PoCo's Summer in the City Festival, now in its eighth week, continues to offer a wide variety of entertainment.

Cinema Under the Stars runs tonight (Friday) at 8: 30 p.m., featuring a screening of the film Hairspray at Aggie Park. In the event of rain, the showing will be moved to the following Friday.

Saturday afternoon will see the Port Coquitlam-based duo Sister Says performing at 2 p.m. at Leigh Square as part of the Village Vibe series. Consisting of brother/sister tandem Rob and Gillian Thomson, the group's signature calling cards include soul and singer/ songwriter tunes. Funk/soul/reggae act Trunk Drive will round out the day's performance.

The weekend will feature the sounds of Django Reinhart-style jazz, as Swing 2 Beat takes to Lions Park at 2 p.m for the Music in the Park concert series. The five-piece group specializes in gypsy jazz, which is derived from the sounds of 1930s and 1940s France.

A JULY TO REMEMBER

Two out of four, and two out of hundreds.

A pair of dancers who train out of Coquitlam's danceLAB Studios recently wrapped up a month-long professional summer school program at the National Ballet School of Canada in Toronto.

Erika Bernard (11) and Sarah Davies (14), were two of only four dancers accepted into the program from B.C., while hundreds more applied for the summer sojourn from locales like Japan, Russia, the United States, China, Hong Kong, Romania and Greece.

Bernard and Davies study Cecchetti ballet under danceLAB's co-artistic director Jennifer Hill, and had spent the previous six months preparing for the summer program.

"We are incredibly proud of them for their dedication and commitment to their dance training," Hill wrote in an e-mail to The NOW.

"While most dancers break for the summer, they put on their ballet tights and ballet shoes all of July, dancing four to five classes a day, six days a week with the professional faculty of the National Ballet School in a state-of-the-art facility." For more info, visit www.dancelab.ca.

GIRL TEAM TACKLES TRADITION

A Coquitlam-based singer and a stage manager from PoCo will combine their eclectic talents to bring a 19th-century play to life this week. Mezzo-soprano Debi Wong (Coquitlam) and Port Coquitlam native Hersie Init will present Clara/Clara at Vancouver's Pyatt Hall through Saturday, Aug. 20.

The play portrays the life of Clara Wieck, a 19th-century German damsel groomed from early childhood to be a concert pianist. Against her father's wishes, she falls in love with his student, Robert Schumann. The pair is then forced to sue Wieck's father in order to marry.

"Clara/Clara is an innovative stage work which breaks the traditions of both theatre and art song," Wong said in a press release.

A UBC School of Music grad, Wong also has a master's degree in voice from Yale and is currently a doctoral candidate at the Sibelius Academy in Finland.

Init, on the other hand, has earned both a bachelor of education degree and a bachelor of arts degree in theatre.

"I am so pleased to be working on Clara/ Clara," she said. "It's an original play, scripted so that the dialogue enhances the beautiful music that the Schumanns wrote expressing their undying love for each other."

Clara/Clara runs at 8 p.m. through Aug. 20 at the Pyatt Hall, located at the corner of Smithe and Seymour streets in Vancouver.

Tickets are $30 and are available at brownpapertickets.com or at the door.

EXPLORE SUBURBAN LANDSCAPES

Known for juxtaposing urban settings against nature-based scenescapes, oil painter Jennifer McAuley's works are the subject of this month's exhibit at the Port Moody Public Library. A graduate of SFU's contemporary arts program, McAuley finds catharsis and understanding through her works. Her latest exhibit, entitled Landscapes of Suburbia, is inspired by local parks and green spaces within the TriCities.

"When one lives in suburbia they seek refuge and a return to nature in the parks and wild areas that are either pocketed by the expanding city or that border the sprawl," McAuley said in a press release. "These areas are beautiful and dynamic, a refuge not only to the dog walkers and hikers but a vital artery for migrating birds and interurban wild life. The spaces have a sad beauty."

For more info, see www.jennifermcauley. com or www.library.portmoody.ca.