Things to Do in Portland This Week, October 2025
Image: Courtesy Shaking the Tree
You’re reading our weekly Things to Do column about the concerts, art shows, comedy sets, movies, readings, and plays we’re attending each week. Sign up to receive it in your inbox.
“The Twelve Dancing Princesses,” also known as “The Shoes That Were Danced to Pieces,” is, intentionally or not, a story of surveillance and rebellion. A Brothers Grimm B–side from their second volume, published in 1815, the dark and bewildering fairy tale is filled with deception, enchantment, arranged marriage, and violence. The king, puzzled by how his 12 locked-away daughters keep wearing out their dancing shoes, challenges a string of suitors to figure out how and where the princesses disappear each night. To sweeten the deal, the king offers any suitor who solves the mystery a reward: He may choose one of the princesses as his bride and become heir to the throne.
Dancing on the Sabbath, the Shaking the Tree production that opened October 11 (7:30pm Thursdays–Sundays; thru November 8), reimagines the Brothers Grimm tale in a more covertly Handmaid's Tale–esque world. The play begins in the Center of Compliance, where audiences witness five women behind glass windows completing their daily routine of prayers, writing, and reflection. A nightly guard clocks in for his shift. The center is a place where unruly women are “retrained to become proper wives.” The king has sent five of his 12 daughters there to be disciplined. And if audiences are familiar with how the story goes, they know once the lights go out, the princesses will attempt to sneak out to a grove to dance.
Throughout the performance, the center, which is staged in the theater’s rehearsal space, serves as an immersive set. Audiences are free to move within the space and play a kind of role, too, as both detective and voyeur, explains artistic director Samantha Van Der Merwe. Audiences have been summoned by the king to spy on his daughters.
Van Der Merwe says the play’s timely themes of silent resistance and the control of women’s bodily autonomy are no accident, as access to reproductive care becomes increasingly restricted following the reversal of Roe v. Wade. The name, Dancing on the Sabbath, alludes to both dancing and witchcraft, practices that have been viewed as taboo in Western cultures and banned on and off throughout history. “These things often had to happen in secret,” Van Der Merwe says. “The whole play is basically one big secret.”
More things to do this week
Music M. Ward w/ the Oregon Symphony
7:30PM TUE, OCT 21 | REVOLUTION HALL, $51+
Longtime (and now former) Portlander M. Ward kicks off Oregon Symphony’s inaugural Sounds Like Portland Festival with a compilation of hits from his best-of album For Beginners (Merge Records). The lo-fi singer-songwriter and, alongside Zooey Deschanel, one-half of the peak-aughts indie duo She & Him, released the album in September 2024. It features 14 tracks from his wide-ranging discography. There’s a new cover of Godley & Creme’s “Cry” (featuring Folk Bitch Trio), his acoustic arrangement of David Bowie’s “Let’s Dance,” and “Chinese Translation” from his fifth album Post-War. The concert, guest conducted by local musician and Oregon Symphony creative chair Gabriel Kahane, is the first of the festival’s performances from Portland music icons like esperanza spalding, Storm Large, and The Decemberists.
Visual Art Threadlines: SWANA Stitch Exhibit
SAT, OCT 18–NOV 1 | SWANA ROSE CULTURE + COMMUNITY CENTER, $15+
Portland Textile Month began this October with more than 40 workshops and exhibits showcasing diverse textile practices from local and national artists. Returning for its third annual community show, SWANA Stitch’s Threadlines exhibit features 23 needlecraft and textile artists, including the work of Palestinian artist Ren Allathkani and Armenian artist Emma Welty. The exhibit is only available for viewing during public events at the SWANA Rose Culture and Community Center in Northeast; events include a stitch fundraiser for Haneen, a Palestinian Tatreez artist, teacher, and mother in Gaza, as well as an Egyptian khayamiya embroidery workshop. Stitchers of all skill levels are welcome to attend.
FILM Big Medicine: York Outdoors
7PM WED, OCT 22 | TOMORROW THEATER, $15
Though it is commonly known as the Lewis and Clark Expedition, the historic crossing of the continental United States leaves an integral figure out of its name: York, an enslaved man who was the only Black member of the Corps of Discovery. Exactly 220 years ago, York reached what we now know as Portland. Big Medicine: York Outdoors makes its West Coast premiere during Portland’s nine-day-long York Fest. With six different events, the festival honors York’s overlooked contributions to the expedition and his legacy as a Black explorer. The documentary film follows eight Black educators and environmental stewards as they paddle the same path York made across the White Cliffs of the Missouri Breaks in 1805. A panel discussion with Oregon Black Pioneers will conclude the event.
Elsewhere...
- After over a decade of leading the Portland Opera, general director Sue Dixon announced plans to retire at the end of the 2025–26 season. (Willamette Week)
- The Oregon Music Hall of Fame formally celebrated its 2025 inductees at the Aladdin Theater on Saturday, October 11. This year’s inductees include Portugal. The Man, Mary-Sue Tobin, Yob, and Casey Neill. (Portland Mercury)
