Dance legends celebrate 50 years of shadow play, a soprano transports audiences to South America, and a Concert Truck brings free mobile symphonic music. Plus, Kaki King, Thomas Friedman and more in your week ahead.
TUESDAY
What: Symphony of the Americas: “Between Pampa and Rio”
When: 7:45 p.m.
Where: Broward Center, 201 S.W. Fifth Ave., Fort Lauderdale
Cost: $35-$75
Contact: 954/462-0222, browardcenter.org
Renowned soprano Karen Slack may have least representative surname imaginable: There’s no time for idleness for this prolific and dynamic singer, who has always been working, even during the pandemic, when she performed virtually and launched a digital talk show. Fresh off her role as Serena in the Metropolitan Opera’s “Porgy and Bess,” Slack will join Symphony of the Americas for a change of pace: “Between Pampa and Rio” showcases the timeless compositions of Heitor Villa-Lobos and Alberto Ginastera, the most influential classical composers of Brazil and Argentina, respectively. The program promises a “confluence of musical and cultural sights and sounds.”
WEDNESDAY
What: Thomas Friedman
When: 4 p.m.
Where: Kaye Auditorium at FAU, 777 Glades Road, Boca Raton
Cost: $35-$75, free for FAU students
Contact: 561/297-6124, fauevents.com
Three-time Pulitzer Prize-winner Thomas Friedman earned the first of those honors for his time in Beirut, circa 1979-1981, covering the Lebanon Civil War. These days, he reports from well-appointed offices and studios, but his defining years as a war correspondent continue to inform his expertise on global affairs and American foreign policy. An elder statesman of Washington’s influential pundit class, Friedman has published a handful of best-sellers that have become talismans for policy wonks in and out of government, from The Lexus and the Olive Tree: Understanding Globalization to Hot, Flat and Crowded: Why We Need a Green Revolution—and How It Can Renew America. Though often criticized for his globalist perspectives by voices on the right and the left, few question his knowledge or credentials, and he is sure to be an engaging speaker at FAU’s annual Symposium on the American Presidency.
THURSDAY AND FRIDAY
Pilobolus: “Big Five-Oh!”
When: 7:30 p.m.
Where: Broward Center, 201 S.W. Fifth Ave., Fort Lauderdale
Cost: $55-$65
Contact: 954/462-0222, browardcenter.org
The best dance company ever named after a fungus, Pilobolus has been fusing contemporary choreography with gravity-defying contortionism and cutting-edge shadow play since its auspicious founding, in a classroom in Dartmouth College, in 1971. This year’s landmark 50th anniversary tour will celebrate its trailblazing legacy in theatrical dance, which has explored themes as whimsical as the fantasies of Maurice Sendak and as grave as the Holocaust. Pilobolus has performed anywhere spectacle has been prized: At the Oscars and the Olympics, on Broadway and on the stage of a TED conference. For the “Big Five-Oh!” tour, the company will debut a few compositions and re-interpret signature pieces from its 120-work repertory.
THURSDAY TO SATURDAY
What: “Intersection of Lincoln and Rosa Parks”
Where: Kravis Center, 701 Okeechobee Blvd., West Palm Beach
Cost: $35
Contact: 561/832-7469, kravis.org
This full-length play by Donna Carbone reimagines the events leading up to the Montgomery Bus Boycott. Rosa Parks boards the Cleveland Avenue Bus No. 2857 as usual, and refuses to give up her seat to a white man. But in Carbone’s telling, she ends up sharing her row with Robert Todd Lincoln Beckwith, the last living descendent of Abraham Lincoln, resulting in a wide-ranging conversation about the issues of the time—and perhaps our time, as well.
SUNDAY
What: The Concert Truck
When: 3 and 4:30 p.m.
Where: Society of the Four Arts, 2 Four Arts Plaza, Palm Beach
Cost: Free
Contact: 561/655-7227, fourarts.org
We’ve all heard of food trucks and mobile libraries. But a concert truck? Dedicated to bringing low or no-cost live music to communities from all walks of life, award-winning pianists Nick Luby and Susan Zhang formed this concert hall on wheels in 2016 by converting a 16-foot box truck into a fully functioning venue, complete with lights, sound system and piano. Parking outside schools, universities, symphony halls and opera houses, the pianists perform accomplished recitals for outdoor audiences in their ongoing efforts to democratize and redefine the classic music experience.
What: Kaki King: “Modern Yesterdays”
When: 7:30 p.m.
Where: Kravis Center, 701 Okeechobee Blvd., West Palm Beach
Cost: $35
Contact: 561/832-7469, kravis.org
This Atlanta native, born Katherine Elizabeth King, has been playing guitar for more than 30 years, and can rightly be called a virtuoso of the instrument. Rolling Stone dubbed her a “new guitar god” back in 2006, and she’s only improved since, cultivating a textured, cinematic sound bath that feels like a warm balm poured straight into the soul. But her concerts are not simply solo instrumental performances; she backs them with mapped projections in vivid Technicolor, so that her Ovation Adamas Signature Six-String acoustic guitar is as much a visual component as an audible one. King’s latest immersive multimedia experience, “Modern Yesterdays,” was conceived during the lockdown of 2020, and is inspired by the desire for the pre-COVID “yesterdays” of recent memory.
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