Dance: Julie Kent, long a principal dancer with the American Ballet Theatre, takes the title role tonight and through the weekend in Giselle, with the Boca Ballet Theatre at Florida Atlantic University’s University Theatre. Kent, one of the best-known ballerinas of her generation, partners with another ABT standout, Marcelo Gomes, for these three performances of the beloved 1841 ballet scored by French composer Adolphe Adam. It’s a story of selfless love, as a poor village girl who falls in love with an unattainable man, then dies, comes from beyond the grave to save him from a certain death by dancing at the hands of the Willis, spirits of girls who have died before their wedding day. This is one of the staples of the repertoire, with charming, elegant music, a dramatic story, and the kind of dance that epitomizes what classical ballet is all about. The shows (with recorded music) begin at 7 p.m. today, 8 p.m. Saturday, and 2 p.m. Sunday. Call 995-0709 or visit www.bocaballet.org. – G. Stepanich
Music: The South African-born singer-songwriter Dave Matthews and his band return to the Cruzan Amphitheatre for two shows, tonight and tomorrow (Saturday night’s show is sold out, according to the band). Matthews’ politically conscious jam-band style has won him a devoted core of followers, and he’ll be joined at the Cruzan by the festival favorites Gov’t Mule, the Allman Brothers Band offspring featuring Warren Haynes. The concerts, if you can get in, start at 7 p.m. Tickets are $40-$75, and are available through Live Nation.
Then on Sunday at the Cruzan, it’s a visit from two of the rock titans of the 1970s: guitarist Carlos Santana and keyboardist Steve Winwood. This is a classic Boomer show, and while there will no doubt be much new music from these busy artists, lots of the crowd will have come to hear Black Magic Woman and Gimme Some Lovin’, among other favorites from these performers’ large catalogs. The show starts at 7:30 p.m. Sunday; tickets are $25.50-$125.50 and are available through Live Nation.
It’s the final weekend of the Palm Beach Chamber Music Festival, and the musicians will end their 19th season with a world premiere and several of the rarities for which this concert series has become known. Composer Clark McAlister, who has produced each of the festival’s six CDs, offers Odyssey, a work for flute, clarinet and bassoon written in honor of the series’ three founders: Karen Dixon, Michael Forte and Michael Ellert. Also on the program are pieces by Donizetti, known primarily for his operas but also a prolific chamber composer earlier in his career (a Trio for flute, bassoon and piano), France’s Albert Roussel (a Duo for bassoon and double bass), German-born American composer Ingolf Dahl (Concerto a tre for clarinet, violin and cello), and the beautiful String Quintet in G, Op. 77, of Antonin Dvořák. The concerts are set for 8 p.m. tonight at Palm Beach Atlantic University’s Persson Hall; 2 p.m. Sunday at the Crest Theatre in Delray Beach, and 8 p.m. Monday at the Eissey Campus Theatre at Palm Beach State College in Palm Beach Gardens. Call 800-330-6874 or visit www.pbcmf.org. – G. Stepanich
Film: For those who appreciate the excitement of a breakout performance, see the new independent film Winter’s Bone and be stunned by the emergence of young Jennifer Lawrence. This impressive young actress plays a teenager trying to hold onto her homestead in backwoods Missouri, threatened with foreclosure by the disappearance of her deadbeat, drug dealer dad. So she heads off on an odyssey in the Ozarks to find him and, of course, encounters more than she bargained for. The film, a sensation at Sundance, is directed and co-written by Debra Granik, who made a similarly bleak feature called Down to the Bone a few years ago. The release of Winter’s Bone in the summer is more than a little puzzling, but do not let that stop you from seeking out this small, low-budget gem. At area theaters beginning this weekend. – H. Erstein
Theater: Sometimes a show’s cast is powerful enough to overcome the material’s shortcomings. The new musical revue Low Down Dirty Blues at Florida Stage’s new digs at the Kravis Center in West Palm Beach is a dramatically lazy songfest, but its four-member company of performers is so entertaining, you will be willing to overlook the evening’s shapelessness. Instead, go and enjoy Sandra Reaves-Phillips, Mississippi Charles Bevel, Felicia P. Fields and Gregory Porter, four Chicago area fixtures who know their way around the blues and each get time in the spotlight to prove it. The show is not ideally suited for the Rinker Playhouse’s new thrust stage configuration, but with the expert sound design by Victoria DeIorio, the vocalists and band are a fine aural blend. Continuing through Sept. 5. Call (561) 585-3433 for tickets. – H. Erstein
Art: Next week, the Norton Museum of Art offers an exhibit of works by American artists such as Winslow Homer and Rockwell Kent from the West Palm Beach museum’s collections. The show, called American Masters: Prints and Drawings From the Norton Museum of Art collection, runs from Thursday, Aug. 5, to Oct. 1o, and was curated by the museum’s five summer interns. Those of us who’ve worked in companies that employ interns on a regular basis always look forward to the summer and collaborating with enthusiastic young people who so willingly and eagerly shoulder some of the burdens of the permanent staff. No doubt the Norton feels the same way about its quintet of helping hands, all of them young women from Palm Beach County, two of whom are still in high school and the others students at Florida State, the University of Florida and Dartmouth. Go see the show, which features 13 works on paper from the 19th and 20th centuries, as a way of honoring the interns in your own office, or as a tribute to the days when you yourself were a member of this honorable company of summer laborers. – G. Stepanich
