DANCE: Smuin Ballet hosts a special LGBT Show Pre-Party prior to their annual Christmas Ballet in the upstairs theater lobby tonight, featuring complimentary appetizers, cocktails and entertainment. $5 of every ticket sold will be donated to a local LGBT charity. (6:30 to 9:30 p.m., Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, 700 Howard Street)

MUSIC: The Bay Area's favorite all-male a cappela group Conspiracy of Beards will perform their signature Leonard Cohen covers as part of Contemporary Jewish Museum's Hanukkah-Houdini inspired RitLab. The night will also feature an Art Flash Gallery Chat on the Houdini: Art and Magic exhibition, a driedel spin-off, and lots of gift-making activities. (6 to 8 p.m., Contemporary Jewish Museum, 736 Mission Street)

FILM: Oddball Films presents Volume 3 of Jason Pappariella's Places in Pieces series, which "subsists within the framework of the two previous volumes by focusing on the mundane, the peculiar, and the discarded." The series as a whole "presents rich visual ideas that feel all at once offbeat and familiar." (8 p.m., Oddball Films, 275 Capp Street)