Your perfect LA weekend: March 7-9

We curate an LA weekend itinerary of the city's best concerts, culture and cuisine, every week, just for you.

By Michael Juliano Thu Mar 6 2014

Friday

You probably think Cirque du Soleil is something to see while stoned in Vegas—and that’s true. But walk into the bigtop by the Santa Monica Pier for a Friday night performance of Totem, and you’ll find yourself intoxicated by the show’s high-flying, tightly choreographed feats. Don’t dissect its reptile-meets-primate evolution storyline, instead simply sit back and enjoy the spiraling human disco ball and springing South American spacemen.

Leave the acrobatic astronauts behind for a mean green mother from outer space at Cinefamily's midnight screening of Little Shop of Horrors. The classic horror-comedy-musical hybrid finds Rick Moranis raising a man-eating plant, Audrey II—voiced by Four Tops singer Levi Stubbs—whose thirst for human blood wrangles in a legendary cast of comedians, most notably Steve Martin as a sadistic, nitrous-huffing dentist.

The Wooster Group, one of the foremost contemporary theater ensembles in the world, premieres a new work at REDCAT called "Cry, Trojans!"

Saturday

Welcome in springtime this Saturday by singing, dancing and blasting your friends with dry powder at the LA Festival of Colors. This annual Indian tradition is as jovial as it is colorful—check out our photos from last year for proof—and fills its rainbow dust cloud with musical performances from the yoga rock scene (our favorite of all the exercise rocks). You’ll have to head to Norwalk for the fest, but its a worthwhile trip.

Come down from that technicolor high with a decidedly more black and white affair: WeHo’s OHWOW gallery is mounting a month-long exhibition of Robert Mapplethorpe’s photographs. The show’s title, “As Above, So Below”, has something or other to do with Greek theosophy, but we’re far more interested in the provocative photographer’s bold, physical and often taboo images, some of which are rarely on public view.

In keeping with the (loosely) Greek-inspired theme, secure a seat at REDCAT for the final weekend of the Wooster Group’s Cry, Trojans! The eccentric interpretation of Shakespeare’s Trojan War play, Troilus and Cressida, was originally staged for the 2012 London Olympics, but this US-specific production recasts the Trojans as a fictional early American tribe. We guess that works?

Sunday

Few events unify this city like the LA Marathon, if for no other reason than we’ll all be dealing with street closures on Sunset and Santa Monica. If you’ll be out there racing on Sunday morning, we have the utmost respect for your athletic and fundraising prowess. But if you’re just looking for a place to get brunch with a view of the lead pack, we sympathize—enough so that we scoured the race route to find the best places to eat, drink and be lazy.

Westside street closures will carry on well into the afternoon, so we suggest spending the rest of the day Downtown. In Little Tokyo, “Perseverance: Japanese Tattoo Tradition in a Modern World” kicks off its opening weekend at JANM. This photo-heavy exhibit traces the history of Japanese tattoos, from their woodblock print origins to their Western bastardization. You’ll find beautiful life-sized photographs of full-body tattoos, inked by SoCal and Japanese artists whose indelible work has shown up everywhere from museums to Sega games.

Meanwhile, at LA Mart you can very politely stuff your face with tastes from the city’s best restaurants at the Essentials, LA Weekly’s sixth annual food and wine fest. Expect LA fixtures like AOC and Church & State alongside slightly newer faces such as Sqirl and Hinoki & the Bird. And oh yeah, also expect to end your weekend in postprandial somnolence—more affectionately known as a food coma.