Tonight starting at 8 p.m. at Danger! Danger!

We can’t vouch for the bands, but we can vouch for the Garden Court Eatery, whose sign inspired one of their names.

If you haven’t had a chance to see the Curio Theatre Company‘s staging of  Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, you are in luck because they just added three more shows. The wildly popular performances have been packed every night since the show opened on April 22. The run was originally scheduled to close this Saturday.

The added shows at the Calvary Center (4740 Baltimore Ave.) will be May 19, 20, 21 at 8 p.m. Tickets are $10/$15 and are available here.

Music that traces its history to a wrecked slave ship near what is now St. Vincent centuries ago is coming to West Philly tomorrow.

Umalali (the Garifuna word for “voice”), a musical ensemble consisting of Garifuna women from the countries of Belize, Honduras and Guatemala, is visiting West Philly this Wednesday, May 4, with two performances at Crossroads Music (801 S. 48th Street). The first show is for children and their parents, and starts at 6 p.m. Children’s tickets are only $5 and the accompanying adults go for free! The main performance begins at 7:30 p.m. All tickets can be purchased here.

The Garifuna culture traces back to 1635 when a ship carrying people from present-day Nigeria to be sold into slavery wrecked off the coast of St. Vincent in the eastern Caribbean. The people who survived the wreck were absorbed into the indigenous Carib population and created their own unique culture. Four centuries later the Garifuna culture was recognized by UNESCO as a “Masterpiece of Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity.” It’s mostly Garifuna women who should take credit for this recognition, because they carried on the teaching of the language and passed on songs from generation to generation.

The tour that stops in West Philly is the result of a 14-year process of recording Garifuna songs – first in their original setting – and then in a studio. Belizean musician and producer has led the project, which has become like a Buena Vista Social Club for the Garifuna music and culture. The resulting album, “Umalali: The Garifuna Women’s Project,” was recorded in a studio set up in a thatched-roof hut in the village of Hopkins, Belize.

Here’s a video preview of Umalali: The Garifuna Women’s Project.

Making rugs in Afghanistan is almost like a form of journalism. Many rug weavers recreate the devastation their country has seen for decades in textiles that include scenes of war and destruction. An exhibit that includes a large selection of these rugs opens today at the Penn Museum (3260 South St.).

Battleground: War Rugs of Afghanistan runs through July 31. Today’s opening includes a ribbon cutting at 1 p.m., a special lecture by Brian Spooner, the curator of the museum’s Near East Section and a “make your own rug” craft activity from 1 p.m. to 3 p.m. The museum will also screen the film Painted Trucks, a 1972 documentary that shows the Afghan tradition of painting trucks. The film, made by two Fulbright scholars, shows the country in a more peaceful time and has become a favorite of the Afghani community. The filmmakers will be present for a discussion after the screening.

Below is a short video narrated by Brian Rose, an archaeology professor at Penn, that shows the rugs in detail.

Notes from Afghanistan: War Rugs from Penn Museum on Vimeo.

With its classic tiled roof and soaring, arched windows, The Rotunda (4014 Walnut St.) sticks out amid the polished metal and stone that has become the west side of the intersection of 40th and Walnut Streets.

Built in 1911, the one-time Christian Science church turned neighborhood arts and culture venue is 100 years old this year. It’s celebrating with three days of performances by the wonderful Anne-Marie Mulgrew & Dancers Co., which has designed a production specifically for The Rotunda’s sanctuary space.

Most events at The Rotunda are held in a black-box theater in the rear part of the building that once served as a Sunday school when the building was a church. Occasionally, a performance warrants opening the much bigger sanctuary space, which sits under the buildings distinctive round roof.

This weekend’s unique performance, entitled Le Dada Va Gaga Dans 2011, is part of the Philadelphia International Festival of the Arts, which continues through May 1.

This description of the performance comes from the dance company’s website:

The program consists of a dozen short theatrical vignettes, dances and art installations inspired by the architecture of the space and the festival theme, Paris in 1911 moving towards 2011. Highlights include video projections on walls juxtaposed with live performance, a 2011 installation inspired by Marcel Duchamp’s notorious Etant Donnes, dancers clinging to doorways and walls, a pew dance, characters such as the lighted-hat lady who drops Kleenexs from the choir loft, a re-imagined version of Mulgrew’s 1992’s Earthborne featuring a woman on a ladder watching a stick dance, carousel like-dances using the fallen chandelier as a
sculpture, unexpected scenarios and audience interaction.

Performances on Friday and Saturday begin at 7:11 p.m. Sunday’s performance begins at 3:11 p.m. If you arrive 11 minutes before the show, you can watch a “pre-show” performance outside The Rotunda. There will also be refreshments and discussion in the black-box theater following the show.

Tickets are $15 General Admission, $10 Students/Seniors/DancePass holders. Tickets can be purchased on the PIFA website www.pifa.org, in person at the Kimmel Center Box Office, or by phone at 215-546-PIFA or 215-790-5800.

Below is an interview with The Rotunda’s director, Gina Renzi, about the building and this weekend’s performance.

Rodney Camarce, an artist in the city’s Mural Arts Program, will lay down some urban flair on eight pairs of sneakers today at 34th and Walnut from 2 p.m. to 6 p.m. Camarce’s custom paint jobs are part of the Keds company’s “How Do You Do?” road trip to colleges across the country.

The stop at Penn will also feature live music and, we suspect, many things sneaker related.