8pm DanceReturning to the Southland for what...

8pm Dance

Returning to the Southland for what The Times called “an evening of antic lunacy,” the freewheeling, New York-based trio Second Hand uses an assortment of found objects as props and costumes (hence the group’s name). Studiously irreverent but highly adept at gymnastic body-sculpture, Marlon Torres, Greg O’Brien and Paul Gordon have scheduled the West Coast premieres of “Window-7,” “The Much,” “Viklarbo,” “Merry-Go-Round” and “Lonesome Cowboy Bob.” Old favorites are also promised, including “Clackers,” in which, as the Village Voice explained, “they’ve tied triangular wooden pieces under their buttocks and wooden blocks to their ankles and rap them together loudly as they dance.”

Second Hand, Beckman Auditorium, Caltech, 332 S. Michigan Ave., Pasadena. 8 p.m. $14 to $22. (888) 2-CALTECH. Also April 13 at 8 p.m. at Smothers Theatre, Pepperdine University, 24255 Pacific Coast Highway, Malibu. $20 (children) to $30. (310) 506-4522.

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8:30pm Theater

New York-based humorist, cartoonist and photographer Flash Rosenberg hosts “Tickling Adam’s Rib,” an evening of comedy with a rotating bill of female comedians. (See story, Page 16.) Performers include Amy Borkowsky (“Amy’s Phone Machine: Messages From Mom”), hearing-impaired comedian-storyteller Kathy Buckley (“No Labels, No Limits”), the “Uncabaret’s” Beth Lapides, “Yenta Unplugged” Annie Korzen (“Seinfeld’s” Doris Klumpus), piano comic Marie Cain and chanteuse-comedian Teresa Tudury.

“Tickling Adam’s Rib,” Gindi Auditorium, University of Judaism, 15600 Mulholland Drive, L.A., Saturday, 8:30 p.m.; Sunday, 2 and 7:30 p.m.; Tuesday, 8 p.m. Ends Tuesday. $30 to $35. (310) 476-9777.

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8pm Pop Music

England’s Fila Brazillia has been one of electronic music’s most respected forces over the course of its decade-long career, which has yielded eight albums and remix jobs for the likes of Radiohead, Lamb and UNKLE. In its latest set, “Jump Leads,” the team of Dave McSherry and Steve Cobby continues to surprise, shedding its “chill out” image with some heavy funk inflections.

Fila Brazillia, Knitting Factory Hollywood, 7021 Hollywood Blvd., Hollywood, 8 p.m. $15. (323) 463-0204.

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8pm Music/Poetry

Launching an 11-stop U.S. tour, the Takacs String Quartet and former Poet Laureate Robert Pinsky appear in Royce Hall performing “All the World for Love”--uniting the poetry of Ben Jonson, Emily Dickinson, Robert Frost, Louise Bogan, Alan Dugan, Virgil and 10 others, including Pinsky himself, with Janacek’s String Quartet No. 2, the Adagio from Barber’s Quartet, Opus 11, and Britten’s String Quartet No. 3.

Takacs Quartet, with Robert Pinsky, Royce Hall, UCLA, 405 Hilgard Ave., Westwood, 8 p.m. $20 to $35. (310) 825-2101. Also Sunday at Campbell Hall, UC Santa Barbara, 4 p.m. $25 to $30. (805) 893-3535.

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8pm Theater

A.R. Gurney grew up in a well-off family in Buffalo, N.Y., and is known for writing about life amid the comfortable classes of the American Northeast. “Far East,” in its Southern California premiere at the Laguna Playhouse, is drawn from a different part of his life: his Navy days stationed in Japan during the early 1950s. The play concerns a young naval officer who falls in love with a Japanese woman--to the consternation of the folks back home and the wife of his commanding officer, who resolves that this East-West twain, having met, will not remain together.

“Far East,” Laguna Playhouse, 606 Laguna Canyon Road, Laguna Beach. Tuesdays to Fridays, 8 p.m.; Saturdays, 2 and 8 p.m.; Sundays, 2 and 7 p.m. Ends May 5. $38 to $45. (949) 497-2787.

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8pm Dance

No locally based company has caught the imagination of young audiences as strongly as Jacques Heim’s Diavolo Dance Theater, which uses a gymnastic movement vocabulary to explore unusual physical environments for dance. In their upcoming program, for instance, the performers begin “Tete en L’Air” (1994) by streaming down a steep wooden staircase and end by popping out of trapdoors inside it. In the two sections of “Trajectoire” (1999 and 2001), they rock the boat--the set is a large, round-bottom platform that can tip and roll depending on where they place their weight on it. We’re all conditioned and sometimes undone by the spatial realities of our homes, offices, modes of transportation. But who besides Diavolo makes those experiences into potent dance metaphors?

Diavolo Dance Theater, Marsee Auditorium, El Camino College, 16007 Crenshaw Blvd., Torrance, 8 p.m. $23 to $26. (310) 329-5345.

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8:30pm Theater

Three Asian American women meet in search of the perfect refrigerator in Lodestone Theatre Ensemble’s premiere of “Refrigerators,” Judy Soo Hoo’s exploration of the relationship between people and possessions. Jeanne Sakata heads the cast.

“Refrigerators,” East L.A. College Auditorium, 1301 Cesar E. Chavez Ave., East L.A., Saturday, 8:30 p.m. only. Regular schedule: Fridays, 8:30 p.m.; Saturdays, 2:30 and 8:30 p.m.; Sundays, 7:30 p.m. Ends April 28. $13. (323) 993-7245.