Bjorn Lomborg in Cool It!
Barbara Bradshaw and Kim Morgan Dean in Collected Stories. Theater: Playwright Donald Margulies posits a literary All About Eve story in his smart, involving Collected Stories, now getting a well-acted, nicely balanced production at Mosaic Theatre in Plantation. In it, a renowned, well-established writer of short stories gives one of her students the complex assignment of becoming her assistant. Soon, the writer shares some intimate details, which the young woman turns into source material for a novel. Issues of the nature and limits of art, as well as loyalty and propriety, surface. Barbara Bradshaw and Kim Morgan Dean face off in a rendering if the play that will have you arguing among yourselves on the ride home. Continuing through Dec. 5. Call: (954) 57-STAGE. –– H. Erstein
Alexander Sitkovetsky.
Music: The Kronberg Academy of Germany has been working with rising violinists, violists and cellists since 1993 at its home in the small town of Kronberg, just outside Frankfurt. Four or five years ago, the academy decided to expand its reach to the United States, and in 2008 formed the American Friends of Kronberg Academy.
Its Palm Beach chapter is based in Boca Raton, where its CEO is Axel Langhorst, a native of Kronberg whose international business career has included executive positions with Nabisco.
“It is about nurturing the top talent, giving them the experience with the senior great artists, and passing on this knowledge to the next generation,” Langhorst said.
On Monday evening, the young Russo-British violinist Alexander Sitkovetsky (nephew of Dmitri) appears in concert at the Boca Steinway Gallery, accompanied by the Spanish pianist Jose Menor. Sitkovetsky will play the Franck sonata and the Third Sonata of Grieg (in C minor, Op. 45), along with two showpieces: The Devil’s Trill sonata of Tartini and the Zigeunerweisen of Sarasate.
It’s the first of six concerts the Palm Beach County chapter will present this season. Sitkovetsky appears again Jan. 27 and 29, followed by two recitals Feb. 9 and 10 by the Chinese violist Peijun Xu. The Japanese cellist Dai Miyata closes out the series on March 8.
The recital begins at 7 p.m. Monday and is a fundraiser for the American Friends of Kronberg Academy. Tickets range from $40-$60. Call 283-1815 or send an e-mail to info@usfriendskronbergacademy.org. –– G. Stepanich
A scene from Theme and Variations. (Photo by Joe Gato)
Dance: The Miami City Ballet comes to the Kravis Center starting tonight for four performances of its Program I, which features Jerome Robbins’ Fanfare (Britten) and two works by George Balanchine: Bugaku (Mayuzumi) and Theme and Variations (Tchaikovsky). Edward Villella’s Miami Beach-based company is celebrating its 25th anniversary this season, and will mark the milestone with a mounting of John Cranko’s version of Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet in Program IV.
The MCB (whose first Palm Beach County performance was at the Duncan Theatre in 1987) is the only company hereabouts to perform with a live orchestra, the Opus One, which will be playing through 2013 with the company courtesy of a $900,000 Knight Foundation grant.
Program I opens with Fanfare, which was choreographed in 1953 for Britain’s new monarch, Queen Elizabeth II. It’s set to Britten’s Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra (itself a treatment of music by Henry Purcell), and starts with a tableau of ballerinas dressed in sherbet-colored tutus in a moment of stillness before they pirouette into action. Dressed as instruments in the orchestra – the woodwinds in blue, the string instruments in yellow, and the percussion in whimsical stripes and sombreros – Fanfare is lively and lighthearted and interacts in a call-and-response with the live orchestra.
Shows are set for 8 p.m. today, 2 p.m. and 8 p.m. Saturday, and 1 p.m. Sunday. Tickets are $19-$169. For more information, call 877-929-7010 or visit www.miamicityballet.org. Tickets also are available through the Kravis Center at 832-7469 or www.kravis.org.