(Queens, NY) The borough is thinking big this week with a food extravaganza, a maker fair, a country festival, a community arts day and countless retrospective films. There’s also time for unique live music concerts, a bike-paddle expedition and dance theater honoring a pioneer dance therapist. Here’s the rundown.
Sept. 20, Viva la Comida!, 4 pm to 10 pm. This outdoor festival combines the best food trucks in the city, live music, interactive art, dancing, a market and more. Free to attend. 82nd Street between Roosevelt and Baxter avenues, Jackson Heights, www.vivalacomida.com.
Sept. 20, Crossing Frets for Tappingo, 8 pm. A cross-cultural live improvisation featuring virtuoso Chinese pipa player Min Xiao-Fen, Korean komungo player Jin Hi Kim and award-winning rhumba tapper Max Pollak. $15. Flushing Town Hall, 137-35 Northern Blvd., Flushing, www.flushingtownhall.org.
Sept. 20, The Big Sleep, 7 pm. The Museum of the Moving Image is hosting a 39-feature retrospective on quintessential Hollywood director Howard Hawks. The Big Sleep, a noir masterpiece and the first film version of a Raymond Chandler novel, stars Humphrey Bogart as a private detective hired to investigate a series of troubles plaguing an affluent family. MMI, 36-01 35th Ave., Astoria, www.movingimage.us.
Sept. 21, World Maker Faire 2013, 10 am to 7 pm; and Sept. 22, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. A family fun festival to make, create, learn, invent, craft, recycle, build, think, play and be inspired by celebrating arts, crafts, engineering, food, music, science and technology. Hundreds of makers will present their fun and unusual creations, such as rockets, robots, electronics, artisanal foods, woodworking and live music. $14 to $55. New York Hall of Science, 47-01 111th St., Corona, www.nysci.org.
Sept. 21-22, 31st Annual Queens County Fair, 11 am to 6 pm both days. A traditional county fair with blue ribbon competitions in livestock, produce, home crafts, pie-eating and corn-husking contests, lumberjack shows, pig-racing, hayrides and carnival rides. $8/$5 children 12 and under. Queens County Farm Museum, 73-50 Little Neck Pkwy., Floral Park, www.queensfarm.org.
Sept. 21, A Time to Dance, 7 pm. Elizabeth Polk escaped the Nazis and settled in Sunnyside, where she was a founding member of the American Dance Therapy Association. Polk’s grandniece, Libby Skala, will perform an award-winning, one-woman play that interweaves storytelling, music and dance to portray the 100 years of her great aunt who transcended poverty, artistic repression and the rise of Hitler through the power of dance. A Q&A and reception will follow. Free. Sunnyside Reformed Church, 48-03 Skillman Ave., Sunnyside, (718) 426-5997.
Sept. 21, Urvashi, A Love Story, 6:30 pm. In Indian mythology, Urvashi was a famous nymph known for her beauty and tantalizing dance skills. This abridged version tells her story from birth to adulthood with a combination of classical, filmy and fusion Bollywood dances, choreographed by the teachers of the Natraj Center for the Performing Arts. $20. Queens Theatre, 14 United Nations Ave. S., Flushing Meadows-Corona Park, www.queenstheatre.org.
Sept. 21, Lhevinne Classical Concert Series, 7:30 pm. Pianist and chamber musician Steven Graff performs this hour-long program that includes a wine-and-cheese reception. Graff made his debut with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. $15 to $25. The Center at Maple Grove, 127-15 Kew Gardens Rd., Kew Gardens, www.friendsofmaplegrove.org.
Sept. 21, The Criminal Code, 1:30 pm; Scarface, 3:30 pm. The Museum of the Moving Image is hosting a 39-feature retrospective on quintessential Hollywood director Howard Hawks. The Criminal Code is a stylistically elegant, colorfully cast prison melodrama starring Walter Huston as a warden who decides to give a young convict a second chance by hiring him as his valet. Scarface is a brutal gangster film of the 1930s starring Paul Muni as an ambitious, insanely violent gangster who climbs the ladder of success in the mob, but whose weaknesses, chiefly his charged love for his own sister, prove to be his downfall. MMI, 36-01 35th Ave., Astoria, www.movingimage.us.
Sept. 21, Concrete Poetry with Seldon Yuan, noon to 3 pm. Yuan will help participants turns words into 3-dimensional sculptures at this weekly workshop. Children and families are encouraged to drop in and enjoy hands-on creativity. Socrates Sculpture Park, 32-01 Vernon Blvd., LIC, www.socratessculpturepark.org.
Sept. 21, Rockspot Bike/Paddle Tour, 9:45 am departure. The fun begins with a bike ride from Firehouse 59 (Beach 59th Street and Rockaway Beach Boulevard) to Riis Landing, where participants will join National Park Ranger John Daskalakis for a paddle along Jamaica Bay. Free registration, www.rwalliance.org.
Sept. 22, Orchestra of St. Luke’s, 4 pm. The Queens Botanical Garden hits a high note with the Orchestra’s brass quintet playing in the Cherry Circle. Free with admission. QBG, 43-50 Main St., Flushing, www.queensbotanical.org.
Sept. 22, Kew Gardens Community Arts Day, 11 am to 5 pm. Explore an eclectic mix of fine art from local painters, glass makers, potters, poets and sidewalk chalk artists. There will also be Broadway tunes, multicultural demos/exhibits and kiddie workshops. The day will end with poetry and prose readings by the REZ Reading Group at Odradeks Coffee House (82-60 Austin St.). Free. Austin Street, Lefferts Boulevard and Metropolitan Avenue, Kew Gardens, (917) 881-3358.
Sept. 22, Twentieth Century, 2 pm; The Thing from Another World, 4:30 pm. The Museum of the Moving Image is hosting a 39-feature retrospective on quintessential Hollywood director Howard Hawks. In Twentieth Century, a flamboyant Broadway impresario who has fallen on hard times tries to get his former lover, now a Hollywood diva, to return and resurrect his failing career. In The Thing from Another World, Air Force pilots stationed in the North Pole discover a downed plane that turns out to be an alien spacecraft in this intelligent, allegorical science-fiction film. MMI, 36-01 35th Ave., Astoria, www.movingimage.us.
Sept. 23, Simple Men, 7 pm. Actors Bill Sage and Robert Burke and filmmaker Hal Hartley will screen and discuss Simple Men, a road movie about two brothers who reunite after their father escapes from a hospital. $15. Museum of the Moving Image, 36-01 35th Ave., Astoria, www.movingimage.us.
Sept. 24, We Are What We Are, 7 pm. Actor Bill Sage and director Jim Mickle will participate in a discussion and preview screening of We Are What We Are, a reimagining of a Mexican movie about a reclusive family that practices violent, secret rituals. $15. Museum of the Moving Image, 36-01 35th Ave., Astoria, www.movingimage.us.
The “It’s In Queens” column is produced by the Queens Tourism Council with the hope that readers will enjoy the borough’s wonderful attractions.
