Dance troupe announces free summer concerts

The Lawrence-based Bowery Dancers, a group of performers who came together as dance students at Kansas University, will perform a series of free public concerts this summer.

The series begins Saturday at South Park. A performance geared toward children begins at 4:30 p.m., and a show featuring the troupe’s repertoire begins at 7:30 p.m. Future South Park concerts will be July 12 and 19 and Aug. 2.

The experimental dance company takes its name from the canopy of boughs built to protect dancers performing outdoors a hundred years ago. The group made its premiere June 13-15 at the Smoky Hill River Festival in Salina.

Its repertoire includes comic dances based on football and grocery shopping, traditional Irish step dances, explorations of historical dance forms, such as the minuet, and several pieces that use traditional tap, ballet, jazz and modern dance forms.

All choreography is created by members of the company. They are Ellie Goudie-Averill, Brandi Green, Beau Hancock, Michael Ingle, Kathleen O’Connor, Jeffrey Potter and Christine Scott.

Spencer Museum shows Asian nature paintings

The Asian Gallery at the Spencer Museum of Art is featuring “Flora & Fauna,” a display of Chinese and Japanese paintings, decorative art and prints from the permanent collection.

The works will be shown through the summer.

Chinese bird-and-flower painting flourished during the Song dynasty (960-1297) under the imperial patronage, was revived in the Ming dynasty (1368-1644) and transmitted to Japan during the Edo period (1615-1868).

The museum’s hours are 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday; 10 a.m.-9 p.m. Thursday; and noon-5 p.m. Sunday.

Admission is free.

Langston Hughes Review features Lawrence writer

The work of Lawrence writer and jazz musician Tim Cross will appear in an upcoming volume of The Langston Hughes Review, published at the University of Georgia.

The poems “Blue Room Sketches (18th and Vine),” “Tribute-tary,” and “Blue Jays and a Train” will be included.

Cross is a contributing writer for JAM Magazine in Kansas City and a former adjunct instructor at Baker University and Johnson County Community College.