Friday: Mipso at the 9:30 Club

A four-member string-centric band hailing from North Carolina already points to Americana. And for any other band, a debut album that lands itself on Billboard’s Bluegrass Top 10 might have solidified their home in the genre. But for Mipso’s debut release, “Dark Holler Pop just felt like the most exciting way to present those songs at the time,” says frontperson Joseph Terrell. Listeners agreed. The album propelled Mipso into early success. Since 2013, they have put out a new album every two years, each one containing additional streaming hits such as “Louise” and “People Change.” In August, Mipso released their sixth album,  Book of Fools, which is also their boldest break away from the genre that started it all. “I think we’re writing our best songs right now, and it’s completely different,” says Terrell. With all four members penning songs, creating the cohesive 10-track collection took some simmering. “We started out with 50 songs,” Terrell explains, “Fools is maybe not the absolute best of those, but it’s the songs that felt the most together […] We’re four distinct personalities, so it becomes about preserving those identities in this one album.” (For further evidence of Mipso’s ability to converge otherwise divergent ideas, a recent show included covers of Dido, Phish, and Bruce Springsteen.) Pulling from the larger collection of songs, Fools is a selection of the tracks that are “transformed by the others’ presence,” Terrell continues. Mipso’s ability to seamlessly pivot styles in Fools was, in part, due to the band’s approach. “At the beginning, we confused intensity with quality,” Terrell says of the band’s early days. In Fools, Mipso took their time to figure out what they wanted to say through the very process of creating the album. “It was a process of revelation,” says Terrell. Mipso’s Carolina roots come through in Book of Fools, but what is just as clear is their profound desire to follow the creative process wherever it takes them. The band return to the 9:30 Club this Friday, one of the first venues they played outside of North Carolina, and which Terrell calls, “one of the best clubs in the country.” Mipso play at 10 p.m. on Nov. 17 at the 9:30 Club, 815 V St. NW. 930club.com. $25. —Camila Bailey

Friday and Saturday: LaTasha Barnes’ The Jazz Continuum at the Kennedy Center

Social dance is dance that happens in social contexts, for social purposes. Think of the balls in Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice: ballrooms and gloves, music and a band. The characters’ dramas unfurled through the dances, partly because the choreography brought people close enough to touch and talk. Participation, not observation, is the point. Social dance happens in every culture, and the elements reflect the people, fashions, and times that the particular dance form was created. LaTasha Barnes is a choreographer, Kennedy Center “Office Hours” resident, and a scholar of Black American social dance through the ages. Her latest work, The Jazz Continuum, is a “stage experience” that guides audiences through the history of social dance in Black communities, such as jazz, Lindy Hop, hip-hop, and house. Each show is tailored to the region where it’s performed, so Barnes’ upcoming experiences will focus on D.C.’s popular social dances, past and present. LaTasha Barnes’ The Jazz Continuum performs at 8 p.m. on Nov. 17 and 18 at the Kennedy Center Eisenhower Theater, 2700 F St. NW. kennedycenter.org. $29. —Mary Scott Manning

Saturday: Punk Rock Flea Market at St. Stephen’s

“Punk” tends to be something of an equivocal term, and even defining it can sometimes prove challenging. Everybody knows the cliches—combat boots, mohawks, middle fingers, and profanity-strewn homemade shirts—but the views, beliefs, and political currents underlying punk are a little more nuanced: grassroots efforts, community-based movements with an antiestablishment edge, and, quite often, a sneaking whiff of satire. These are just four aspects (among many, many others) that might help define “punk”, and this Saturday, the DC Punk Rock Flea Market is looking to hit every mark. On Nov. 18, just days before Thanksgiving, the Punk Rock Flea Market will be partnering with We Are Family, a senior outreach group, and Positive Force DC, a self-described “hardcore activist collective,” to organize a food drive for D.C.’s low-income seniors. The food drive will be located at St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church alongside the annual flea market. Attendees are asked to bring a donation of whole-grain cereal, pasta, rice, peanut butter, or canned vegetables, fruit, beans, or tuna. It might seem a little removed from Joey Ramone or Sid Vicious, but the truth is there’s nothing more punk rock than helping get rid of community food insecurity. Mohawks and leather jackets are not required but are encouraged. Punk Rock Flea Market runs from noon to 5 p.m. on Nov. 18 at St. Stephen and the Incarnation Episcopal Church, 1525 Newton St. NW. instagram.com/dc_punkrockflea. Free. —Julian Ford

Saturday: The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari with the Anvil Orchestra at AFI Silver

With its brilliantly designed nightmare sets and bleak view of humanity, this 103-year old silent masterwork of German Expressionism is as startling today as it was more than a century ago. The plot of the 1920 film The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari unfolds through the eyes of naive Francis (Friedrich Feher). In flashback, he tells us of mad Dr. Caligari (Werner Krauss), who traveled to county fairs with Cesare (Conrad Veidt), a somnambulist whom the doctor has brainwashed into doing his evil bidding. It all sounds like a typical gothic mystery (albeit one that has frequently been interpreted in the context of future German tyrants), but what makes this so unforgettable—besides the heavily mascaraed villainy of Krauss and Veidt—are the fantastical sets: Windows made up of skewed angles, roadways all abruptly curved and disorienting, and most of all those wildly distorted architectural forms that seem like the embodiment of moral decay. Watching Caligari is like watching the birth of the 20th century, of the modern world and its myriad evils. Its influence can be seen in horror movies of course, from the low-budget 1962 classic Carnival of Souls to David Gordon Green’s 2018 Halloween reboot, but you can also see its imprint in the surreal sets of Pee-Wee’s Playhouse. For decades, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari was only available in muddy prints, played on grainy UHF broadcasts  (a designation for radio frequencies) whose lo-fi gauze was an apt filter through which to experience its hallucinatory vision. But in this 4K restoration, the terror is that much clearer. See it with live musical accompaniment by the Anvil Orchestra, a duo consisting of Terry Donahue and Mission of Burma co-founder Roger Clark Miller. The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari with the Anvil Orchestra plays at 7 p.m. on Nov. 18 at AFI Silver, 8633 Colesville Rd., Silver Spring. silver.afi.com. $20. — Pat Padua

Ongoing: Kee Woo Rhee at Gallery B

You can’t fault landscape photographer Kee Woo Rhee for being a homebody; her Gallery B exhibit, Conversing with Nature, features images not only from her home country, South Korea, and her adopted country, the United States, but also from Patagonia, New Zealand, Iceland, Scotland, and Canada. The Silver Spring-based photographer has a soft spot for the American West; a sweeping, five-image vista of autumn trees in Colorado is a symphony of yellow, red, orange, and brown; a photograph of hoodoos at Utah’s Bryce Canyon National Park is notable for its dusting of snow, which could easily pass for powdered sugar; and in an image of canyon walls from Colorado suggest marbleized beef sheltering a thin strip of blue river. An image from Utah’s Zion National Park, adds a splash of whimsy, with its unreal, candy-colored depiction of a winding road. A few images are more humble, such as an ambiguous, black-and-white portrayal of spindly aquatic plants, or a small A-frame building set against an impenetrably snowy Icelandic background. But when she chooses to go big, the results are striking. In an image from Iceland, she captures brilliant green aurorae, seen both in the sky and in a lake reflection below, while another image from Iceland fruitfully pairs a receding wall of striated volcanic cliffs with the smooth, glistening surface of the water. One deceptively complex work comes from Scotland’s Isle of Harris; the waterscape channels Mark Rothko, pairing no fewer than six distinct shades of blue in the distance with a large swatch of beach-sand white in the foreground. Conversing with Nature runs through Dec. 4 at Gallery B, 7700 Wisconsin Ave., Bethesda. Thursdays through Sundays, noon to 5 p.m. bethesda.org. Free. —Louis Jacobson

Ongoing: We are forever folding into the night at HEMPHILL

Artist Hedieh Javanshir Ilchi investigates invasion and equilibrium, weaving harmony through tension, nature in celestial experiences, and dreams into reality in her newest exhibition on display at HEMPHILL Artworks. Ilchi’s paintings merge seemingly contrasting spaces as a commentary on sociopolitical landscapes, drawing inspiration from her own Iranian American heritage. Each artwork is formed from poured paint that Ilchi crafts into scenes of solace found in vastness. The acrylic and watercolor give bold blues, greens, and reds that uncover earth and heaven. Some works intertwine Tazhib patterns, or Islamic illuminated gold, as frames or small archways bridging land and atmosphere. Other works show elements falling to earth, some appearing as saucers or meteors, shattering the separation between distant environments. Trees give way to the moon in the sky, hinting at an unexplored frontier with unknown galaxies beyond the familiar chaos of our individual worlds. Ilchi’s We are forever folding into the night combines Persian art with Western abstraction in a way that preserves the conflict inherent in interference. Ilchi, finding home in D.C. after immigrating from her birth home of Tehran, Iran, understands blending cultures to find clashes and belonging. Like West and East, with unease comes comfort, with fear comes courage, and with shade comes light. We are forever folding into the night runs through Dec. 22 at HEMPHILL Artworks, 434 K St. NW. Tuesday through Saturday, noon to 5 p.m. Viewable in person and online at hemphillartworks.com. Free. —Anupma Sahay