concerts For Lovers Only (AND For People Who Love Themselves)
In the words of the legendary Al Green, the message is love this Valentine’s Day at Black Ensemble Theater. The company’s glossy new digs in Uptown become “The Love Club” for a night, when BE members croon the kind of turn-the-lights-low standards made popular by Otis Redding, Etta James, and other mood setters (not excluding Rev. Green). Champagne and dessert optional. Slow dancing required.
GO: 2/14 at 7:30. $65; $125 per couple. Black Ensemble Theater, 4450 N Clark. blackensemble.org

ALSO THIS WEEK: The former Chicagoan Kurt Elling returns for a program of global love tunes—abetted by the remarkable violinist Regina Carter and the ebullient saxophonist/clarinetist Anat Cohen—at Symphony Center on 2/14 at 8.

dance River North Dance Chicago
The ever-passionate RNDC stages two world premieres at its always-popular Valentine’s concert. This year’s theme? Relationships. A collaboration between RNDC’s artistic director, Frank Chaves, and the pianist and composer Josephine Lee reflects on the brief, intense creative partnerships between dancers and choreographers, while Mauro Astolfi’s Contact-Me is an intricate study of the body’s connection to space.
GO: 2/10–11 at 8, 2/12 at 3. $30–$75. Harris Theater, 205 E Randolph. harristheaterchicago.org

ALSO THIS WEEK: At The Athenaeum Theatre, Chicago Dance Crash produces Duets for My Valentine, an unsentimental evening (2/11) of urban, ballet, and contemporary pairings about hard-driving breakups and makeups—sort of an antiromantic rave. . . . Two local contemporary troupes—Luna Negra Dance Theater and Thodos Dance Chicago—team up for a concert of each group’s greatest hits at North Shore Center for the Performing Arts 2/11–12. . . . Chicago Flamenco Festival staccato-steps back onto stages across the city through 3/13, starting 2/9 with Diego Amador Trio at Instituto Cervantes.

folk University of Chicago Folk Festival
Hyde Park is an unlikely home for the funkiest, folkiest folk fest in town, yet here it is for the 52nd time: a brilliantly culled homage to traditional musical culture, including Billy Boy Arnold’s country blues, bluegrass from the Wildwood Valley Boys, Bua’s Celtic melodies, and James Bryan and Carl Jones’s old-time. The fest includes concerts, workshops, dances, jam sessions, and fine folkie fellowship.
GO: 2/10–12. $10–$55; weekend passes $45–$55. U of C’s Mandel Hall, 1131 E 57th. uofcfolk.org

film We Began By Measuring Distance
Conversations at the Edge—the divergent series that sends folks from SAIC’s film, video, and new media department into the Siskel’s video vault to curate weekly screenings and director talks—sets off its tenth anniversary year with a collection of shorts by women filmmakers from or connected to Palestine. This Thursday’s installment borrows its name from a 19-minute film by artist and University of Illinois at Chicago alumna Basma al-Sharif, who fields questions after the showing.
GO: 2/9 at 6. $4–$11. Gene Siskel Film Center, 164 N State. siskelfilmcenter.org/cate

museums Laura Letinsky
The remains of a meal are never as appealing in real life as they are when photographed by Letinsky, whose light-drenched images make melon rinds, lipstick-stained wineglasses, and even fast-food wrappers oddly enticing. The U. of C. professor gives us more to drool over with a solo show—the latest in the Chicago Works series—at the Museum of Contemporary Art. Cleaning your plate is so overrated.
GO: Through 4/17. $7–$12 suggested admission (free for Illinois residents on Tuesdays). Museum of Contemporary Art, 220 E Chicago Ave. mcachicago.org

ALSO THIS WEEK: From our present vantage point post-age-of-excess, post-second-wave-feminism, and post-dawn-of-the-AIDS-crisis, MCA’s This Will Have Been: Art, Love & Politics in the 1980s—opening 2/11 and running through 6/3—aims to make sense of both what we lived through and the art interpreting it, with works by the Guerrilla Girls, Jeff Koons, and others.