No Borders: by Anna-Marie Lopez de LeonThis eclectic event benefitting Doctors Without Borders includes a silent art auction with work by dozens of contributing artists including Anna-Marie Lopez de Leon, and performances by the Middle Eastern-jazz fusion group Saffron Parade Arabesque Band, Tehran’s heavy metal band TarantisT, belly dancers, deejays and much more. Pic Vicious and Killsonic will perform later in the soirée.

Best of Natacha Atlas: your purchase benefits LCC programmingNatacha Atlas has long been one of our favorite Arab fusion artists, though it’s been several years since we’ve seen her in Los Angeles. The London-based singer was born in Belgium of Egyptian and Moroccan heritage. She sings in Arabic, French and English. Natacha cut her teeth singing with the Transglobal Underground and has more than half a dozen solo albums to her credit. She’s also served as Good Will Ambassador for the United Nations and has always been an outspoken peace advocate.

The Silk Road Music & Dance Ensemble and the iST-West Ensemble will perform live with special guest vocalist Serpil Borazan. Featuring Rowan Storm on percussions, with Nyofu Tyson on saz, Neil Seigel on Azeri tar, Ergun Tamer on kanun and Robyn Friend performing dances of Turkey and Central Asia, plus additional musicians.

Zarbang and Banafsheh with Namah Dancers at the Wilshire Ebell. Enjoy an evening of exquisite contemporary mystical Persian music and dance. An evening of wild and whirling dance, ground-breaking drums and Rumi's evocative poetry. A collection of masters, seasoned from years together, Mirror features the Sufi dance innovator Banafsheh, her dance company NAMAH and music from the world renowned ZARBANG.

Merging contemporary dance with Sufi ritual, Persian dance & Flamenco, Banafsheh and ZARBANG take the audience on a journey into the mysteries of being alive and living from the heart, featuring Pejman Hadadi, Behnam & Reza Samani, Javid Afsari, Kelly Archbold and Bahareh Ebrahimzadeh. At the Wilshire Ebell Theatre, 4401 W. 8th St., Los Angeles 90005. Tickets & Information: 818.887.7878, 818.908.0808.

Zarbang and Banafsheh: concert of contemporary mystical music and dance

Zarbang and Banafsheh with Namah Dancers at the Wilshire Ebell. Enjoy an evening of exquisite contemporary mystical Persian music and dance. An evening of wild and whirling dance, ground-breaking drums and Rumi's evocative poetry. A collection of masters, seasoned from years together, Mirror features the Sufi dance innovator Banafsheh, her dance company NAMAH and music from the world renowned ZARBANG.

Merging contemporary dance with Sufi ritual, Persian dance & Flamenco, Banafsheh and ZARBANG take the audience on a journey into the mysteries of being alive and living from the heart, featuring Pejman Hadadi, Behnam & Reza Samani, Javid Afsari, Kelly Archbold and Bahareh Ebrahimzadeh. At the Wilshire Ebell Theatre, 4401 W. 8th St., Los Angeles 90005. Tickets & Information: 818.887.7878, 818.908.0808.

Zarbang and Banafsheh: concert of contemporary mystical music and dance

Poet/translator Niloufar Talebi They say it takes ten years to make a dancer and twenty to settle animmigrant, both of which I have been. I started to dance in mymid-twenties, and after ten years of training, having swum upstream tomake an aging instrument into an expressive one, I began to finallyacquire that coveted dancer’s “center,” though the moment I danced as atenured dancer was fleeting—as the absence of a life-long foundationcollided head-on with the tenuousness of a newly-trained body. Then,what does the aging dancer do when her physical facility wanes? Shepours herself into other bodies, redirects her ideas into movement forother bodies, translates her ideas into movements for those bodies. Inother words, she choreographs, superimposes herself on the shiftingsurface of other bodies. She re-enters the self from a differentposition, recreates herself elsewhere. This way, the dancer does notdie, but lives on by way of transforming.