Arts & Culture

Chariots, a folk-indie-pop trio that delivers stripped-down vocals and diverse instrumentation over infectious beats, will launch the annual Kemper Presents Concert Series Feb. 26. In all, the series will showcase eight St. Louisl acts working in a variety of styles and genres most Friday evenings throughout the spring. 

Over the past 40 years, PHILADANCO has grown from a small community arts organization into a world-renowned troupe that mixes African-American cultural traditions with ballet, modern, jazz and other dance forms. This weekend, the trailblazing dance company will help the WUSTL community celebrate Black History Month with a pair of performances for the Edison Theatre OVATIONS Series Friday, Feb. 19, and Saturday, Feb. 20. 

Equipped with dialogue as pithy as their helmets, three female Victorian adventurers journey across time, space and history in the Performing Arts Department in Arts & Sciences comedy  “On the Verge (or The Geography of Yearning),” opening Friday, Feb. 19, in the A.E. Hotchner Studio Theatre.

Brian Evenson — whose intensely macabre yet darkly comic and subtly philosophical novels and stories led American Book Review to praise him as “essentially our poet laureate of violence” — will read from his work at 8 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 11, for The Writing Program in the Department of English in Arts & Sciences.

Saxophonist Jason Swagler opens the spring Jazz at Holmes Series at 8 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 4. The series, which was launched in 1996, features professional jazz musicians from around St. Louis and abroad performing in Holmes Lounge — a casual, coffeehouse-style setting — most Thursday evenings throughout the fall and spring semesters. 

Seven musicians from the Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra will join Seth Carlin, professor of music in Arts & Sciences and director of the piano program, for a performance of works by Toshi Ichiyanagi, Robert Schumann and Franz Schubert.

“The strongest man in the world is the man who stands most alone.” So argues Dr. Thomas Stockmann, the beleaguered hero of Henrik Ibsen’s darkly funny thriller “An Enemy of the People.” New York’s Aquila Theatre Company returns to Edison Theatre Feb. 12 and 13 with a new production of Ibsen’s drama as well as William Shakespeare’s delirious, gender-bending comedy “As You Like It.”

While the story of Michelangelo’s artistic genius has been told many times, the story of his social ambitions has been told scarcely at all. Indeed, scholars have largely dismissed the artist’s claims to noble birth. Yet it was precisely that belief that propelled Michelangelo’s lifelong quest not only to improve his family’s financial position, but to improve the very social standing of artists. So argues art historian William Wallace in the new biography “Michelangelo: The Artist, the Man, and his Times.” 

Nejla Yatkin, the 2010 Marcus Artist in the Performing Arts Department in Arts & Sciences’ Dance Program, will present an informal concert of her work at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday, Jan. 26. Yatkin — who was born and raised in Berlin but has Turkish roots — draws on a range of dance traditions to explore issues of memory, migration, identity and multiculturalism.

Hugh Macdonald, the Avis Blewett Professor of Music in Arts & Sciences, will conduct a concert of late works by Richard Strauss at 8 p.m. Monday, Jan. 25, in the E. Desmond Lee Concert Hall. The performance, which celebrates Macdonald’s 70th birthday, will feature musicians from the Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra and from the Department of Music in Arts & Sciences.