Chamecki/Lerner, Flying Lesson.

Been naughty lately? Haven’t had the opportunity to get your dose of creative energy? Well, we have the solution you need! TRACE Magazine, GANG UP! and Monkeytown present an evening of short films, videos, performances, and music to benefit top-notch NYC choreographers — Will Rawls, Milka Djordevich, and Nohemi Contreras — who have received a scholarship by DanceWEB Europe to participate in this summer’s ImPulsTanz festival in Vienna. The three get a 2/3 scholarship to cover tuition for dance workshops, tutorials and housing for the five-week festival but lack the funds for such things as, say, a plane ticket over there. (Money for food would also be nice.) So, simple as that: Help some of the best dancers in NYC get their wings and snag a free ticket to heaven (or a Get Out of Jail Free card, your call).

The event will take place Tuesday, June 10th at Monkeytown. There are two programs jam-packed with performances and multi-media presentations, all donated by the generosity of the NYC artistic community.

The first program, GANG UP: A Creative Congress, features short films and videos from Chamecki/Lerner, Rachel Johnson, Jeff Larson, Dance Gang. Choreographers Andrea Lerner and Rosane Chamecki present their first foray into film, “Flying Lesson,” which won the 2008 Jury Award at Lincoln Center’s Dance on Camera festival in January. Rachel Johnson, an award-winning animator, will show her Oscar-nominated short film “The Toll Collector.” Also appearing, “A Store of Sucking Stones,” the Beckett-based video farce, starring film and stage designer, Jeff Larson. Guerilla public performance company, Dance Gang, will also screen its video, “Shadow Dance.”

The first program also includes live performances by pop-obsessed Neal Medlyn, composer Karinne Keithley, experimental musician Jon Monlaci, dancer/choreographer Felicia Ballos, and the all-woman artband, JERK.

The second program of the evening, The Green Beat Box, will feature live sets from beatbox extraordinaire Adam Matta and avant-garde guitarist Eyal Moaz, as well as director of New Amsterdam Records, composer of critically acclaimed Now Ensemble and DJ, Judd Greenstein. Accompanying visuals will be from Dance Gang’s public video project, “Last in a Series,” a kinetic portrait of New York City.

Will Rawls is a site-specific performer, curator and installation artist who toured and performed nationally and internationally with Shen Wei Dance Arts in Venice, Israel and New York. He has also appeared with Tiffany Mills Company, with collaborator Katie Workum/Workum Dance League. Milka Djordevich is a performer/choreographer/co-curator of Movement Research Festival 2008 who studied at UCLA and at PARTS in Brussels. Nohemi Contreras is a performer/choreographer/curator who obtained a Masters from Tisch in Performance Studies.

First program begins at 7:30; the second at 10. Entrance fee for the first program is $40 or $60 with three-course dinner. Second program is $15, with a $10 minimum. All proceeds from the door will go to the three artists’ tuition.

Dearly Beloved,

We are gathering tonight and tomorrow night to get through this show called Shockadelica: Celebrating 50 years of his Royal Badness. The sirens from Brown Girls Burlesque are at it again bringing power to the purple people and that indescribable feminine mystique that could make Prince, himself, blush.

If you live in Erotic City, ever made a plea about how things would be if you were his Girlfriend, sang the Ballad of Dorothy Parker, or been concerned by the Sign O the Times, there is no other place you need to be tonight and tomorrow night.

Audience come quick! Audience come in a hurry. Tickets will sell out. $25 for general admission. $40 for the Royal Court.

The show starts at 11pm at the Zipper Factory, 336 west 37th street (in between 8th and 9th avenues).

And while you wait to cleanse yourself in the waters of the Brown Girls Burlesque, czech out our TRACE Insider video of BGB in action at their last nyc performance “Itches Brew…Sheroes Unleashed.”

Something has the canucks excited. Across the blogosphere they are getting hot and bothered and they want more of this all-natural brew of sundry flavor. That brew is Zaki Ibrahim.

Born in Vancouver to a South African father and a Scottish/English mother, Ibrahim lived alternately in Vancouver and Cape Town before landing in Toronto in 2001. Since then the transnational songstress has developed a sound that melds the bits and pieces that make up her life into the smooth composite for her current EP, Eclectica (Episodes in Purple).

Ibrahim’s vocals can be lush and Sade-esque, light and smooth like Ladysmith Black Mambazo or float over electronic arias like Beth Gibbons. Although she stays far from the internet, Canadian press and bloggers have been showing much love for her music which is steeped just right in eclectic creativity.

Currently promoting the Eclectica EP and preparing for a set of UK tour dates, Ibrahim chat briefly with me about the album, her influences and the frustrations she has with technology.

For more info on Zaki Ibrahim and two free downloads off Eclectica, click here and stay tuned for her full-length album debut later this year.

Trace: You have a wide range of musical styles on Eclectica — what influenced you to go in the directions that you did?
Zaki Ibrahim: There isn’t one specific influence — I definitely just try to keep it open. I don’t like to think too hard about it. I started off thinking how am I going to bring it all together and how to fit one song with the next or the next. Then I just said forget it.

I got a lot of questions like “what is this?” and “where are you going?” It’s just everything though, old soul, R&B, folk and influences like Edith Piaf, Roberta Flack, Fela Kuti…I just went digging.

T: Your music defies labels, how do you feel then about being called a neo-soul star?
ZI: Neo-Soul is a fairly new title, created out of not being able to describe what that music is. My album is somewhere between urban, folk, something eclectic. You could call it whatever if it fits I suppose. If it fits there, it fits there.

T: You’ve lived in Cape Town, Vancouver and Toronto. I read that you consider all of these places home. Could you have made this album anywhere?
ZI: Yes and Yes, except for Cape Town. In Cape Town I am surrounded by family and I am dedicated to them when I am there. Toronto now is the best place though — it is where I’ve been able to do my music. I’m looking to spend more time in New York and on the West Coast [of Canada] and London. I have a lot of old friends, like, from teenagerdom in New York now saying come down, Brooklyn is where it’s at so, who knows?

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Known for their work with Public Enemy, Run-DMC, Ice Cube, Slick Rick and many others, the influential production team known as The Bomb Squad will be doing a special performance this Saturday at Low End Theory NYC. The Bomb Squad is known for their distinct production style, use of multiple samples on a single track, and incorporation of harsh un-melodic sounds on songs.

The event goes down this Saturday June 7th with opening sets by L.A. native Nosaj Thing and the newest super duo What’s the Science? There will also be performances by Gaslamp Killer, Nocando, and Eliot Lip. The Bomb Squad has just wrapped up the First Look tour with Public Enemy, and this event looks promising.

For more information on the events location and ticket sales click here. For more information on The Bomb Squad itself, click here.