Andy Gillis

Undergraduate students Elana Valastro and Rochenelle-Marihgeila Rose Coffy rehearse for the Locallly Grown Dance Festival at the Schwartz Center.

Jazz legacy

Grammy-nominated jazz musician Ravi Coltrane, the son of John and Alice Coltrane, brings his quartet and his own brand of jazz to Cornell March 20 at 8 p.m. in Bailey Hall. Presented by the Cornell Concert Series. Tickets are available at www.cornellconcertseries.com and at the door: Cornell students (with valid netID) $15, other students $17, Cornell employees and the general public $20-$28.

The Ravi Coltrane Quartet includes David Virelles (recently named one of four young pianists on the rise by The New York Times), bassist Dezron Douglas and drummer Johnathan Blake. The concert will feature selections from Coltrane’s latest album “Spirit Fiction,” improvisations and other works.

More jazz: The Cornell University Jazz Band, directed by Paul Merrill, will perform the full studio version of Duke Ellington’s “Far East Suite,” featuring James Spinazzola on clarinet, March 21, 8 p.m. in Barnes Hall Auditorium. Free and open to the public.

Hip-hop sensation

The Schwartz Center hosts a Dancing Hip Hop Symposium during the annual Locally Grown Dance Festival (LGDF), March 19-22.

The festival, “Sensorial Extracts,” features work by students and faculty, including senior lecturer Jumay Chu and LGDF director Byron Suber. Performances are March 19-21 at 7:30 p.m. in Kiplinger Theatre (tickets $13, $11 students and seniors). IMPACT Dance Troupe also performs, March 22 at 7:30 p.m. in Kiplinger ($5).

Inspired in part by the Society for the Humanities 2014-15 focal theme “Sensation,” the festival allows performers to demonstrate that dance is not just entertainment but “a different way of forming knowledge,” Suber says.

“WAVE: A True Story in Hip Hop” kicks off the Dancing Hip Hop Symposium March 20 at 6 p.m. in the Schwartz Center Film Forum, with a presentation by documentary subject Tony “Mr. Wave” Draughon of New York City Breakers. The symposium, March 21, 9:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., is free and open to the public, with a panel of hip-hop scholars, movement workshops, a break dancing competition workshop and a performance showcase with Cornell groups Absolute Zero, BASE Productions, BreakFree, Phenomenon Step Crew and Urban Blaze.

The symposium is organized by J. Lorenzo Perillo, Mellon Postdoctoral Diversity Fellow in the Department of Performing and Media Arts, and the Asian American Studies Program.

Cinema benefit party

Cornell Cinema’s 11th annual Elegant Winter Party will be “A Black & White Ball,” March 21 at 8 p.m. in the Willard Straight Hall Memorial Room. Tickets are $45 in advance, $55 at the door, $25/$35 for students. Advance tickets available at CornellCinemaTickets.com and at 104 Willard Straight Hall.

The event benefits the repertory cinema as it celebrates its 45th anniversary, with classic black-and-white films projected on four screens, a photo booth and movie memorabilia reflecting the theme.

Also featured: live music by Annie Lewandowski and David Yearsley, djs Alexander Livingston and Merike Andre-Barrett, dancing, door prizes and a cash bar. Admission includes a complimentary glass of champagne, catered hors d’oeuvres and desserts.

Cornell composers

The Cornell University Wind Symphony celebrates the music of Cornell composers March 22, 3 p.m. in Bailey Hall. Free and open to the public.

The concert, “Cornell at 150,” features “Clapping Music” by Steve Reich ’57, Professor Emeritus Steven Stucky’s “Music for the Funeral of Queen Mary,” Professor Emeritus Karel Husa’s “Al Fresco,” CU Winds conductor James Spinazzola’s arrangement of “Montuno” by professor of music Roberto Sierra, and works by Gustav Holst and Charles Ives.

Poetry and performance

Chilean poet, artist and filmmaker Cecilia Vicuña visits for the first of three lectures and performances as a Messenger Lecturer this semester, ”Quipu and the Quanta of Language,” March 24 at 4:30 p.m. in Alice Statler Auditorium.

Vicuña’s work addresses themes of language, memory, decay and exile, and such topics as ecological destruction, economic disparity and cultural homogenization. She has exhibited at the Whitney Museum of American Art and the Museum of Modern Art. She is co-editor of “The Oxford Book of Latin American Poetry: A Bilingual Anthology” (2009) and a founding member of Artists for Democracy.

Other programs with Vicuña are “The Poem is the Animal,” April 28 at 4:45 p.m.; and “Awareness is the Art: Artists for Democracy and Other Stories," May 2 at 7 p.m., both in the Schwartz Center for the Performing Arts’ Film Forum.

All programs are free and open to the public. Sponsored by the Messenger Lecture Series and co-sponsored the Departments of Anthropology and Performing and Media Arts, the American Indian Program, and the Feminist, Gender & Sexuality Studies Program.

Dancing across borders

Alejandro L. Madrid will discuss danzón, a 19th-century Latin American music and dance that has influenced culture for more than 150 years, in a book talk March 25, 4:30 p.m. in 107 
Olin Library.

Madrid, an associate professor of ethnomusicology at Cornell, is the co- author (with Robin Moore) of “Danzón: Circum-Caribbean Dialogues in Music and Dance” (2013). Fusing elements of European and African culture, danzón became wildly popular in the early 20th century, an international phenomenon influencing Latin dance and jazz in New Orleans.

Chats in the Stacks book talks are free and open to the public. Buffalo Street Books will offer books for purchase and signing.

Dragon Day

The arrival of spring brings a 114-year-old Cornell tradition roaring to life – the annual Dragon Day celebration, Friday, March 27. The dragon will be accompanied on a parade through campus by first-year architecture students, who design and fabricate the creature. A related exhibition, “Heads of the Hydra: Trophies of Dragon Day,” is on display March 20-27 in John Hartell Gallery, Sibley Dome.

The Dragon Day theme this year is “Apocalypse.” Rival engineering students in the Phoenix Society also join in, with a challenge to the dragon when the parade passes the Engineering Quad.

The Dragon Day Parade begins at 1 p.m. next to Rand Hall on East Avenue, proceeding south to Campus Road, turning west and then north to pass through Ho Plaza and end on the Arts Quad. Due to continuing construction on Klarman Hall, one lane of East Avenue remains closed to traffic (see updates on road closings here). There is limited room for spectators along parts of the route.

Dragon Day, originally called Architecture Day, was initiated in 1901 by then-student Willard Straight.

Folk heroes

The Cornell Folk Song Society presents Jay Ungar and Molly Mason in concert Friday, March 27, at 8 p.m. at the Community School of Music and Arts, 330 E. State St., Ithaca.

Known for their Grammy-winning “Ashokan Farewell” from the soundtrack of Ken Burns’ PBS series “The Civil War,” appearances on “A Prairie Home Companion” and the Ashokan fiddle and dance camps in New York’s Hudson Valley, the duo plays Appalachian, Celtic, Cajun and Klezmer fiddle tunes; swing, waltzes, country, folk and original songs.

Advance tickets are $15, at Ithaca Guitar Works, Autumn Leaves, Greenstar, Bound for Glory (Sunday, 8-11 p.m. in Anabel Taylor Hall) and at www.cornellfolksong.org/. $17 at the door. Students $5. Children age 12 and under free; $3 off for society members, seniors and teens. Information online or call 607-351-1845.