THURSDAY 8/11

DAMES, DEMS & DRINKS

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5:30-7:30 p.m. Pavilion in the Park. $75.

This inaugural fundraiser for the Progressive Arkansas Women PAC, which is working to elect broad-minded women to the Arkansas legislature, will feature snacks, signature cocktails and a meet-and-greet with candidates Rep. Camille Bennett (House District 14), Melissa Fults (House District 27), Susan Inman (House District 32) and Victoria Leigh (House District 38) and other politicians who support progressive causes. Yes, the candidates are all Democrats, but if any Republican woman in the future wants to champion women’s rights, she’ll be considered for support as well. There’s a link to Eventbrite on the Dames, Dems and Drinks Facebook page to buy tickets, which will be sold until the day of the event, which honors the 96th anniversary of women’s voting rights. LNP

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THURSDAY 8/11

KAY ODYSSEY

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9 p.m. Maxine’s, Hot Springs.

Morphed from a different lineup and a slightly different name (Kay Leotard), Kay Odyssey is made up of members from a smattering of Austin bands, including ¿Que Pasa?, Dikes of Holland and No Mas Bodas. The quartet released a debut album, “Chimera,” in 2015, a trippy collection of modern new wave that weaves Vajaja Valejo’s hypnotic drums with Liz Burrito’s Johnny Marr-esque guitar and Kelsey Wickliffe’s melodic bass, topped off with a sonorous, sometimes spooky warble from lead singer and guitarist Kristina Boswell. Live shows and videos — like the one Federico Moreno shot for the band’s song “Snake” — lend an LSD-flecked ephemera to the band’s aesthetic, a vibe that’s sure to fit in seamlessly with the red light ambience at the former brothel on Central Avenue, Maxine’s. SS

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FRIDAY 8/12

‘RHYTHMS OF OUR LANDS’: BI-OKOTO DRUM AND DANCE THEATRE

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2 p.m. Faulkner County Library, Free.

“You can call us the Afrocentric YMCA in Pleasant Ridge,” Bi-Okoto founder and director Adebola “Ade” Olowe told Cincinnati’s City Beat. Olowe, who immigrated to the Cincinnati gaslight neighborhood from Nigeria, was attending the University of Cincinnati when he decided to answer some of the questions he says he commonly fielded from his classmates (“Did you have lions in your backyard?”) by forming a West African dance troupe, one that would tie its performances to a larger cultural context, developing outreach programs like the one that toured last winter, “Black Dance Is Beautiful.” During the troupe’s audition process, he met Jeaunita Weathersby, now his wife, and the pair eventually purchased a performance space, gallery, and costume and drum repair shop from which they operate the Bi-Okoto Cultural Institute, offering language classes in Hausa, Yoruba and Twi, as well as classes in the cooking and sewing traditions of West Africa. The troupe has toured in Europe and South Korea extensively, and for the last several years has held an annual heritage festival that celebrates and teaches dance traditions, food, storytelling and visual art from Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria and South Africa. SS

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FRIDAY 8/12

2ND FRIDAY ART NIGHT

5 p.m. Various galleries. Free.

While the heat outside’s left most people strolling for function rather than for fun, 2nd Friday Art Night is a time you should make an exception to that rule. Here’s this month’s lineup. At the Historic Arkansas Museum, enjoy American songbook-style jazz from Heather Smith and her band while David Malcolm Rose’s architectural models are unveiled, exploring forgotten Americana like “Sunset Drive-In,” which was inspired by the now-demolished drive-in movie theater on Asher, and “Gas,” based on the Round Top filling station in Sherwood. Those are paired with fine art photography from Walter Arnold, who travels the country in search of buildings on the brink of being forgotten, like Hot Springs’ Majestic Hotel. The Butler Center Galleries feature work from jewelry maker and fabric artist Bonnie Krastner, with music from saxophonist Dave Williams and friends. At the Old State House Museum, sip some Stone’s Throw brews, dig some jazz from Michael Carenbauer’s trio and check out “We Make Our Own Choices: Staff Picks from the Old State House Collection.” Matt McLeod Fine Art Gallery is showing “The Human Experience, An Artistic Expression of Human Existance”; next door at Bella Vita Jewelry, there’s a “Summer Shindig Party,” where you can get sweets from Loblolly Creamery and brews from Lost Forty, and make a donation to The Van. SS

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SATURDAY 8/13

DOLLY PARTON

7:30 p.m. Verizon Arena. $66-$120.

“I’ve always been misunderstood because of how I look. Don’t judge me by my cover, ’cause I’m a real good book.” The real-life Backwoods Barbie is coming to North Little Rock, uniting a stunningly diverse group of superfans in unfettered enthusiasm for the icon, all of whom will regale anyone who will listen with the thousands of ways in which Dolly is so much more than jokes about her breasts — which, by the way, she has humored over the years with boundless grace and wit: “I would have been very tall had I not gotten so bunched up at the top.” Her status as a patron saint in the LGBT community is long-lived (and local, too: see Club Sway’s House of Avalon T-shirt, an image of Dolly above the hashtag #PROPHET), but was cemented in 2014 when she made statements in favor of gay marriage, quipping, “They should suffer just like us heterosexuals.” Let’s look at Dolly’s career by the numbers: Parton turned 70 earlier this year, and the doctor that brought her into the world was paid one bag of oatmeal for the task. (Later, Parton donated more than a half-million dollars to a hospital named for him.) She was one of 12 children in a one-room cabin in Locust Ridge near the Smoky Mountains. She has composed over 3,000 songs. She plays 10 instruments — a dozen if you count her voice and the autoharp: fiddle, mandolin, guitar, dulcimer, banjo, saxophone, pennywhistle, organ, harmonica and piano. Through her charitable foundation’s program Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library, her staff distributes one book a month to over 850,000 children from birth through kindergarten. If reviews of her current tour — and her reputation for indulging her audience — are any indication, she’ll be playing pared-down versions of her greatest hits Saturday evening at Verizon Arena, backed by three musicians, each of whom have backed her for at least 25 years. SS

SUNDAY 8/14

CEDELL DAVIS

6 p.m. White Water Tavern. $7.

Earlier this year, Cedell Davis was singing from his wheelchair on a stage in the center of a treeless field on state Highway 23 at Turpentine Creek Wildlife Refuge, to which the Eureka Springs Blues Festival had been relocated after years of grappling with limited parking on the winding, craggy streets downtown. From underneath whatever tents or umbrella pods we could construct to ward off the relentless sun, we watched as Cedell delivered the bad news over and over again — sans the butter knife he once used as a substitute for his polio-wracked hands to fret the guitar — but still imbued with the gravity of his station as one of the last remaining “hill country blues” musicians: “You know I done brought that woman my money every time I get my pay / You know, sometimes I wish that woman would change her ways, she’s got the devil in her … She says, ‘I feel like doin’ somethin’ wrong.’ ” Davis was solidly backed up and guided through the tunes with due reverence from his bandmates of several years, Zakk and Greg “Big Papa” Binns, who join him for this early Sunday show. SS

TUESDAY 8/16

ARKANSAS TIMES PRESENTS: ‘DO THE RIGHT THING’

6 p.m. Riverdale 10 Cinema. $8.

Inspired by a pair of racially motivated killings in 1980s Brooklyn, Spike Lee’s “Do the Right Thing” opens with a dance sequence set to Public Enemy’s “Fight the Power,” in which Rosie Perez (playing “Tina” in her debut film role) dances, thrusts and punches in front of a slide projection depicting the type of Brooklyn neighborhood in which the film is set. The four-minute sequence took eight hours and took a physical toll on Perez, who admits she didn’t understand what Lee was going for until she saw it in theaters; it’s aggressive and confrontational, and it sets the tone for the film to follow. In colors reminiscent of the Technicolor films of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, Lee manages to seamlessly integrate a political message in a loose narrative. He’s a filmmaker just as in love with the medium as he is with his peers, even if he’s not often mentioned as a cinephile in the same breath as Scorsese or Tarantino. Set in the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn on the hottest day of the year, the story follows Mookie (played by Lee) as he delivers pizza for Sal’s Pizzeria — the Italian-American-owned locus of the community — and the way tensions rise within the community as the day wears on. “Do the Right Thing” is Spike Lee’s third film (preceded by “She’s Gotta Have It” and “School Daze”), and it marries the director’s artistic talent and film influences with a sense of urgency and purpose that’s just as relevant today in 2016 as it was in 1989. OJ

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