GUERRILLA GIRLS
For decades, these feminist avengers have created posters, billboards, and more decrying the art world’s deficit of women and minorities. We assume female artists created most of the work on view at this retrospective at Columbia College—but with those gorilla masks, who can be sure?
DETAILS:
3/1–4/21 The notorious feminist avengers are back, filling two gallery spaces with videos, posters, and banners featuring the artists in their signature gorilla masks. The exhibits also include a selection of the group’s favorite love notes and hate mail.
3/1 The curator Neysa Page-Lieberman leads a Q&A with the Guerrilla Girls at the Conaway Center. At 6.
A+D Gallery, 619 S Wabash, and Glass Curtain Gallery, 1104 S Wabash. colum.edu.
Photograph: Tom Nowak Kathe
HOT PINK
If Adam Levin’s 1,030-page debut novel, The Instructions, remains on your shelf of good intentions, maybe the Chicagoan’s new short-story collection will make your bedside table. Hot Pink (McSweeney’s, $22) is downsized not only in subject matter (small-scale butterfly effects) but also in length (256 pages).
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THIRD COAST PERCUSSION
The all-percussion ensemble ventures out—far out—into the Adler Planetarium’s auditorium, surrounding the audience for a performance of Gérard Grisey’s Le noir de l’étoile. Expect sound recordings of the Vela pulsar and spacy images playing overhead. In a word: trippy.
DETAILS:
3/14 This talented local ensemble performs Gérard Grisey’s Le noir de l’étoile—inspired by and incorporating radio signals emitted by dying stars—at the Adler Planetarium. Expect blinking lights and stellar projections in the big dome. At 7:30. $10–$15. 1300 S Lake Shore. thirdcoastpercussion.com.
Photograph: NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center
LUNA NEGRA DANCE THEATER
Spain, the home of tapas, Penélope Cruz, and that tomato-throwing festival, also gave us Gustavo Ramírez Sansano, Luna Negra’s artistic director and the choreographer of the company’s first full-length production. Carmen.maquia takes inspiration from Georges Bizet’s Carmen and Pablo Picasso—two other cultural icons that still reign in Spain.
DETAILS:
3/24 Picasso, Carmen, and bullfighting may be well-frayed Iberian clichés, but LNDT’s artistic director, Gustavo Ramírez Sansano, mines ritual slaughter, crimes of passion, and Picasso’s violent views of sexuality in the highly original Carmen.maquia (a riff on tauromaquia, or “art of bullfighting”), the troupe’s first full-length dance drama. At 8. $25–$65. Harris Theater, 205 E Randolph. harristheaterchicago.org.
Photograph: Cheryl Mann
FELA!
Just like the titular Fela Kuti, father of Afrobeat and fierce opponent of military rule in 1970s Nigeria, this three-time Tony-winning musical is bound to rouse audiences. That exclamation point means “Get up and dance.”
DETAILS:
3/27–4/8 The Nigerian composer/performer/activist Fela Kuti provoked his country’s military dictatorship, getting his mother killed. He sent her coffin to the head of the armed forces and continued writing protest music. The Tony-winning Fela! celebrates a complicated man who raised the consciousness of a nation. $20–$90. Oriental Theatre, Ford Center for the Performing Arts, 24 W Randolph. broadwayinchicago.com.
Photograph: Tristram Kenton