Best bets for Folklife festival

Folklife is huge and confidently picking "the best" of its 900-odd performances is impossible. Besides, maybe "the best" isn't what you want ... maybe you just like to be immersed in silly variety.

Where else but Northwest Folklife can you stumble out of a dark room, having just seen what can only be described as "Pizzeria Italian" music from Lenny Luzzi and the Primo Basso Band (at 1 p.m. Saturday in the KUOW Center House Theatre), and then find yourself face to face with a dance team called Irish Entanglement (at 1 p.m. Saturday on the Center House Court)?

Go to www.nwfolklife.org for a full printable schedule. For one man's plan of attack, read on:

St. Demetrios Greek Dancers, 3:25-4 p.m. today, Exhibition Hall

Perhaps nothing makes one feel they've arrived at Folklife more than the St. Demetrios dancers. Whenever there's a festival at Seattle Center, there's always a St. Demetrios food booth and some dancers. The church is a subtle constant of Seattle Center festival character.

High-School Swing Dance, 5-6:45 p.m. today, Center House Court

A participatory intro to swing dancing (Folklife loves participation), and music from the Eckstein Middle School Jazz Band and the Garfield High School Jazz Ensemble, the latter recent winners at the national Essentially Ellington jazz-band competition.

Blackened Cascadian Folk, 6-9 p.m. today, Vera Project

Um ... there's "skybound new-age psychedelia" from At the Head of the Woods, "archaic heathen folk" by Waldteufel, and Soriah does some Tuvan throat singing.

The Big A-Y-P Kickoff! 3-4 p.m., Saturday, Mural Amphitheatre

Mayor Greg Nickels gets down with the Ballard Sedentary Sousa band and talks about Folklife 2009's cultural focus — the centennial of the 1909 Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exhibition — with Chinese lion dancers aroar.

Filipino Show, 1-3 p.m., Sunday, Exhibition Hall

There's dance and music, but the real heartwarmer is the Fil-Am Family Choir. This would be one of the events that the 1909 A-Y-P would have handled weirdly, and now that we're in 2009, will have a lot more to do with Filipino pride than white-on-brown gawking.

206 Zulu Showcase, 7-10 p.m. Sunday, Vera Project

Come for Yirim Seck, possibly Seattle's best Senegalese-American rapper, and stay for Helladope, our town's hands-down most exciting young rap group, straight outta Beacon Hill.

Andrew Matson: 206-464-2153 or amatson@seattletimes.com