Thursday Through Sunday: Beat Ya Feet Kings 20th Anniversary Festival
By most accounts, the local street dance style known as Beat Ya Feet was created by go-go fan Marvin “Slush” Gross in the late 1990s before it exploded in popularity by 2002. Since then, Beat Ya Feet has become a defining aspect of go-go culture. Characterized by fast footwork and tremendous creativity, Beat Ya Feet has evolved over time, and like go-go itself, it functions as both an internationally recognized and a distinctly underground local culture. This weekend, John “Crazy Legz” Pearson, who inherited Slush’s mantle to become the Beat Ya Feet King, Porche “Queen P” Anthony, and other popular dance influencers celebrate the 20th anniversary of the ensemble of local dancers known as the Beat Ya Feet Kings. Their multiday Beat Ya Feet Festival features a series of events, all showcasing the ingenuity and physical prowess of a street dance style that like, go-go itself, is here to stay. “This Beat Ya Feet Festival is from us, by us, us choosing what we’d like to see happen,” says Queen P. “Beat Ya Feet is the style of dancing that burst out of a certain era of go-go music, and it’s connected to what people regard as the music of the city. The closer you get to the music, there’s the dance.” The festivities include Thursday’s Kick-Off Mixer featuring Julante “G-Magic” Shoatz’s da Hitmakaz production group at the Go-Go Museum and—incase you want to learn a few moves yourself—concludes with a Beat Ya Feet Intensive on Sunday at Atlas Performing Arts Center. There’s also a dance competition and a screening of the Beat Ya Feet documentary We Rep DC. We Are DC. Beat Ya Feet Kings 20th Anniversary Festival starts at 6 p.m. on June 11 and runs through June 14 at various locations. beatyafeet.com/byffest. Free–$40. —Alona Wartofsky
Friday: Mehrnam Rastegari at Hill Center
On her 2025 album, Dislocated Pulse, New York City-based Iranian singer and kamancheh player Mehrnam Rastegari lends her ethereal voice and instrumental bowing to a spectrum of styles, ranging from frenetic Persian folk melded with jazz rock, slower-tempoed traditional Persian beats, and Persian psychedelic rock meets Balkan dance music. Rastegari, who moved to the U.S. in July 2022, has been playing the four-string kamancheh, also known as a Persian spike fiddle, since she was a child after first playing the Persian tombak drum and then violin. As for her singing, she tells City Paper via email that it “is based on Persian classical music and Iranian folk music, this system is not initiated from a specific person, it’s something that has come together during thousands of years and now it has reached us in its current form.” Although Rastegari’s vocals often sound heavenly—just listen to “I’m Longing”—sometimes her intonation is harder-edged and stretches out lyrical phrases via a version of melisma known in Persian music as tahir. She does that on the song “Velveleh” after opening with dramatic bowed fiddle notes. Rastegari and her band skillfully and creatively deploy all their various techniques on “Naz,” which has some lilting sweet vocals, rough-toned speedy fiddle work, noisy guitar, bass, drums, and extended glottal singing. Mehrnam Rastegari performs at 7 p.m. on June 12 at Hill Center at the Old Naval Hospital, 921 Pennsylvania Ave. SE. hillcenterdc.org. $23. —Steve Kiviat
Sunday: The Blueprint with Jen Psaki in Conversation With Billy Eichner Live Recording at Sixth and I
Billy Eichner was a menace to the New York City streets. As part of his iconic TV and web series Billy on the Street, the comedian would approach pedestrians, asking questions like “name a woman for a dollar.” He also once pretended that comedian Seth Rogen was dead, in the aptly named “Death Rogen” segment. While Eichner is no longer regularly releasing episodes, he is revisiting the series as part of his new audiobook: Billy on Billy: An Audio Memoir. The work explores his creative evolution and how his experiences sparked his on-the-street persona. “Writing this book meant getting reacquainted with the childlike wonder I had for culture,” Eichner recently told the New York Times. On June 14, Eichner will discuss the audiobook with political adviser and former White House secretary Jen Psaki, on a live recording of her MS NOW podcast, The Blueprint with Jen Psaki. The two will talk about the iconic show and how humor can sustain us during such difficult times. The talk starts at 5 p.m and is offered both virtually and in-person at Sixth and I, 600 I St. NW. sixthandi.org. $15 –$47.50. —Hannah Docter-Loeb
Sunday:
at AFI Silver Theatre
It’s Bleak Week in Silver Spring: Do you know where your loved ones are? We can’t prove this 1984 made-for-TV apocalypse is the most depressing film on a program subtitled “Cinema of Despair,” but do you dare find out? Threads is set in Sheffield, a then-industrial British town that gave birth to ABC and the Human League, but aside from her synth-pop offspring the place looks pretty bleak even before the bomb. The catastrophe is brought about by tensions between the U.S. and the Soviet Union over—get this—Iran. Threads’ first act depicts the mundane lives of Sheffielders, particularly young lovers Jimmy (Reece Dinsdale) and Ruth (Karen Meagher), who we meet in a parked car overlooking a smoggy industrial town as the young woman tells her boyfriend she’s pregnant. The domestic concerns that overwhelm the couple soon become small potatoes when international tensions burst and our then-superpowers exchange nukes—including a one-megaton device dropped right over Sheffield. What would life look like for those lucky (or unlucky) enough to survive the blast? American audiences of a certain age grew up with The Day After as their made-for-TV apocalypse, but Threads is more graphic in its observation of the physical and emotional toll that nuclear war takes on the populace. Screenwriter Barry Hines, who adapted his own novel for Ken Loach’s 1969 coming-of-age drama Kes, frequently made the working-class people of Northern England his subjects. But one can only imagine the guidance director Mick Jackson gave to his performers—“Alright, Karen, imagine you’ve lost everyone and everything you love, and now it’s time for a baby!” The director weaves a convincingly despairing canvas, all the more surprising given the more commercial work he’d go on to make, including the Steve Martin vehicle L.A. Story and the Kevin Costner–Whitney Houston romantic thriller The Bodyguard. Threads, with an introduction by Imani Davis, programmer at Los Angeles’ American Cinematheque, screens at 9 p.m. on June 14 and again at 1:15 p.m on June 17 at AFI Silver Theatre, 8633 Colesville Rd., Silver Spring. silver.afi.com. $10–$14. —Pat Padua
Ongoing: Seeing in B&W at Photoworks
In our age of relentless AI slop, there’s something cleansing about seeing an exhibit of old-school black-and-white photography. In Photoworks’ new exhibit, photographer Richard Batch has collected monochrome works by 13 photographers; collectively, they’re a strong bunch. Carl de Moor uses a Holga camera, known for its distortions, to photograph a varied array of subjects, including a run-down wooden structure, a collection of plants, and a still life of dolls and doll parts. Michael Goulding contributes carefully lit nudes, while William Dusterwald captures broad landscapes that feature unusual patterns of lighting. Christine Franklin and Batch himself offer more domestic material; Franklin photographs a happy looking dog and kids jumping on a bed, the latter with some solarized flourishes, while Batch captures a timeless tableau of children playing amid backyard greenery. Craig Nedrow’s stark depictions of Detroit focus on smokestack emissions and deserted manufacturing plants. Unexpectedly, three photographers choose to show desert imagery. Alan Simmons contributed one impressively dramatic image of a sand dune (plus another of a tree eerily spotlighted against a dark background), while Frank Aquino offers two bleached desert landscapes with Joshua trees and Tom Sliter contributed three high-contrast images of sand dunes cut by wavy parallels, echoing some works of Edward Weston. Seeing in B&W runs through July 12 at Photoworks, 7300 MacArthur Blvd., Glen Echo. glenechophotoworks.org. Free. —Louis Jacobson
Ongoing: Blacklisted: An American Story at the Capital Jewish Museum
In the mid-20th century, the Red Scare upended the lives of thousands, from Hollywood to the halls of the federal government. A new exhibit at the Capital Jewish Museum chronicles how the anxiety about the spread of Communism fanned fears and led to surveillance, job loss, silencing of free speech, and stifling of creativity. While numerous people were affected, Jews were routinely purged from their jobs—considered suspect simply because of their religion. Blacklisted: An American Story has traveled across the country, but the CJM rendition will have a special emphasis on the very close to home story of how federal employees’ lives were turned upside down. Jewish federal workers were brought before loyalty boards: Visitors can read real testimonies from Washingtonians accused of Communist sympathies. “The Red Scare was a frightening time for many Americans, who worried about coming under attack from their own government,” says Beatrice Gurwitz, executive director of the museum. “This exhibition gives our visitors space to reflect on this history and what it means for us in today’s world.” As part of the exhibit, the museum is also hosting a film series throughout the summer to spotlight movies that reckon with similar themes. Blacklisted runs through Sept. 7 at the Capital Jewish Museum, 575 3rd St. NW. capitaljewishmuseum.org. $12. —Hannah Docter-Loeb…