Strange to tell, some art students at the Barnes Foundation are actually painters. Having marinated in the Barnes milieu for years, Christopher Callahan produces work that's just plain gorgeous to look at, in the best Barnes tradition.

Dan Rottenberg's complaints notwithstanding, Dirty Rotten Scoundrels is above all a rejection of serious theater and a spoof of old Broadway musicals. On that admittedly lightweight level, it succeeds amply.

This year's Live Arts Festival went out on a limb by pitting 12 Philadelphia choreographers against each other for a $10,000 first prize. This gimmick boosted attendance and helped raise dance consciousness. But how does a popularity contest affect a collegial and creative community?

The composer George Crumb, now approaching 80, is a true American individualist who created his own style during the years when American composers mostly seemed to be writing for the approval of their academic promotion committees. Orchestra 2001: Crumb, selections from American Songbooks. Ann Crumb, Jamie Van Eyck, Barbara Ann Martin, vocal soloists; James Freeman, conductor. September 25, 2009 at Volumes I, II, III: Perelman Theater, Kimmel Center. Volumes IV, V, VI: September 27, 2009 at Lang Concert Hall, Swarthmore College. 267-687-6243 or www.orchestra2001.org.

The hero of Little Shop of Horrors always thought of his man-eating plant as female. So why has it taken 49 years for a theater company to cast a woman as the plant?

Headlong's more juxtaposes the ordinariness of domestic life with the life of the artist. But what makes this dance and choreography— art that BSR's Jim Rutter has questioned— is that these meanings are communicated through bodies in and out of motion, and through movement gestures and movement vocabulary.

Rarely have we seen such a full integration between body and technology as the Australian choreographer Gideon Obarzanek's Mortal Engine achieved at the Wilma.

This musical comedy about a pair of con men on the Riviera is plagued by a fatal flaw that no amount of sprightly performances, witty lyrics, energetic music and lavish sets can camouflage: Its characters lack character. There is simply no one to root for or empathize with here.

When you see the great Symbolist artist James Ensor “in bulk” at MoMA, you see him in full for the first time— which is to recognize that he represents Symbolism's angry side.

In two engagingly idiosyncratic shows, Susan Hagen offers teenage figurines while Tina Newberry inserts herself into America's colonial past.