On-stage spotlight: 'The Words and Music of Irving Berlin'

THE WORDS AND MUSIC OF IRVING BERLIN

Friday-Sunday: The Ordway Center launches its series celebrating Broadway songwriters with the composer of such standards as "Puttin' on the Ritz," "White Christmas" and "God Bless America." The words and music of Irving Berlin's Americana will be delivered by a first-rate slate of Twin Cities singers, including Kersten Rodau, Joel Liestman and Maria Stukey. Raymond Berg directs. --Rohan Preston

DANCE FROM CONGO

Friday-Saturday: Congolese choreographer Faustin Linyekula last visited four years ago with the bold "Festival of Lies." His latest work "more more more ... future" draws on the powerful words of political prisoner Antoine Vumilia Muhindo, plus the driving pulse of ndombolo (a hot blend of rumba, traditional rhythms, church fanfares and funk) to mine hope from a place where it is often in short supply. Kinshasa's electric-guitar legend Flamme Kapaya (touring this country for the first time) and a five-member band propel Linyekula's Studios Kabako dancers through all the rage and passion fueling Muhindo's poetic statements of resistance. --Caroline Palmer

THE MALE INTELLECT: AN OXYMORON?

Opening: The refurbished $42 million Cowles Center is not the only new venue to come online in Minneapolis recently. Just across the street, Hennepin Theatre Trust has added a small house, the New Century Theatre, to its stable. The new flexible-space theater seats up to 300. Comic actor and writer Robert Dubac inaugurates the New Century with a return engagement of this one-man, multi-character show, centered on a distraught man trying to cope and seeking advice after being dumped by his girlfriend. --Rohan Preston