The Arts

Photo by Jim Dryden, Partners 1

Good Form

Bucking the exodus of galleries from Minneapolis’s Warehouse District, the Form + Content Gallery opens its inaugural exhibition there on March 1, featuring works from founding members as well as guest artists, selected by the assistant curator of visual art at the Walker Art Center. Going forward, the gallery expects to stage lectures, readings, and live performances to make the art-viewing experience less passive. • Form + Content Gallery, Whitney Square, 210 Second St. N., Mpls., 612-436-1151.

Photo by Joan Marcus

Move Toward the Light

Broadway’s hottest show, The Light in the Piazza, brings some amore to Minneapolis from March 20 to 25. Staged at the Orpheum Theatre, the winner of six Tony Awards is said by the New York Times to have “the most romantic score of any Broadway musical since West Side Story.” It’s girl-meets-handsome-stranger with a touching twist. • Orpheum Theatre, 910 Hennepin Ave., Mpls., 612-673-0404

Merci for the Memories

Back in Minneapolis after 34 years, Les Ballets Africains brings Mandinka Memories to Northrop Auditorium on March 1. For half a century, the company has embodied African culture as the national dance ensemble of Guinea, baring their souls and their bodies (literally—there’s partial nudity involved) in high-energy performances. • Northrop Auditorium,
84 Church St. SE, Mpls., 612-624-2345.

Kick Up Yer Heels

We’re pretty sure the neck of Myron Johnson, artistic director for Ballet of the Dolls, isn’t red. But he’s pushing his patented blend of camp and cool into some pretty swampy waters with Country Cabaret, a new work danced to early ’20s Cajun, honky-tonk, and even Trisha Yearwood–style contemporary country. When his troupe debuts the piece March 8 to 18, there’ll be less line dancing and more ballet, jazz dance, and even mime. Yee-hah! • Ritz Theater, 345 13th Ave. NE, Mpls., 612-436-1129.

King of Musicals

Camelot, the musical depiction of King Arthur’s court, bolstered the growing fame of actors Julie Andrews, Richard Burton, and Robert Goulet when it opened on Broadway in 1960. It also provided a metaphor for the idealistic reign of John F. Kennedy, who ascended to power at about the same time and apparently loved the show. Stopping at the Ordway Center from March 6 to 17, the musical is best known nowadays for such songs as “How to Handle a Woman” and the poignant love triangle around which the plot revolves. Not that JFK would have known anything about those subjects. • Ordway Center for the Performing Arts, 345 Washington St., St. Paul, 651-224-4222.

Healing the Touch

Last year, the American Composers Forum, a St. Paul–based supporter of new music, sent a member to the Tubman Family Alliance in Minneapolis to create a piece that reflects the center’s work: healing from domestic violence. Composer Maura Bosch decided to focus on the rarely heard point of view of the now-contrite men involved—which is to say, the perpetrators. On March 10, the celebrated male vocal ensemble Cantus will premiere Bosch’s composition in a concert that also features the poet Robert Bly reading from his work. • Ted Mann Concert Hall, 2128 Fourth St. S., Mpls., 651-209-6689.

Tuned Up

The North Star Opera was long the quirky cousin of the more prominent Minnesota Opera. Now, the local troupe has renewed its commitment to fresh, spunky performances with a new name, Skylark Opera, and tagline: Familiar, New, and Out of the Blue. Lost in the Stars, to be performed March 24 to April 1, could fit all three specifications. Starring Regina Williams as a nightclub singer, the Kurt Weill musical is based on the novel Cry, the Beloved Country, in which a South African minister must choose between his son’s life and the convictions of his faith. • Ritz Theater, 345 13th Ave. NE, Mpls., 651-209-6689.

Deluxe by Ellen Gallagher

Seen Today’s Paper?

Just as works on paper are beginning to attract increasing interest from collectors (prices for paintings have gone skyward), the Walker Art Center reveals its latest additions in printmaking, drawing, woodcuts, and collage. Paper Trail: A Decade of Acquisitions opens March 15, demonstrating that there is no end to the ways that wood pulp can be manipulated in the name of creative expression. • Walker Art Center, 1750 Hennepin Ave., Mpls., 612-375-7600.

Lost and Found

In the late 1980s, more than 20,000 young Sudanese boys fled civil war and slavery to take refuge in Kenya, with some eventually relocating to small American towns. The Lost Boys of Sudan, premiering March 27 at the Children’s Theatre Company, follows three refugees who trade cow herding for cow tipping, and desert heat for freezing cold in Fargo, North Dakota. • Children’s Theatre Company, 2400 Third Ave. S., Mpls., 612-874-0400.

Behind Clothes Doors

Recently revived on Broadway in a lively production starring Harry Connick Jr., The Pajama Game is guaranteed to keep you awake. Once considered light entertainment from the ’50s, the new Tony Award–winning version goes deeper into the subtext of labor disputes in a garment industry dominated by Latino workers. Mixed Blood Theatre’s version, March 9 to 24, will be partly in Spanish with English subtitles. • Sabathani Community Center, 310 E. 38th St., Mpls., 612-338-6131.