“I like a Gershwin tune, how about you?”

If you do, put on your dancing shoes and head to the Encore Musical Theatre in Dexter for a feast of George Gershwin tunes and Ira Gershwin lyrics.

Crazy for You is a post-Gershwin, Gershwin musical. The 1992 Tony Award-winning best “new musical” brought light singing, dancing, and frivolity back to Broadway. Conceived by and with a book by Ken Ludwig, the play uses the Gershwins’ 1931 Broadway hit Girl Crazy as the framework and then adds numerous songs from other Gershwin stage and film musicals, a few tweaks to the story, and ample room for dance routines. The result is an appropriately bubbly, silly, charming tribute to a style of musical that lit the lights of Broadway in the 1920s and early '30s with great music that lingers on.

Jason DeMarte's intimate solo show Garden of Artificial Delights mixes the domestic, the “natural,” and the artificial to create a room-sized simulacrum of a still-life at the University of Michigan Museum of Art.

DeMarte takes over the space with his take on classic floral wallpaper, a foreboding gray background with a warm foreground containing peonies, poppies, and female cardinals. The stage of the exhibition is the entire ArtGym, a relatively cozy gallery space that houses DeMarte’s room-sized adhesive wallpaper, and six framed photographs. Each photograph is digitally manipulated and portrays what appears to be at first glance a traditional still life. The color palette and inclusion of floral elements in each photograph echo the wallpaper, with a gray, dreary fog contrasting against vibrant flora and fauna.

Except, it isn’t always flora and fauna featured in the frames of these photographs.

Instead, multi-colored candy floats through the dreary atmosphere, paint drips over a peony and covers a bird entirely, or perhaps canned whipped cream covers wilting flowers from which butterflies are attempting to feast. In the center of the gallery space, there is a square black bench that viewers may utilize in order to absorb the 360-degree immersive experience created by the wallpaper. 

Each photograph is a digital photomontage comprised of multiple images, edited to appear “hyperreal,” as UMMA’s Assistant Curator of Photography Jennifer M. Friess observes. The resulting works of art are seductive, pulling us into the dismal yet confusingly bright and vibrant world of the birds and their candy.

Being a culinary ambassador for cookware. Acting as a dominatrix. Facing search and seizure laws in Tennessee. Helping the refugee crisis in Greece.

These are all things that author Susan Jane Gilman had to have known or learned about to include in her new novel, Donna Has Left the Building, said fellow author Polly Rosenwaike in conversation with her at Literati Bookstore on Thursday, June 6. There, Gilman shared stories from her life and research that led to writing about these situations in her book. Within these experiences, Gilman’s characters may be flawed and behave badly, but they also display tenderness and sympathy, added Rosenwaike.

As a writer, “You want to have empathy for all characters,” Gilman said. “I’m all of them.”

This novel has strong ties to Michigan. Gilman wrote Donna Has Left the Building “as a valentine to being here” in southeastern Michigan at the University of Michigan for her MFA and then teaching at U-M and Eastern Michigan University. Gilman, who grew up in the Upper West Side of Manhattan, found the Midwest to be a big contrast to the way she observed that people seemed to be constantly performing in New York.

After six years of glorious noise, one wouldn’t be wrong to think of Fuzz Fest as an Ann Arbor institution -- if using that word for a celebration of Michigan’s loudest and weirdest metal/punk/psychedelic artists didn’t seem so incongruous.

Once again invading the Blind Pig with a sea of denim and leather, Fuzz Fest 6 serves as an important convention for those with calloused eardrums and dilated pupils -- or anyone who seeks out the musically extreme.

The lineup is 33 bands strong, spans a number of genres and represents more decibels than most responsible adults can consume over the course of three days, but here are a few highlights based solely on this reporter’s particularly coarse tastes.

With Peripheral Technologies, curated by Thea Augustina Eck, the Ann Arbor Art Center continues its trend of bringing together a diverse group of voices who ask us, through their works, to reconsider the limits of fine art in an era when we are constantly being asked to do so.

The types of technology employed by the 12 artists -- and how they can be adapted for the creation of art -- are numerous, among them CNC (computer numerical control) machining, image scanning, computer-generated algorithms, and drone photography. Many artists pair emergent technologies with traditional or natural materials such as wood. These pairings create intriguing juxtapositions that ask viewers to consider our current technological moment in relation to manufacturing methods of the recent past. The artists come up with a different conclusion through methods, materials, and their finished works.

A round-up of arts and culture stories featuring people, places, and things in Washtenaw County, whether they're just passing through or Townies for life. Coverage includes music, visual art, film & video, theater & dance, written word, and Pulp life (food, fairs, and more). If you're reading this in the future and a story link is dead, look up the URL on web.archive.org; we've cached every post there.

Featuring articles on what's happening at UMMA this summer, the Nevertheless Film Festival, the latest episode of Ann Arbor Tonight with Bob Ufer's son, a rare video of the grindcore band Repulsion playing Schoolkids Records in 1991, and many more.

Rin Tarsy is drawn to creating albums with “[l]yrics that inspire, vulnerable songs that create connection and tap into feeling, organic and raw instrumentation, and energy in the music that is just plain fun to groove to!”

The Ark describes her music as “Midwestern soul-tinged Americana with an arresting, bone-shaking voice.” Currently, she is going in a new direction, the singer-songwriter genre, which is a departure from her 2018 spiritual-folk album, East. She’s in the process of recording new songs. She’s also relatively new to the area after moving to Ypsilanti from Grand Rapids for a job two years ago. 

Rin Tarsy will perform new music at The Ark on Tuesday, June 25, at 8 pm with free admission and nonperishables accepted for Food Gatherers. She shared about her creative process, sources of inspiration, and love for music with Pulp.  

The Tenth Muse tells the story of Katherine, a mathematics scholar with a largely unknown personal history, through her voice. Her relationships, family, choices, and studies begin to interconnect as she advances in mathematics and simultaneously uncovers her past. As Katherine narrates her experiences spanning her childhood in the 1950s, fellowship in Europe, and family’s past in World War II, she points out pivotal moments in her life and what they mean to her. Both success and pain mark her journey of learning about herself and gaining prestige in mathematics. 

Author Catherine Chung grew up in Michigan, where her second novel, The Tenth Muse, begins. She has a background in mathematics herself and went on to earn her MFA at Cornell University. She lives in New York City and is a fiction editor at Guernica. 

Chung reads at Literati Bookstore on Tuesday, June 25, at 7 pm, and prior to her visit to Ann Arbor, she answered some questions from Pulp.

For roughly half a decade, the Roman emperor Hadrian was in love with a man who was not his spouse. Between 125 CE and 130 CE, the Greek youth Antinous became a favorite of Hadrian, and for the final two years of the latter's life they were side by side touring the Roman empire.

After Antinous' surprise death on the Nile, Hadrian was devastated and, in his grief, proclaimed his lover a deity, In turn, priests connected Antinous to the Egyptian god Osiris, lord of the underworld, afterworld, and rebirth.

Et voilà:

Nearly 2,000 years later we have Antinous as Osiris, the latest album by Ann Arbor jazz drummer Jesse Kramer.

Sometimes a multi-arts celebration does such a good job at presenting its multiple arts -- dance, theater and musical performances, visual arts exhibitions, literary events, film festivals, and culinary showcases in the case of Akshara's India-inspired Rasa Festival -- that it has to split itself up just so those interested can find the time to attend.

Rasa has filled venues in Washtenaw County every September and early October since its 2017 inception, but Ann Arbor's Sreyashi Dey -- dancer and president and artistic director of Akshara -- admits the dozens of high-quality events the festival presents became something of a traffic jam.

"What we were finding is that everything being concentrated and focused on in one month left a lot of people out even though they were interested in various events," she said. "There's always conflict and it's a busy time when people are coming back to school and other things are picking up."

The Rasa Festival will still be roaring throughout September 2019, but some of the dance and theater elements now have their own summer spotlight. On June 15, three dances and one dastangoi (storytelling) performance will happen at Riverside Arts Center in Ypsilanti, with many of the works featuring a strong feminist point of view. (There will still be some dance mixed into the fall fest, too.)