Eight Island kids participated in a dance competition Tuesday morning at the Hard Rock Cafe in Times Square in New York city as a part of the Pimple Blocker Battle, hosted by Clearasil. The competitions pits five dance crews against each other to become the first Clearasil Dance Crew.

Longtime friends of the Yard, Gus Solomons Jr and Carmen de Lavallade, return with Paradigm, their company of fellow luminaries, for a weekend of performances in the Yard’s intimate Patricia N. Nanon Theater. Island audiences may remember Carmen de Lavallade and Gus Solomons from last summer’s tribute to Patricia Nanon at the Martha’s Vineyard Performing Arts Center, in which they performed Three Scenes from Archy & Mehitabel.

Two of the Yard’s residencies culminate this weekend, both performances consisting entirely of new work.

On Saturday, the New England Choreographers Project presents Disappearing Woman, an informal showing by Nell Breyer, Alissa Cardone, and Lorraine Chapman. This work addresses the anxieties of three women in an increasingly dispersed, high-speed, distributed culture. The artists use the metaphor of digital media as an enveloping, inescapable extension of the body itself. There is a free family matinee (donations accepted) at 4 p.m.

Unusual sounds are coming out of the normally sedate Up-Island Senior Center at Howes House this Monday afternoon in May. Shortly after a barefoot man jumps out of a van to unload a set of conga drums, the rhythms from palms and sticks start to reverberate throughout the building.

Entrain Brings Big Love to Oak Bluffs

Vineyard-born world-rock band Entrain will present Drums for Peace, a theatre production combining elements of a rock concert, an epic drum circle, projected imagery and audience participation at the Tabernacle on Saturday, July 25 at 8 p.m. Bring your clapping hands and dancing feet. Tickets to the performance are $10 in advance at www.entrainshop.stores.yahoo.net, or $15 at the door, and kids under 12 are free.

That proud twinkle in John Alaimo’s eye on the cover of his latest solo album does not deceive.

Called Songs for Three Seasons, the disc delivers a rich and textured display of a master mood painter on an enchanting and enriching spree. Mr. Alaimo affably invites us to share his whimsy, his nostalgia, an occasional flirtation with regret, all on a splendidly harmonic solo pianistic tour of nature’s three warmer seasons.

Irish Tunes on July 4

Irish music duo Michael Rooney (on harp) and June McCormack (on flute) bring freshness, forcefulness and finesse to traditional music for a concert at 8 p.m. on Saturday, July 4, at Katharine Cornell Theatre on Spring street in Vineyard Haven. Tickets are $15 in advance at Aboveground Records, Island Entertainment and Alley’s General Store, or $20 at the door. Children are free at the door. Call 508-693-6996 or 508-693-6237

Four well-known organists will be performing at the First Baptist Church in Vineyard Haven on the evening of Friday, August 14, at 7:30 p.m. Martha Child, Philip Dietterich, David Rhoderick and Nancy Rogers will play the old Hook and Hastings organ. Edson Rogers with his trumpet will take part in this musical program, along with several vocal soloists. There is no admission charge; a free-will offering will be received and used toward the maintenance and repair of the organ.

In his 1841 essay Circles, the transcendentalist philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson celebrated the moment when a visionary rises up amongst us. “By a flash of his eye,” wrote Emerson, the artist “burns up the veil which shrouded all things, and the meaning of the very furniture, of cup and saucer, of chair and clock and tester, is manifest.”

The Harlem String Quartet makes its Vineyard debut on Monday and Tuesday, July 20 and 21, as part of the summer concert series of the Martha’s Vineyard Chamber Music Society.

In 8 p.m. concerts Monday at the Old Whaling Church and Tuesday at the Chilmark Community Center, the quartet will perform music by Joachin Turina, Maurice Ravel, Wynton Marsalis and Billy Strayhorn.