The Kravis Center screens classics of Black cinema, Lynn ventures “Into the Woods,” and Palm Beach Opera goes fishing for a love triangle. Plus, Terence Blanchard on Malcolm X and more in your week ahead.
WEDNESDAY
What: “Declaration: The Story of American Independence”
When: 6:30 p.m.
Where: The Studio at Mizner Park, 201 Plaza Real, Boca Raton
Cost: $12.51 (Free for Boca Raton Historical Society members)
Contact: 561/395-6766, bocahistory.org
As the U.S. celebrates its 250th anniversary this year, the Boca Raton Historical Society has slated some 10 talks and exhibitions, stretching from this week through the end of the summer, that illuminate key aspects of American history. The series starts, appropriately enough, with the document that established our country’s freedom from the yoke of British occupation. Though encompassing just 1,337 words—shorter than most features in Boca magazine!—the authors’ mission statement contains, per prize-winning historian Joseph Ellis, “the most potent and consequential words in American history.” In this presentation, Robert Watson, the acclaimed author, historian and Lynn University professor, will break down the drama that led to the document’s conception and publication, detailing the tensions among Founding Fathers, the scope of their revolutionary ideas, and the risks they took to publish them.
THURSDAY TO SATURDAY
What: African American Film Festival
When: Various show times
Where: Kravis Center, 701 Okeechobee Blvd., West Palm Beach
Cost: $60 for five-film series
Contact: 561/832-7469, kravis.org
Sports and dance form the DNA of this year’s African American Film Festival, an annual Kravis Center tradition. Subtitled “Dance Like a Butterfly, Sting Like a Bee,” the festival features five titles that filter the Black experience through sports or dance, curated by local film expert Terri Francis, who has brought on guest speakers at four of the screenings. The documentary “Muhammad Ali, the Greatest” (6:30 p.m. Feb. 19) charts the boxer’s storied career and cultural impact, with insights from director Jimmy Jacques; 1935’s “Princess Tam” (6:30 p.m. Feb. 20) stars dance legend Josephine Baker in a musical comedy inspired by “Pygmalion,” and is introduced by Miami historian Nadege Green; Emmy-winning filmmaker Cathleen Dean will lead audiences into “Love and Basketball” (1 p.m. Feb. 21), the 2000 hoops-themed romance; and “Stormy Weather” (1 p.m. Feb. 22), a hit 1940s musical with Lena Horne, features a talk from Miami choreographer Gentry George.
FRIDAY
What: “Malcolm X Jazz Suite”
When: 8 p.m.
Where: Arsht Center, 1300 Biscayne Blvd., Miami
Cost: $40-$141
Contact: 305/949-6722, arshtcenter.org
Director Spike Lee and trumpeter Terence Blanchard have served as muses for each other since the former became a household name in cinema. Since 1991, Blanchard has scored 14 of Lee’s movies, providing the sonic textures for his documentaries, mainstream hits and independent projects alike. Few projects were more personal for Blanchard than his work on “Malcolm X,” Lee’s visionary epic about the slain civil rights activist. Fixated on Malcolm long after the credits rolled, Blanchard went on to rearrange, record and release his “Malcolm X Suite” as a small-band quintet album a year later. Blanchard has continued to revive and refine the soulful suite in the decades since. In this concert, hosted a day before what would have been Malcolm X’s 100th birthday, Blanchard will perform it with his band, the E-Collective, and a string quartet.
FRIDAY TO SUNDAY
What: “Into the Woods”
When: 7:30 p.m. Friday, 2 and 7:30 p.m. Saturday, 3 p.m. Sunday
Where: Wold Performing Arts Center at Lynn University, 3601 N. Military Trail, Boca Raton
Cost: $35-$50
Contact: 561/237-7000, lynn.edu
Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine’s second musical collaboration needed just one tryout before it debuted on Broadway, netting three Tonys in a year (1988) otherwise dominated by “The Phantom of the Opera.” “Into the Woods” has since become one of their signature works, a delightful and deadpan mash-up of the several Brothers Grimm fairy tales with some of the composer’s most persistent earworms and plenty of narrative surprises. Central to the story are a baker and his wife, and their quest to remove a witch’s curse that has left them childless. As the baker enters the woods to secure the ingredients needed to reverse the curse, his story collides with others who have ventured into the mystical space, among them Cinderella, Little Red Riding Hood and Jack (of the Beanstalk fame).
What: Palm Beach Opera: “The Pearl Fishers”
When: 7:30 p.m. Friday and Saturday, 2 p.m. Sunday
Where: Kravis Center, 701 Okeechobee Blvd., West Palm Beach
Cost: $28.75-$230
Contact: 561/832-7469, kravis.org
It’s a tale as old as time: Two guys have a thing for the same gal. In the case of George Bizet’s opera “The Pearl Fishers,” the guys are Zurga, newly elected leader of a fishing village in present-day Sri Lanka; and Nadir, his childhood friend, with whom he reunites at the beginning of the story. When they were younger, both needed only a glimpse to fall in love with Leila, a veiled Hindu princess, and both vowed that they would never pursue their desires for her, lest it destroy their friendship. Naturally, Leila reappears in their lives, with a vow of chastity to maintain her oath in the priesthood. All intentions around this swirling love triangle will be tested in an opera that, in its 1863 premiere, helped put its then-25-year-old composer on the international map.
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