three local theater productions, two symphony concerts, two rodeo events, two dance productions, the start of an art exhibition, a well-known comedian, and a concert by a big pop star.

Below are the best ways to spend your free time this weekend. If you want more options, check out the calendar for an even longer list of the city's best events.

Thursday, May 15

The Firehouse Theatre presents The Wedding Singer
The Wedding Singer takes viewers back to a time when hair was big, greed was good, collars were up, and a wedding singer might just be the coolest guy in the room. Based on the hit Adam Sandler movie, The Wedding Singer's score does for the '80s what Hairspray did for the '60s. The production runs through June 1 at The Firehouse Theatre in Farmers Branch.

Dallas Symphony Orchestra presents "Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 5"
The first of two Beethoven-themed concerts by the Dallas Symphony Orchestra this week features conductor Jonathan Heyward and pianist Benjamin Grosvenor, who will be the soloist for Beethoven’s final piano concerto, “Emperor.” The evening concludes with Shostakovich’s Ninth Symphony. There will be three performances through Sunday at Meyerson Symphony Center.

Friday, May 16

City of Grapevine presents 41st Annual Main Street Fest
The 41st Annual Main Street Fest is a family-friendly event featuring live music, craft brew and wine experiences, food and unique shopping. Visitors can enjoy the Carnival and Midway, explore the KidZone and experience Texan-sized fun all weekend long. Country star Neal McCoy will be the headlining performer for the festival, which takes place through Sunday in Historic Downtown Grapevine.

Wildflower! Arts and Music Festival
The annual Wildflower! Arts and Music Festival features live performances by national, regional, and local bands. Headlining bands will include The Revivalists, Cold War Kids, Young the Giant, NEEDTOBREATHE, and Black Joe Lewis & The Honeybears. Over the course of the festival, nearly 50 bands will perform on various stages. The event also includes kids activities, roaming performers, food, and more. The event takes place in Galatyn Park Urban Center outside of Eisemann Center for Performing Arts in Richardson through Sunday.

Professional Bull Riders presents Kid Rock's Rock N Rodeo
The big PBR weekend in Arlington kicks off with Kid Rock's Rock N Rodeo, a music-infused event that features Kid Rock live in concert. Six teams, each led by a legendary rodeo head coach, will compete head-to-head in bracket-style competition across barrel racing, bareback riding, saddle bronc riding, tie-down roping, team roping, steer wrestling, and breakaway roping. The event takes place AT&T Stadium.

Art Centre Theatre presents Southern Fried Nuptials
Harlene Frye is going to marry her childhood sweetheart this weekend ... assuming the typical Frye family hijinks don’t derail the wedding. Harlene and Attie’s future together is threatened when the bride-to-be’s awful ex-flame shows up with information she doesn’t want her fiancé to find out. The production runs through June 1 at Art Centre Theatre in Plano.

Dallas Black Dance Theatre presents Spring Celebration
Dallas Black Dance Theatre's annual Spring Celebration will feature the world premiere of Kareem B. Goodwin’s Building the Beat, along with two audience favorites: Allyne D. Gartrell’s My Inspiration and Christopher L. Huggins’ Night Run. There will be performances on Friday and Saturday at Wyly Theatre.

Teatro Dallas presents El Otro
A simple ride to retrieve a birthday gift sends a young teenage girl named Romy and her two fathers on a phantasmagoric ride through a harrowing night. Lupe, her birth father, forces her to choose between him and Ben, the fresh-faced Fort Bliss soldier who recently married her mother. The winner gets to live. The production runs through May 31 at Latino Cultural Center.

Texas Ballet Theater presents Giselle
Closing Texas Ballet Theater's season is the world premiere of Giselle, where Artistic Director Tim O’Keefe intricately builds upon the foundational choreography of Jean Coralli, Jules Perrot, and Marius Petipa to present his own interpretation of the iconic masterpiece. Set to the hauntingly beautiful composition of Adolphe Adam, the production tells the tragic tale of love, betrayal, and redemption. There will be four performances through Sunday at Winspear Opera House.

Saturday, May 17

Art & Soul of Kaleidoscope Park
Kaleidoscope Park in Frisco will present the inaugural Art & Soul of Kaleidoscope Park, a two-day celebration of creativity and community that will showcase 30 artists from North Texas and beyond. The featured artists, selected by a jury of Frisco arts advocates, include Suzy Jones, Jennifer Luney, Donna Schmittler, and Rick Chambers, representing a diverse mix of mediums, from ceramics and glass to digital art, drawing, mixed media, and more. The event takes place on Saturday and Sunday.

Nasher Sculpture Center presents "Generations: 150 Years of Sculpture" opening day
Nasher Sculpture Center will present its 2025 summer show, "Generations: 150 Years of Sculpture." Drawn from the Nasher’s permanent collection, the new selection of works features numerous recent acquisitions and offers conversations about the possibilities for sculpture, both past and present. The exhibition features over 50 works of art by 24 artists, with sculptures by Nairy Baghramian, Kevin Beasley, Huma Bhabha, Anthony Caro, Jaume Plensa, Jean Tinguely, and others. The exhibition will remain on display through August 24.

Texas Theatre presents Ramy Youssef
Comedian Ramy Youssef comes to Dallas as part as of his love beam 7000 tour. Youssef created, produces, directs, and stars in the Hulu show Ramy, inspired by his own experiences centering around a first-generation Egyptian-American Muslim on a spiritual journey in his politically divided New Jersey neighborhood. He'll perform at Texas Theatre.

Halsey in concert
Pop/R&B singer Halsey is 10 years into her career, one that has been a success since the beginning. All five of her albums finished either No. 1 or No. 2 on the Billboard 200, including her latest, 2024's The Great Impersonator. Along the way, she's collaborated with other notable artists across multiple genres, including G-Eazy, Benny Blanco, Yungblud, Kelsea Ballerini, Marshmello, and Justin Timberlake. She'll perform at Dos Equis Pavilion.

Dallas Symphony Orchestra presents "Beethoven X Beyoncé"
Composer/conductor Steve Hackman will present a new blend of pop/R&B’s queen and classical music’s king as Beyoncé’s iconic repertoire is interwoven with Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony. The symphonic world’s most joyful celebration of dance becomes the backdrop to 15 of Beyoncé’s chart-topping hits, including “Girls,” “Crazy in Love,” “Single Ladies,” “Sorry,” “Halo,” “Cuff It,” and “Texas Hold ‘Em” in the innovative new musical fusion. The concert takes place at Meyerson Symphony Center.

Professional Bull Riders World Finals: Championship
Professional Bull Riders will present the climatic end of the battle for the 2025 PBR World Championship. Following four rounds of competition, the bull rider with the most world points will be crowned the World Champion, earning the $1 million bonus, and coveted gold buckle. The competition takes place on Saturday and Sunday at AT&T Stadium.

Wildflower Arts and Music Festival in Richardson

Photo by David Downs

The Wildflower! Arts and Music Festival takes place at Galatyn Park Urban Center in Richardson, May 16-18.

comedy concerts dance event-planner families festivals galleries kids main street fest music rodeo symphony theater

Movie Review

Animated Disney film Elio is fun but falls short of Pixar top tier

Photo courtesy of Pixar

Elio (Yonas Kibreab) and Glordon (Remy Edgerly) in Elio.

Pixar has done a ton of different things in the 28 feature films they’ve released over the past 30 years, but the one they’d never done is deal with aliens (and, no, the alien toys in Toy Story don’t count). Now they’re going where many storytellers have gone before, but in their own unique way, in the new film Elio.

Elio (voiced by Yonas Kibreab) is a space fanatic who has recently lost both of his parents in an unnamed event. His Aunt Olga (Zoe Saldaña) is now his guardian, and because she happens to be a member of the U.S. Space Force, Elio finds himself tantalizingly close to communications from space. With a desire to be abducted by aliens for both curiosity and sentimental reasons, Elio sends a message into space, hoping for some kind of response.

He gets that and more when a ship full of multiple types of beings takes him into space, believing him to be a leader instead of a child. An encounter with a hostile force led by Lord Grigon (Brad Garrett) gives Elio both a new friend, Grigon’s son Glordon (Remy Edgerly), and responsibility for maintaining peace during an unexpected galactic crisis.

Pixar has not typically followed the route of many Disney movies of giving their child protagonist the trauma of dead parents, and doing so here is the first of a few minor missteps. Having Olga be his mom instead of his aunt would have altered their dynamic, but only slightly. While Elio is shown to miss his parents, his major focus is on making contact with aliens. Since the film only briefly deals with his grief, it would have been better served by excising it altogether.

For the most part, the film is goofy, with Elio’s enthusiasm for aliens matched by the oddness of the creatures he meets in space. The filmmakers - there are three credited directors and three credited writers - seem to have taken inspiration from sea creatures and Pixar’s own history, as the main bad guy emulates Mike and Sully’s boss from Monsters, Inc. Almost every character in the film is heightened to a degree that makes for funny situations, but not as much sentimentality as other Pixar offerings.

Surprisingly, especially since the film ends with a voiceover from notable astronomer Carl Sagan, the filmmakers play fast and loose with real-life science. Elio’s journeys to and from the alien spaceship are treated as close-to-instantaneous trips, even involving portals directly to Earth. The idea of the story doesn’t allow them to delve into things like relativistic time dilation, but there still could have been other scientific references to keep the story aboveboard.

There are very few stars to be found among the film’s voice cast other than Saldaña and Garrett, who are each fine if unmemorable. Kibreab and Edgerly are given many more scenes than anyone else, and they each do a great job of bringing out both the joy and naivete of their characters. Some lesser-known actors like Jameela Jamil, Atsuko Okatsuka, and Brendan Hunt show up in minor roles, but they don’t stand out in any way.

The story and characters in Elio are sweet and fun, but the film as a whole falls well short of the top tier Pixar movies. The filmmakers could have gone many different directions with a story about a boy who wants to be abducted by aliens, and the way they chose ended up being innocuous and less than compelling.

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Elio opens in theaters on June 20.

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