Start your summer with music, dance and art

Music

Guest conductor Miguel Harth-Bedoya will lead the MSO through “Alexander Nevsky” and parts of “Swan Lake.” Photo credit Gordon Trice.

The Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra opens its last month of the season with the help of guest conductor Miguel Harth-Bedoya and the MSO Chorus. On this weekend’s program is Prokofiev’s Alexander Nevsky, also featuring guest mezzo-soprano Mary Phillips, and excerpts from Tchaikovsky’s first ballet, Swan Lake. Performances are at 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday and 2:30 p.m. Sunday; tickets are $25 to $102. Call (414) 291-7605 or visit the MSO’s website to order.

Dance

It’s time once again for UWM Dance Department’s Summerdances, the annual summer showcase of faculty and guest artist work. This year’s offerings, falling under the category of Destiny/Chance & Circumstance, include works by Elizabeth Johnson, Gerald Casel, Christina Briggs Winslow, Colleen Thomas and Luc Vanier, whose work, “Bob’s Palace,” is an excerpt from his Somatophobia, set to be performed in full June 22 to 24. Performances are May 31 to June 2 at 7:30 p.m., with a reception after Friday’s show. Tickets are $17, $12 for seniors and UWM community members and $10 for students; call (414) 229-4308 to order.

Visual Art

“Divan Japonais,” a poster by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, is typical of the artistic posters of the 1890s in Paris.

Summer’s here, and so is the Milwaukee Art Museum’s latest exhibit: Posters of Paris: Toulouse-Lautrec and His Contemporaries. The exhibit focuses on the artistic posters ubiquitous in 19th-century Paris, and the artists who created these Rococo, realist or Art Nouveau masterpieces. Also included are a number of posters that didn’t make it past Parisian censors, and preparatory studies showing how these posters got from the drawing board to the streets. The MAM will show the exhibition June 1 through Sept. 9, and admission is free with museum entry. Visit the MAM’s website for more details.

Lynden Sculpture Garden celebrates its second anniversary Sunday, June 3, with “Get Out and Paint!”, a plein air painting day. Visitors will be able to paint in the garden throughout the afternoon, and there will also be a number of side events: a screening of Something New for the Rose Garden, a view of the garden through the eyes of Carl Urban, the Bradley family gardener, at 12:30 p.m.; a performance by Painted Caves, a band fronted by Milwaukeean Ali Lubbad that fuses Palestinian/Near Eastern sounds with a Western folk and jazz base, at 1 p.m.; and several garden tours, including one led by Sharon Morrisey, UW-Extension horticulture agent, that specifically focuses on the garden’s trees, at 3 p.m. The celebration runs from 12 to 5 p.m., and admission is free with museum entry: $9, or $7 for students/seniors.

Lon Michels’ “Magi,” an acrylic work on a canvas nearly 6 feet by 7 feet (56 x 68″), is just one example of the pieces in his “Life Lived Large” series.

Saturday, the Tory Folliard Gallery opens Life Lived Large, an exhibition of work by Lon Michels, a recent MFA graduate from UW-Madison. The artist’s works are all acrylics on either expansive canvases or on bone skulls, and are mesmerizing, highly textured pieces. The exhibit runs June 2 to 30.

The Charles Allis and Villa Terrace Art Museums‘ inaugural “A Chair to Remember” Chair-ity Auction isn’t for another few weeks (June 20, from 6 to 9:30 p.m.), but the museums will host a preview event Sunday, June 3, in conjunction with the opening of Villa Terrace’s Renaissance Garden opening. Visitors will be able to see the chairs up for auction at the official event, including TCD’s entry: a planter chair crafted by our DIY master, Carly Rubach. The preview will run from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., and is free with museum admission: $5, or $3 for students/seniors/military.

Theatre

Pink Banana Theater’s annual One-Act Festival opens this weekend, offering seven different short plays at Next Act’s new theater space. The shows all revolve around the theme of The End of the World, and feature local and national cast members. Performances are June 1 to June 9, all shows at 7:30 p.m. save a 2 p.m. matinee June 3. Tickets are $12, and can be purchased at their online box office.

Film

Wednesday, the Oriental Theatre screens WaterWalk, a movie filmed in Wisconsin about a father and son attempting to retraverse Jacques Marquette and Louis Jolliet’s journey down the Mississippi by canoe. The film features a number of local actors, including Jacque Troy, John McGivern, Lee Ernst, Angela Iannone, Deborah Staples and many more. The screening starts at 7 p.m. May 30, and tickets are $10 or $7.50 for students and seniors; order online or at (414) 276-5140. For more information, visit the film’s website.

Skylight Music Theatre: Sunday in the Park with George, through June 10

Sunset Playhouse: Six Degrees of Separation, through June 10

Boulevard Theatre: Cowboy Versus Samurai, through June 24

Fireside Theatre: Legally Blonde, through July 1

Last Chance

Off the Wall Theatre: Roadside, through June 3