Scene & Heard

+ Riverview Kilties roll out the green carpet
Band geeks are in for a rare treat this month.

Japan’s famous Green Band will roll into town next week for a joint performance with Riverview High School’s Kiltie Band.

The Green Band formed in 1998 with a mission to promote environmental awareness by performing overseas concerts in conjunction with pitching in on eco-conscious volunteer projects.

The band, which recruits its members from Japanese high schools, has notched countless Rose Bowl Parades over the years.

Fifty-eight visiting “green” musicians will kick off their Sarasota stay March 25, with a beach party on Siesta Key. Each member of the band has already been paired up with a Kiltie host family.

In addition to performing, the Kilties and the Greens will visit Myakka State Park and participate in a tree-planting ceremony at Riverview High School.

The bands will perform a free concert at 7 p.m. March 27, at the Riverview Performing Arts Center. Donations will be accepted for victims of last year’s Japanese earthquake.

+ The Players steps up its game with ‘A Chorus Line’
How many leg puns can one writer work into a blurb about “A Chorus Line?”

Well, here’s a start: Last month The Players Theatre got a leg-up on its competition when it opened “A Chorus Line” Feb. 16 to a sold-out crowd.

For two weeks, the musical played to a packed house, setting the new record for the highest-grossing show the theater has ever produced. (The previous record went to the 2007 production of “Miss Saigon.”)

To the “Chorus” cast and crew, I say congratulations. Way to kick butt.

+ Sarasota pole dancer slides into first place
This news didn’t surprise me: Pole dancer Nicole Landkas placed first this month in the amateur division at the Florida Pole Fitness Championship in Orlando.

A fifth-generation aerialist, Landkas is a vertical tour de force. Anyone who’s ever seen her perform can tell you her moves on a pole are equal parts physical and sensual.

Watching her in action can be both mesmerizing and terrifying.

With Gumby-like flexibility and Herculean strength, she effortlessly swings, contorts and hangs from the pole as if the apparatus were an extension of her body.

A teacher at Sarasota’s Apple Jelly Studios, Landkas, who grew up performing on the silks, ropes, Lyra and swinging trapeze, is one of the most flexible dames on the Gulf Coast.

If this award, given at the state’s first pole dancing competition, doesn’t prove her worth, I don’t know what will.

If you think pole dancing is only relegated to strip clubs, you’re sadly misinformed. Landkas could spin circles around an exotic dancer.

HOT TICKETS
‘10x10’: Hosted by State of the Arts Gallery on State Street, “10x10” is a fast-paced, informal discussion on art, design and community stewardship. The forum features 10 speakers presenting 10 images in five minutes. Speakers include art historian Ann Albritton; architect Carl Abbott; Selby Gallery Director Kevin Dean; Ringling Museum contemporary art curator Matthew McLendon; artist Dasha Reich, Selby Gardens Education Director Jeannie Perales; musicologist Maribeth Clark; anthropologist Uzi Baram; painter Rick Rados; and Observer CEO Matt Walsh. The event runs from 5:30 to 7 p.m. March 15. Tickets are $10. For more info, call 955-2787.

‘Vanessa’: Before “Cougar Town” there was Samuel Barber’s “Vanessa.” The three-act opera about an aging aristocrat and her delusional crush on the son of her former lover has all the frothy drama of a modern-day soap opera. The production continues Sarasota Opera’s American Classics Series and runs through March 24. For tickets, call 366-8450, Ext. 1 or visit sarasotaopera.org.