Arts Fuse critics select the best in music, film, theater, visual arts, author readings, and dance that’s coming up in the next week.

By The Arts Fuse Staff

Dance

Class Act
June 15
Oberon
Cambridge, MA

Tall tapper Ryan Casey gets his Astaire on in the nightclub setting where tap has often felt most at home. This ode to the 1920s and ’30s includes tap dancing basketball and rhythmic mobsters choreographed by Casey and Kelly Kaleta.

Dance for World Community Dance on Film Festival
June 15
1151 Mass Ave
Cambridge, MA

A rich showing of three films: Musical Chairs, in which two New Yorkers connect through their love of ballroom dancing and have to deal with tragedy, followed by a Q&A with producer, Janet Carrus; excerpts from the documentary about the creation of India Jazz Suites, the collaboration between kathak master Pandit Chitresh Das and tap star Jason Samuels Smith, (which was so popular here that World Music/CRASHarts brought the show back for an encore presentation); and the poignant American Masters television documentary Afternoon of a Faun: Tanaquil le Clercq, about a great ballerina struck down by polio.

Peter DiMuro: Dance from the Extraordinary Everyday
June 20 – 21
Calderwood Pavilion at the Boston Center for the Arts
Boston, MA

Peter DiMuro, a well known dancer in town decades ago who spent fifteen years at the Liz Lerman Dance Exchange and has returned to take the helm of Cambridge’s Dance Complex, has made a career with art that engages with real life issues and broad community participation. As part of a BCA residency, Peter DiMuro/Public Displays of Motion shares some of his current efforts.

Celebrate Tango Show!
June 20
Holiday Inn
Somerville, MA

Dancers Analia Vega and Marcelo Varela, Facundo and Ching-Ping Posadas, Walter Perez and Leonardo Sardella accompanied by “Los Mozos Guapos” Tango Trio present an hour-long festival showcase of the style that left the docks of Buenos Aires to conquer global ballrooms and milongas. A dance party with live music follows the formal performance.

and further afield…

Reggie Wilson/Fist & Heel Performance Group in Moses(es)
June 18-21
University Theatre
New Haven, CT

also at Jacob’s Pillow in Becket, MA, July 9-13

New Haven’s expansive International Festival of Arts and Ideas presents Reggie Wilson’s Moses(es), a fantasia on the experience of migration inspired by Zora Neale Hurston’s 1939 novel Moses, Man of the Mountain. The engagement includes an especially appealing lunchtime panel June 19 where Wilson will discuss the work, his residency in Jerusalem, and his exploration of the African American vernacular with Zora Neale Hurston scholars from the Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library.

Reggie Wilson from International Festival of Arts & on Vimeo.

— Debra Cash

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Rock

Eagulls
June 17, 2014
Iron Horse, Northampton, MA
June 18, 2014
Great Scott, Boston, MA

If Peter Murphy, who played Boston last week, represents the beginning of postpunk, then Eagulls are the future. In some ways, the Leeds-based band sound like they could be the little brothers of the magnificent Savages, and like all little brothers, they have just a little bit more spunk than their older siblings. Their self-titled debut, released earlier this year, is full of well-crafted songs with a touch of atmosphere and more than a hint of energy. One of 2014’s finest debuts.

Upcoming and On Sale…

Beyonce and Jay Z (7/1/2014, Gillette Stadium); The Kills (7/8/2014, Paradise Rock Club); Queens of the Stone Age (7/14/2014, Providence Performing Arts Center); Queen + Adam Lambert (7/19/2014, Mohegan Sun Arena); Sidewalk Driver (7/19/2014, The Sinclair); Queen + Adam Lambert (7/22/2014, TD Garden); Nine Inch Nails & Soundgarden (7/29/2014, Xfinity Center); Echo & the Bunnymen (8/14/2014, Paradise Rock Club); Arcade Fire (8/19/2014, Comcast Center); Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers (8/30/2014, Fenway Park); Boston Calling Music Festival feat. The National, Lorde, The Replacements (9/5-7/2014, City Hall Plaza); Bombino (9/5/2014, The Sinclair); Justin Townes Earle (9/10/2014, Royale); Bob Mould (9/12/2014, Paradise Rock Club); Jack White (9/17/2014, Fenway Park); The Black Keys (9/21/2014, TD Garden); Kasabian (9/26/2014, Paradise Rock Club); The Orwells (10/9/2014, Brighton Music Hall); J Mascis (10/18/2014, The Sinclair); Temples (10/24/2014, Paradise Rock Club); Peter Hook & the Light (11/8/2014, Royale)

— Adam Ellsworth

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Visual Arts

Awake: Paintings by Maya Brodsky, at the University of Maine Museum of Art in downtown Bangor, ME, June 20 through September 20.

Born in 1984 in Minsk in what became the Republic of Belarus six years later, the artist Maya Brodsky specializes in meticulously painted, realistic depictions of claustrophobic, well-worn interiors and their diverse inhabitants. Her works somehow blend Vermeer, Raphael, Lucien Freud, and Edward Hopper in a style that is, nevertheless, self-possessed. Some, of people sleeping in bed, seem to have been painted from somewhere near the ceiling, the lovingly depicted folds of bedsheets making Brodsky’s subjects look rather like Renaissance angels. This is her first one-person museum show.

— Peter Walsh

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Author Events

Jeffrey Renard Allen
Song of the Shank
Porter Square Books
Monday June 16 at 7 p.m.
Free

Jeffrey Allen’s novel is based around the life of Thomas Wiggins, aka Blind Tom, who was a phenomenally gifted 19th Century African-American pianist who played for the likes of Mark Twain and President Buchanan. Trouble is, his life and work do not appear in the history books. Born a slave, most likely an artistic savant, Allen vividly and dynamically re-creates this otherwise forgotten figure in the pages of his novel.

Lenelle Moise
Haiti Glass
Porter Square Books
Wednesday June 18 at 7 p.m.
Free

What doesn’t Lenelle Moise do? The resident and former poet laureate of Northampton is an award-winning poet, playwright, essayist and internationally touring performance artist. Her writing incorporates jazz, hip-hop, and politics along the themes of identity, memory and magic. Next Wednesday, she comes into Porter Square Books to read from Haiti Glass, which Edwidge Danticat called “part mantra, part lamentation and part prayer.”

Joel Christian Gill
Strange Fruit, Volume I
Uncelebrated Narratives from Black History
Co-Sponsored by The Hutchins Center for African and African American Research
The Harvard Book Store, Cambridge MA
Wednesday June 18 at 7 p.m.
Free

“By the time I finished reading Strange Fruit, I thought, let the comic-book sellers have their mythic superheroes; through Joel Gill, we can have our own. But, instead of flying around in capes or spinning webs, the superheroes in Strange Fruit are extraordinary-ordinary black folks making a ‘way out of no way.’ The difference: they really lived.”- Dr Henry Louis Gates Jr

Small Press Book Club
Brookline Booksmith
Thursday June 19 at 7 p.m.
Free

The Brookline Booksmith’s love for independent presses continues with this month’s selection, which is A Curse On Dostoevsky by Atiq Rahimi. Discussion is free and open to the public. Curses on the mad Russian, however, will come with a price.

Megan Abbott and Rory Flynn
The Fever and Third Rail
Brookline Booksmith
Friday June 20 at 7 p.m.
Free

Next Friday is noir-tastic at Brookline Booksmith. The Edgar Award-winning Megan Abbott is in town to promote her latest novel, which is getting rave reviews from all over the literary world. Some say that to read her fiction is to be captivated by the world she creates, and that once in the reader will be instantly hooked. Rory Flynn will also read from his Boston-based novel, which is also a local favorite of noir fans everywhere. There’s a million stories in the naked city: here are two of them.

Fiction Fridays
Harvard Book Store
Friday June 20

Fridays this summer get 15% off in-store purchases at Harvard Book Store. This offer applies to paperback and hardcover fiction, Mystery, Science Fiction, Poetry, Graphic Novels, Fiction and Poetry Audiobooks, and young reader’s literature. So get your summer reading fix on the cheap- from Raymond Chandler and Robert Frost to Robert Heinlein and Molly Ringwald – all summer long.

— Matt Hanson

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Jazz

Charlie Kohlhase’s Explorer’s Club
June 19, 8 p.m.
Lilly Pad, Cambridge, MA.

That indefatigable explorer himself, saxophonist and composer Charlie Kohlhase, convenes his formidable Explorer’s Club: saxophonist Matt Langley, trombonist Jeff Galindo, pianist Pandelis Karayorgis, guitarist Eric Hofbauer, bassist Aaron Darrell, and drummer Curt Newton. The program will include compositions by Kohlhase, Karayorgis, Oliver Nelson, and John Tchicai.

Jazz Composers Alliance Orchestra
June 20, 8 p.m.
YMCA Theater, Cambridge, MA.

The always compelling 19-piece Jazz Composers Alliance Orchestra has whipped up what looks like an especially appealing program. Darrell Katz’s “Rats Live on No Evil Star” is described as “a concerto . . . for marimba, violin, and jazz orchestra,” featuring Vessela Stoyanova on marimba and violinist Helen Sherrah-Davies. Brass player Bill Lowe will premiere his “Pieces of Cane” and trombonist David Harris will lead a conduction (a composer-conducted improvisation) of his “L.E.G.” (“Latest Ethiopian Groove”).

Cassandra Wilson
June 20-21, 8 p.m.+ 10 p.m.
Scullers Jazz Club, Boston, MA.

THESE SHOWS HAVE BEEN CANCELLED. With its non-standard repertoire and instrumentation (Robert Johnson covers, guitars instead of piano-bass-drums), Cassandra Wilson’s 1994 Blue Light ’til Dawn (Blue Note) was a game changer. The hit CD made possible similar forays by Nora Jones, Madeleine Peyroux, and a host of others. For the 20th anniversary of the album, Wilson is touring with musicians from that band – guitarist Brandon Ross (who was also key to the arrangements) and bassist Lonnie Plaxico – as well as harmonica player Grégoire Maret, pianist Jon Cowherd (of the Brian Blade Fellowship), and drummer John Davis.

Human Feel
June 25, 7:30 p.m.
Regattabar, Cambridge, MA.

The quartet Human Feel was born in Boston (by way of Seattle) in the late ’80s, and its members, though sometimes crossing paths in other projects, have since gone their separate, distinctive ways. But they’re back for this reunion: drummer Jim Black , Andrew D’Angelo on alto sax and bass clarinet, tenor saxophonist and flutist Chris Speed, and guitarist Kurt Rosenwinkel.

— Jon Garelick

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Classical Music

Juilliard String Quartet
Presented by Music Mountain
June 22 at 3 p.m.
Music Mountain, Lakeville, CT

A performance featuring music from three Bs: Bach (Contrapunctus I-IV from Art of the Fugue BWV 1080), Berg (Lyric Suite), and Beethoven (String Quartet in C Major, Opus 59 #3).

Boston Landmarks Orchestra with James David Christie
Presented by the American Guild of Organists
June 23 at 7:30 p.m.
Symphony Hall, Boston, MA

The concert portion of the AGO’s 2014 national convention kicks off with a wonderfully varied program of music for organ and orchestra, showcasing the Boston Symphony’s superb regular organist, James David Christie. Music by Alexander Guilmant and Jean Langlais is followed by an all-American second half of Pinkham, Piston, and Barber.

Handel and Haydn Society plays Bach
Presented by the American Guild of Organists
June 24 at 7:30 and 9 p.m.
St. Paul Parish, Cambridge, MA

Also on the docket for these AGO events is this concert featuring the Handel and Haydn Society Period Instrument Orchestra and Chorus under the leadership of artistic director Harry Christophers. C.P.E. Bach’s cantata Spiegga, Ammonia fortunata is followed by two short pieces from his father: the motet Komm, Jesu, komm and the Missa brevis.

— Jonathan Blumhofer

Parker String Quartet
Sunday, June 15 at 5 p.m.
Shalin Liu Performance Center, 37 Main St. Rockport, MA

Rockport Music presents the Parker String Quartet with bass Tom Van Dyck in a program that includes the Quartet in F Minor, Op. 20, No. 5 by Haydn, “Ainsi la nuit” by Dutilleux, and Dvorak’s Quintet for string quartet and bass in G major, Op. 77.

Pianist Joyce Yang
Thursday, June 19 at 8 p.m.
Shalin Liu Performance Center, 37 Main St. Rockport, MA

Rockport Music presents Joyce Yang in a program of Debussy, Schumann, Mompou, Debussy, and Ginestera.

Aston Magna Music Festival
Thursday, June 19 at 8 p.m.
At Slosberg Recital Hall, Brandeis University, 415 South Street, Waltham, MA

The Festival presents a program that celebrates the 300th birthday of C.P.E. Bach. The program includes the Quartet for Flute, Viola and Keyboard, Fantasia for Harpsichord and Violin, Sonata for Bass Recorder, Viola, and Continuo, and J.S. Bach’s A Musical Offering. With Christopher Krueger, baroque flute and recorder, Laura Jeppesen, viola de gamba, and Peter Sykes, fortepiano.

Schubertiad
Friday, June 20 at 8 p.m.
Shalin Liu Performance Center, 37 Main St. Rockport, MA

Rockport Music presents a program that highlights the musical genius of Schubert: With Elita Kang, violin, Honathan Chu, viola, Owen Young, cello, Tom van Dyck, bass; David Deveau, Victor Rosenbaum, and Mana Tokuno, on piano. The evening will include performances of Schubert’s String Trio in B-flat major, Fantasy in F minor for piano hour-hands, and Piano Quintet in A major, “Trout”

Green Mountain Project
Sunday, June 22 at 7:30 p.m.
St. Paul’s Church, 29 Mount Auburn St., Cambridge, MA

Tenet presents the Green Mountain Project performing Monteverdi’s Vespers for the Feast of St. John the Baptist. The evening features a stellar cast of early music specialists under the musical direction of Scott Metcalfe and artistic direction of Jolle Greenleaf. The concert honors the fifth annual celebration of the Green Mountain Project’s Vespers Tradition.

— Susan Miron

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Film

Boston Area Film Schedules – What is playing today, Where and When

Return To Homs
Tuesday, June 17, 7:30 p.m.
Regent Theater, Arlington, MA

Presented in Collaboration with Belmont World Film and the Arlington International Film Festival, the Regent Theater presents a beautiful but brutal on-the-ground view of the war in Syria that won the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance, among other major awards. The documentary follows a group of young Syrian revolutionaries in the city of Homs, Syria. The release is being rushed due to the timeliness of the subject. Only recently, the rebel retreat from Homs was the basis for a fragile cease-fire between the army and rebels. The majority of the revenue from this screening will be donated to the non-profit DOX BOX to support independent media activists in the Middle East. Note: Viewer Discretion is Advised. Not Recommended for Children.

The Provincetown Film Festival
June 18-22
Venues throughout Provincetown, MA

One of is New England’s friendliest and most interesting festivals begins Wednesday with Last Weekend by Tom Dolby, the son of Dolby Laboratories founder Ray Dolby. The film was shot in his family home, which was also the setting for the film, A Place in the Sun. Synchronicities abound.

Many of the films focus on gay and gender issues, but there will be plenty of variety in venues up and down Commercial Street by the sea. The Filmmaker on the Edge Award this year will be presented to David Cronenberg, Excellence in Acting will go to Patricia Clarkson, and the Faith Hubley Memorial Achievement Award will be given to Debra Winger. There will be screenings of films featuring the recipients. John Waters, the godfather of the festival, will conduct interviews. He will also be signing his new book, Carsick, on Thursday. See schedule for times and locations

Citizen Koch
June 20 – 25
Brattle Theatre, Cambridge, MA

Cambridge and irate progressives unite! The U.S. Supreme Court’s ‘Citizens United’ ruling opening the floodgates for unlimited political contributions. This important film by Carl Deal and Tia Lessin investigates the impact of anonymous spending by corporations and billionaires on the electoral process, featuring stories of life-long Republicans whose loyalty is tested when their families become collateral damage in the GOP fight to take organized labor out at the knees. Alternately terrifying and funny, Citizen Koch is an essential and powerful portrait of our political times. The filmmakers will be present on opening weekend.

The Life and Crimes of Doris Payne
Wednesday, June 25 7:30 p.m
The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA

The opening film of the Roxbury Film Festival looks at how glamorous, 83-year-old Doris Payne unapologetically stole nearly $2 million in jewels over a sixty-year career. The documentary is the story of a poor, single, African American mother from the segregated 1950s who ended up as one of the world’s most notorious jewel thieves. The film explores the secrets of her trade and examines what drove her to a life of crime. A discussion with the director follows the screening.

— Tim Jackson

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Theater

Jacques Brel is Alive and Well and Living in Paris. Music by Jacques Brel.
Staged by Gloucester Stage Company
At the Gorton Theater, Gloucester, MA, through July 6.

Eric C. Engel directs a cast that includes Jennifer Ellis and Daniel Robert Sullivan in a celebrated compilation of music composed by Jacques Brel that “encompasses themes of joy and sorrow, love and loss, life and death.”

The Servant of Two Masters by Carlo Goldoni. Directed and Adapted by Jenna Ware. Songs by Luke Reed.
Staged by Shakespeare & Company
At the outdoor tented Rose Footprint Theatre, Lenox, MA, June 25 through August 23.

Goldoni’s oft-produced farce “gets a fresh take in the deft hands of director and long-time Company artist Jenna Ware. Her fast-paced and hilarious adaptation of this classic Commedia dell’arte features an adroit and energetic cast, some of whom are Berkshire natives, and who trained with S&Co. as adolescents and are now acting, directing and teaching for the Company.”

— Bill Marx