Weekend arts forecast: Get on your feet in Clearwater

Come on baby, shake your body, do the conga! I know you can’t control yourself any long-ah!

So went the hook to the first hit by Miami Sound Machine, a large, horn-driven Latin salsa band put together by Cuban-American musician/composer Emilio Estefan and his singer wife, Gloria.

That was in 1985, and before the turn of the next decade Gloria Estefan had become an international superstar, and Miami Sound Machine carried on (for a bit) without Gloria or her husband.

The story to date is told – with a lot of song, and a lot of dance – in the jukebox musical On Your Feet!, which is on tour and visits Ruth Eckerd Hall Friday and Saturday (April 7 and 8).

The show launched in Chicago, and played on Broadway from 2015 to 2017, receiving a Tony nomination for Best Choreography.

On this tour, Mexican singer, dancer and actress Gaby Albo, a semifinalist on the TV competition La Voz, stars as Gloria. Samuel Garnicka, from Venezuela, plays Emilio.

Find tickets here.

Otherwise, there isn’t a whole lot going on in performing arts this weekend. It’s almost as if some sort of family-type holiday, keeping both performers and attendees at home, is afoot. Something about a rabbit, maybe?

Well, Easter Sunday does bring about the end of Misery. Yes, Jobsite Theater’s mega-successful take on the Stephen King bogeywoman tale winds own with Sunday’s 4 p.m. matinee. Not a lot of tickets remain for shows tonight through that last one on Sunday. Investigate them here.

Also doing great business is Baskerville: A Sherlock Holmes Mystery at freeFall Theatre. The comic caper, running through April 23, is onstage Friday and Saturday, but not tonight, or on Easter Sunday. Tickets.

Zombie Beach: The Musical, written by St. Pete native John Cecil and co-produced by LAB Theatre Project and Hillsborough Community College, lurches (see what I did there?) to a halt Saturday (performances at 2 and 7 p.m.). Shows tonight and Friday, too. Info and tickets.

The final cut: It’s also time to bid farewell to Shear Madness, the Straz Center production of the hair salon musical comedy/mystery in the Jaeb Theatre. There are performance tonight and Friday, and two on Saturday (2 and 7:30 p.m.) Tickets.

So what else is going on?

Texas blues guitarist Jimmie Vaughan, brother of the late Stevie Ray and the co-founder of the Fabulous Thunderbirds, is at the Capitol Theatre Friday. Tickets.

As we talked about earlier this week, USF professor of dance Andee Scott and seven other bay area choreographers have put together Move St. Pete!, a festival of dance, Saturday from 11:30 a.m. until 2:30 p.m. on the outdoor Mahaffey Theater plaza. Admission is free – read all about it here.

Clearwater’s Pier 60 is ground zero for the 2023 Sugar Sand Festival, starting today and lasting approximately two weeks. General admission to walk amongst the sand sculptures in progress is $14 per person and free for children 3 and under. All info is here.

Happy Easter, too.

The Weekend arts forecast appears every Thursday in the Catalyst. 

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