The world premiere of a ground-breaking new musical will take the stage at the Dormouse Theatre in Kalamazoo this month. “The Dead Memoirs” is the latest project from Western Michigan University MFA fiction student K.D. Battle, and music arranger Noah Mercil. Based on the 1881 novel The Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas by Brazilian author Machado de Assis, the play brings diverse musical influences, and fast-paced storytelling to the timeless, classic tale.

• Kalamazoo
• theatre
• opera
• Hip-Hop
• Dormouse Theatre

Is there anything as romantic as classical ballet? Deos Contemporary Ballet reminds us Victorian literature, born of the same historical period, provides the perfect fodder for a new, brilliantly conceived storybook ballet with “Jane Eyre”, performed this weekend at St. Cecilia Music Center.

• Ballet
• Deos Contemporary Ballet
• theatre reviews
• Jane Eyre

To say the relationship between dance and music is an intimate one is to state the obvious, but to fully experience how nuanced movement becomes when performed to live music is quite a privilege.

• Grand Rapids Symphony
• Ballet
• Grand Rapids Ballet
• theatre reviews
• GR Ballet

A common complaint of the much-loved cult classic 1988 Tim Burton film “Beetlejuice”—and its sequel—is that there’s just not enough of its fabulous titular character sprung to life, er, death, by the inimitable Michael Keaton.

• Broadway Grand Rapids
• Broadway
• theatre reviews
• Theater
• Beetlejuice

“I speak more easily through photographs.” These words appear in the introduction to Ann Ray’s Love Looks Not Through The Eyes: Thirteen Years With Lee Alexander McQueen.

• visual art
• Grand Rapids Art Museum
• GRAM
• fashion
• Alexander McQueen

Arts exhibitions and performances have returned in full swing to West Michigan. 

Asked to put together a bit of live entertainment for an EMI Film Studios Christmas party, Richard O’Brien, aspiring actor and lover of B movies, wrote a song called “Science Fiction Double Feature.” It went over pretty well.

• Grand Rapids Civic Theatre
• theatre
• theatre reviews
• Rocky Horror Show

Arts exhibitions and performances have returned in full swing to West Michigan. This season, there’s absolutely no shortage of concerts, symphonies, plays, musicals, ballet, visual arts and beyond. 

• Grand Rapids Symphony
• dance
• jazz
• Ballet
• Classical Music
• Theater
• symphony
• Art Museums

Rhiannan Sibbald says she’s one of those textbook stories of someone who’s been artist their whole life, and she owes that to her parents.

• Artist Profiles
• Murals
• Rhiannan Sibbald

You want to commemorate something. That band, maybe—the one whose music you’d listen to late at night, when the world was crumbling around you. 

• Tattoos
• Sovereign Arms Tattoo