Best Bets: Friday 2/5

8 pm: Theater

The 35th-anniversary national tour of Jerome Robbins’ production of the warm and funny musical “Fiddler on the Roof” comes to town with John Preece as the turn-of-the-century Russian patriarch Tevye struggling to raise three daughters in a changing world.

* “Fiddler on the Roof,” Cerritos Center for the Performing Arts, 12700 Center Court Drive. Friday and Saturday, 8 p.m.; Sunday, 7 p.m.; Saturday and Sunday, 2 p.m. $28 to $40. (800) 300-4345. Also at California Center for the Arts, 340 N. Escondido Blvd., Escondido, Tuesday, Wednesday and Feb. 11, 8 p.m. $27 to $47. (800) 988-4253.

9 pm: Swing Music

The swing movement had yet to make a splash when the Royal Crown Revue began a series of weekly appearances at hip watering hole the Derby. Now the Warner Bros.-label band, riding a wave of swing popularity, returns to the club where it all began for two nights of dance frenzy.

* Royal Crown Revue, the Derby, 4500 Los Feliz Blvd. $15. Also Saturday. (213) 663-8979.

8 pm: Music

Actor-singer-dancer Ben Vereen has helped tell the stories of Jelly Roll Morton in “Jelly’s Last Jam,” Bob Fosse in “All That Jazz” and Fanny Brice in “Funny Lady.” Now the suave star of stage and screen will tell his own story with song, dance and anecdotes.

* Ben Vereen in concert, Carpenter Performing Arts Center, 6200 Atherton St., Long Beach. $29 to $35, $5 discount for seniors and Cal State Long Beach students. (562) 985-7000.

8 pm: Dance

For 25 years, the male ballerinas of Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo have specialized in parodying the pretensions of the dance world. But this tour is different. Along with its familiar high-camp versions of “Swan Lake,” Act 2, and “Le Pas de Quatre,”the company is putting Merce Cunningham’s 1964 modern dance trio “Cross Currents” on its Southland programs--performed straight, not as a spoof. Originally danced by Cunningham, Carolyn Brown and Viola Farber, it requires serious drag from two of the Trocks, a novelty indeed. Completing the rep: “Stars and Stripes Forever,” a new Balanchine lampoon by New York City Ballet principal Robert La Fosse.

* Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo, California Center for the Arts, 340 N. Escondido Blvd., Escondido. 8 p.m. $17 to $39. (800) 988-4253. Also Saturday, 8 p.m., in Marsee Auditorium, El Camino College, 16007 Crenshaw Blvd., Torrance. $22 to $26. (310) 329-5345.

8 pm: Dance

Former Pina Bausch soloist Meryl Tankard brings her Australian Dance Theatre to the Southland for the first time in “Furioso,” a 1993 dance-theater epic featuring music by Arvo Part, Henryk Gorecki and Elliot Sharp. In what the New York Times called “a fiercely emotional, hourlong mating rite,” the company women fly through the air while the men stay earthbound: an apt metaphor for modern romance. Founded in 1965, the 12-member company is Australia’s first full-time, professional modern dance ensemble. Tankard became its fourth artistic director in 1993, after dancing in the Australian Ballet, then with Bausch and afterward running her own troupe.

* Meryl Tankard Australian Dance Theater, Royce Hall, UCLA campus, Westwood. 8 p.m. Also Saturday, 8 p.m. $10 (students) to $30. (310) 825-2101.

7 pm: Movies

The American Cinematheque begins its regular programming at the recently restored Egyptian Theatre with a retrospective of the work of writer-director James Cameron. On Friday, the Cinematheque will screen 70mm prints of two of Cameron’s pre-”Titanic” hits: “Aliens,” the 1986 sequel to the Sigourney Weaver-starring sci-fi hallmark, and “True Lies,” the 1994 adventure-comedy starring Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jamie Lee Curtis. A discussion with producer Gale Anne Hurd will follow “Aliens,” and producer Stephanie Austin will introduce “True Lies.” On Saturday, Cameron’s Academy Award-winning “Titanic” will be screened (also in 70mm), followed by a discussion with actress Gloria Stewart.

* American Cinematheque Presents “Cosmic Fury: The Spectacular Cinema of James Cameron,” Lloyd E. Rigler Theatre at the Egyptian, 6712 Hollywood Blvd., Hollywood. Friday: “Aliens,” 7 p.m.; “True Lies,” 10 p.m. Saturday: “Titanic,” 7 p.m. $5 to $7. (213) 777-FILM.

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FREEBIES:

Acclaimed jazz pianist Billy Childs performs with members of the Los Angeles Philharmonic at Paradise Baptist Church, 5100 S. Broadway, Los Angeles. 7 p.m. (323) 231-4366.

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Nuala O’Faolain reads from her book, “Are You Somebody? The Accidental Memoir of a Dublin Woman,” in the Mark Taper Auditorium of the Los Angeles Central Library, 650 W. 5th St., Los Angeles, 11 a.m. (213) 228-7025.