This August, Grand Rapids Ballet’s Summer Series sees the venerable organization performing in Petoskey, outside Grand Rapids’ Peter Martin Wege Theater, and at Frederik Meijer Gardens & Sculpture Park, in an effort to celebrate dance in an accessible, community-driven way.

• Grand Rapids Ballet
• Frederik Meijer Gardens  & Sculpture Park
• GR Ballet

It’s 2024 and arts organizations in West Michigan are thriving, with incredible, jam-packed seasons of art, conversations, fun and community involvement.

• arts
• Things to Do

On the face of it, one might wonder how a French sex farce in which a greedy, deceptive bachelor shamelessly dupes three clueless, sexy women into simultaneously being his fiancées, roping in his seemingly naive old friend and his bemused housekeeper to keep the charade going could possibly play in this day and age. 

• theatre
• theatre reviews
• barn theatre

The word “Eupnea”, the title of CPR Dance company’s current season’s traveling concert, is literally defined as the breath at rest—our mode of breathing that does not require conscious thought.

• dance
• theatre reviews
• CPR Dance

There is something undeniably delightful about watching people have a wonderful time. At its heart that is the experience of seeing “School of Rock”, the infectious musical at Farmers Alley Theatre.

• theatre
• Farmers Alley Theatre
• theatre reviews

Second-wave feminism taught us that “the personal is political” and the power of that truth underscores “Detroit ’67”, the first of celebrated playwright Dominique Morisseau’s Detroit Project, a trilogy of provocative, classically-structured dramas that each bring to life a pivotal moment in the history of Detroit, which, in turn, inevitably tells a larger American story at the intersection of race, class, and gender. 

• theatre
• theatre reviews
• hope repertory theatre
• Dominique Morisseau

It starts with a tour. James Brandess, smiling under a baseball cap, serves as guide for you and the dozen or so people who’ve enrolled in his landscape class. The Oxbow Lagoon: gorgeous.

• Saugatuck
• Ox-Bow School of Art
• Art classes
• Art workshops

Screen-to-stage adaptations and jukebox musicals abound in contemporary theatre, and the new musical “Mystic Pizza”, is both. 

• theatre
• theatre reviews
• barn theatre
• Mystic Pizza

In the 2022 film Tár, Cate Blanchett plays a formidable and intimidating conductor. She suffers no fools. She demands of musicians that they sacrifice – even destroy – themselves. 

• Classical Music
• Beer City Winds

"It felt like catching the Holy Spirit in church,” Michael Jackson, the character created in “MJ” the musical, says describing the moment he felt he arrived, making music with his brothers and performing to huge applause at the Apollo Theatre. “It felt like love.”

• DeVos Performance Hall
• Broadway Grand Rapids
• Broadway
• theatre reviews