Take a trip to Agadez, the capital city of Saharan rock, with Arizona Arts Live and Best Life Presents as they welcome Etran de L’Aïr or “stars of the Aïr region.” Playing for over 25 years, Etran has emerged as stars of the local wedding circuit. Their sound invokes the desert metropolis and celebrates the sounds of all the dynamism of a hometown wedding. Beloved for their dynamic repertoire of hypnotic solos and sun schlazed melodies, Etran stakes out a place for Agadez guitar music. Etran is a family band composed of brothers and cousins, all born and raised in the small neighborhood of Abalane, just in the shadow of the grand mosque. Sons of nomadic families that settled here in the 1970s fleeing the droughts, they all grew up in Agadez. The band was formed in 1995 when current band leader Moussa “Abindi” Ibra was only 9 years old. “We only had one acoustic guitar,” he explains, “and for percussion, we hit a calabash with a sandal.” Over the decades, the band painstakingly pieced together gear to form their band and built an audience by playing everywhere, for everyone. “It was difficult. We would walk to gigs by foot, lugging all our equipment, carrying a small PA and guitars on our backs, 25 kilometers into the bush, to play for free…there’s nowhere in Agadez we haven’t played.” This is a 21+ event. Facebook Instagram Twitter Bandcamp

Umbrellas fly, fabrics soar over the audience, balloons swallow people, and snow swirls on the Centennial Hall stage this spring. With stunning images and gales of laughter, Air Play bounces on the edge of definition: part comedy, part sculpture, part circus, part theater. A circus-style adventure of two siblings journeying through a surreal land of air, Air Play transforms ordinary objects into uncommon beauty.  Created by circus performers Seth Bloom and Christina Gelsone in collaboration with kinetic sculptor Daniel Wurtzel, this performance was devised through years of experimentation with simple materials, movement, and technology.  Join us for a visual poem great for all ages that uses no words to bring to life the very air we breathe. No translation necessary, this experience has played from the southernmost opera house in the world in Chile to London’s Royal Festival Hall, Melbourne’s State Theatre, and Shanghai’s Grand Theatre, and continues to tour. Artist's Site Facebook Instagram Twitter

Join us for a comedic, family-friendly piece of innovative theatre using lo-fi FX, miniature vehicles, puppetry, video, deadpan mime and ingeniously simple physical recreations of film language. Don’t miss this tender portrait of humanity coming to Tornabene Theatre! Dimanche, a humorous and magical play, features two stories to paint a portrait of mankind totally out of step with climate catastrophes swirling around them. Adventure with a team of wildlife reporters as they travel the world to document the last living species. And spend a quiet Sunday afternoon with a family paying no attention to trembling walls and lashing rain as they absurdly try to preserve their daily life. Between dreamlike fiction and factual reality, Dimanche observes the ingenuity and stubbornness of humans as they try to preserve their day-to-day habits, going to absurd extremes to keep up a sense of normalcy despite the chaos of an ecological collapse. Great for all ages, this production weaves together lo-fi effects, video, puppetry, and clowning in a wondrous work of physical theater! Artist's Site Facebook Instagram Twitter