Jazz jam session
By the Jazz Café Trio and guests, 10 p.m., Jazz Café, Escazú, http://jazzcafecostarica.com.

Marley tribute
By reggae band Native Culture, 10 p.m., Jazz Café, San Pedro, http://jazzcafecostarica.com.

Theater
Free play reading of the work “Garavito,” written by Miguel Rojas, 7 p.m., Teatro Vargas Calvo, behind National Theater. Info: 2257-1612.

In a rare ballet moment, the men onstage this weekend at Costa Rica's Melico Salazar Theater outnumbered the women – 39 to eight.

The Georgian National Ballet, despite its name, was not a leotards and tutus affair in the French “ballet” tradition. This troupe, instead, featured swords and shields, sheep's wool wigs, black capes, boots and long white bride's gowns.

And the grace required throughout many of the almost 20 dance pieces was less Mikhail Baryshnikov and more Michael Jordan or even “Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon.” These Georgians jumped high, and they kicked and spun relentlessly.

“You will have an impression what kind of country we have,” Khatia Ekizashvili, the troupe's English-speaking manager, told The Tico Times Friday, before the weekend's shows, on Saturday and Sunday. “The men which are brave and masculine, and the woman which is gentle and is floating on the stage, the respect the men have towards women – you will see this,” she said.

The crowd seemed more enthused by the brave than the gentle. While the men danced with athleticism, lending leaps and bounds to the spectacle, the woman seemed unenergetic by comparison.

Female dancers executed gentle glides across the stage by taking short, quick steps inside the floor-length skirts that hid their feet. Their arms sometimes stretched out branchlike.

This was contrasted by the frenetic movements of the “brave and masculine.” Within seconds of opening the curtain, some of the male dancers had formed human towers on each other's shoulders, while others spun their bodies, swept their legs and leapt higher and higher, only to bounce on their shins and knees – wearing camouflaged knee pads.

The costumes were a spectacle in themselves, particularly the glittery white gowns and unusual, sheep's wool wigs that Ekizashvili said are called papakhis and are worn by mountain men.

The manager said the costumes were designed by Solomon Virsaladze, friend of the company's founders, the Sukhishvili family, and costume designer of Moscow's Bolshoi Theater.

While several pieces brought men and women dancing together in courtship, others saw the men onstage alone, battling one another. They struck their swords and shields, causing sparks to fly and adding metallic percussion to the musical quartet that played at the back of the stage. The musicians played a drum, two accordions and an Eastern-sounding clarinet-like instrument.

Occasionally, men and women joined dancing in unison in a sort of jig-like River Dance of the Caucasus.

For anyone unfamiliar with the culture, it was hard to place it.

“Georgia is located at the border of Asia and Europe,” said Ekizashvili, “so in the culture we have a lot of mixtures of European and Asian cultures, but still, I wouldn't say that it's more European or Asian, it's something totally different.”

Costa Ricans are set to hit another bump at the pump, paying more colones for gasoline starting this coming Saturday after the Public Services Regulatory Authority (ARESEP) approved a gas price hike.

The price of regular will go up ¢16 (a little over 3 U.S. cents) per liter, super will rise ¢20 (4 cents) and diesel by ¢31, according to an ARESEP press release.

That means the price of super will go from ¢601 ($1.21) a liter to ¢621 ($1.25); regular will go from ¢588 ($1.185) to ¢118 (nearly $1.22); and diesel from ¢556 to ¢587.

These prices could rise again in the next month after a bid by the National Oil Refinery (RECOPE) to push the price of regular gas up another ¢40 on top of ARESEP's rate, the daily La Nación reported.

Halting Nicaragua: Truckers wait on a road outside Managua participating in the Nicaraguan transportation strike that has paralyzed the country. As of yesterday, the strike had gone on for seven days.

Mario López | EFE

MANAGUA, Nicaragua – Just as a nationwide transportation strike was finishing a week that has paralyzed the country and crippled the economy, a renewed energy crisis has led to water rationing here and blackouts lasting from three to seven hours daily.

Striking bus drivers and truckers continued yesterday to keep their ignitions turned off despite a government gesture to slash gas prices for motorists in their sector.

Transport sector leaders were expected to sit down yesterday evening with Catholic Cardinal Miguel Obando y Bravo, a well-known negotiator, in talks that could determine if the strike today will enter its second week. Analysts are warning that the strike could escalate into more violence.

But stopped buses and blackouts aren't the only thing paralyzing Nicaragua.

With a government gridlocked by partisan bickering, a judicial system immobilized by striking judges, and a growing lack of confidence among international donors, the opposition is calling on President Daniel Ortega to either assume his responsibility to resolve the worsening crisis, or resign.

“If he can't (resolve the crisis) he should resign from his post and hand it over to his vice president,” liberal opposition leader Eduardo Montealegre said Thursday. “And if he doesn't want to, we should hold a referendum together with the municipal elections next November to see if the country considers him capable of continuing in government.”

Montealegre, who lost to Ortega in the 2006 presidential elections and is now running for mayor of Managua for the Liberal Constitutional Party (PLC), called Ortega's 16 months in office “disastrous,” leading to 22 percent accumulated inflation, runaway price increases for the cost of living, and massive job loss due to his “inability to generate an adequate climate for private investment.”

Read this Friday's Nica Times for more on Nicaragua's crisis.