Eight Days a Week 

Durham
Road In Sight
Duke University
Twenty-two area artists are on exhibit for Road In Sight: Contemporary Art in North Carolina, featuring paintings, sculpture, installation, digital media and photography, April 13-May 15. The opening reception is at 5 p.m. today and features lectures by curators Lauren Miller and Jessica West and showing of the new Arts Warehouse's exhibition of paintings and installations. Poet DeWayne Barton will also perform. See www.duke.edu/web/art/calendar for site locations and times.

Thursday
Raleigh
Cashore Marionettes
Stewart Theatre, NCSU
For the past 30 years, Joseph Cashore has crafted wooden figures and brought them to life with only a string's pull. Through the Cashore Marionettes, he and his team incite a life-like dance of stories. The show is Thursday, April 14 and Friday, April 15 at 8 p.m.

Carrboro
Jump, Ross Golan
Cat's Cradle
Something of a strange pairing. Ross Golan's scathing, politicized debut, Reagan Baby, aside from assailing the U.S. tendency to end up at war with countries we've armed and supported, takes shots at Eminem and Martha Stewart. Golan opens for regional mainstays Jump Little Children (amended to Jump on their latest release, Between the Dim and the Dark). Full of poetic flair and swooning drama, Jump deliver elegantly wrought folk-pop. Tickets are $10; the show's at 9:30 p.m. --Chris Parker

Friday
Durham
Anima Dance
Wellness Partners in the Arts
Choreographer Rachel Brooker remembers her first night roaming the Swedish countryside. "As I walked, a hole loomed up on my left. A well. Completely uncovered, with a stone curb flush with the ground. It haunted me ... even the ground seemed uncertain, if this hole could appear out of nowhere." The experience reminded her of novelist Haruki Murakami's obsession with wells. Anima Dance explores both in Field Well, during New Deal night at Wellness Partners in the Arts, 319 W. Main St., Durham. The show starts at 7:30 p.m.; suggested donation is $5. Call 680-2562. --Byron Woods

Carrboro
Southern Culture on the Skids
Cat's Cradle
You can count on one hand the number of times a year SCOTS plays the Triangle these days, so seeing them in an all-local lineup at the Cradle is news indeed. Get sloppy with Southern Culture, open your third eye via the blues with Jule Brown, after the Chrome Plated Apostles have soundly kicked in your teeth. Tickets are $12; the show's at 9:30 p.m. --Chris Toenes

Saturday
Raleigh
Martin Sexton
Lincoln Theatre
Jason Adamo, it seems, has landed the dream gig, opening for one of his favorite songwriters in his most important local gig hitherto. Like his protégé Adamo, Sexton is a guitar-toting, heart-on-sleeve everyday everydude, weaving first-person anecdotes and analysis into folk numbers about the open road, the open mind and the open bar. Tickets are $14; the show's at 9:30 p.m. --Grayson Currin

Durham
Magic Wings
Museum of Life and Science
Butterfly Bash is children's time to explore the Museum of Life and Science's Magic Wings exhibit, an in-depth journey into the lives of butterflies. Learn all about the flutters at workshops, bug hunts and even a cockroach race. The event runs 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. at 433 Murray Ave. For more information, 220-5429 or www.ncmls.org.

Chapel Hill
Facing the White Canvas
Varsity Theater
Over the course of a half century, the cantankerously talented Maud Gatewood forged a distinctive artistic identity for herself, painting hundreds of canvases of Southern culture, its inhabitants and its natural state of being. She died last fall at the age of 70, but she lived long enough to see a new film about her work. Produced by the Oscar-winning Chapel Hill documentary collective The Empowerment Project, Gatewood: Facing the White Canvas will screen this Saturday and Sunday at Chapel Hill's Varsity Theater at 1 p.m. --David Fellerath

Sunday
Raleigh
Dora the Explorer!
BTI Center
Who doesn't love pirates and monkeys? Cartoon favorite Dora comes to the stage with Dora the Explorer! Dora's Private Adventure. Along with pal Diego and jungle friend Boots, Dora interacts with the audience in Spanish-language skills and map-reading to solve mysteries and sail the Seven Seas. The Broadway Series South show runs April 15-17. For ticket info and times, call 834-4000 or visit www.broadwayseriessouth.com.

Chapel Hill
Bamboo Kids, Pink Lincolns
Local 506
Listening to the Bamboo Kids and Pink Lincolns makes it feel like 1990 again, when Maximum Rock N Roll still had 40 pages of classifieds. The Lincolns were there, and have been since '86, rolling their Tampa 1-2-3 punk and carrying the snot torch. The NYC-based Kids are probably half the age of their tour mates, but no matter. Crisp melodic-hued '77-style rock that has found a home with garage purveyors Get Hip and burning snarl that is perfectly ageless. --Eric Weddle

Monday
Raleigh
Jesse Sykes
Kings
Jesse Sykes paints what some call alt.country in no less than 80 shades of gray, laying the oils down on a tattered, world-weary canvas of Phil Wandscher's electric guitar impressions. And that voice--all smoke and surrealism--sounds as if it's charming death with a sad-smile lullaby. Arboretum opens. --Grayson Currin

Don Dixon
The Pour House
With a catalog stuffed full of 30-plus years' worth of gems ("Your Sister Told Me" and "Jean Harlow's Return," to name just two personal favorites) and a heart stuffed full of soul, Don Dixon is a true pop/rock heavyweight. And that's not even factoring in his production, thespian and interpretive skills. Tickets are $10; the show's at 8 p.m. --Rick Cornell

Tuesday
Raleigh
Red Elvises
The Pour House
It sounds like the Statler Brothers with Russian accents singing "Flowers on the Wall" with surf guitar breaks and Greg Allman organ riffs. Welcome to the world of the Red Elvises, founders of Eastern Bloc rockabilly surf music, or as their bumper sticker proclaims, "kick-ass rock 'n' roll from Siberia." Co-founder Igor Yuzov says their shows inspire audiences to act like they did "when they were 16, dancing, going crazy. That's the whole idea." Tix are $10; show's at 10 p.m. --Grant Britt

Wednesday next
Raleigh
Citizen Cope
Lincoln Theatre
Citizen Cope is not cut from the cloth of your typical singer/songwriter. Memphis-born Cope, Clarence Greenwood in real life, got his start with Maryland rapper Basehead. But Cope/Greenwood now lays down a smoother line with edgy pop with an inner city feel. Although Carlos Santana and Me'shell Ndegéocello sat in on his latest, The Clarence Greenwood Recordings, Cope will one-man-band it for this tour. Tickets are $12; the show's at 9:30 p.m. --Grant Britt