Rock Candy: Still To-Doing: High art for the masses

Or something like that...

‘MOVIN' OUT'
7:30 p.m., Robinson Center Music Hall. $20-$54.

You might have grown up dancing to Billy Joel songs, but not like this. “Movin' Out,” the hit Broadway musical, was conceived and choreographed by the dance legend Twyla Tharp, and uses Joel's songs to tell a dialogless story about five high school friends whose lives are torn apart by the Vietnam War. The show debuted on Broadway in 2002 and ran for three years. Joel and Tharp both won Tony Awards. The three Robinson performances are the first for the show in Little Rock. The musical plays again at 7:30 p.m. on Thursday.

—Jennifer Barnett Reed

EAST VILLAGE OPERA COMPANY
7:30 p.m., Reynolds Performance Hall, UCA, Conway. $10-$35.

High art, get ye low, says the East Village Opera Company. Or more accurately, the company, through co-leader Peter Kiesewalter, says, “We have a profound love and respect for opera, but it's so dramatic, so over-the-top by today's standards, that it cannot be delivered with a straight face. You need a little bit of irreverence in it.” That means EVOC embraces the “pomposity” of both rock and opera by taking selections from “Carmen” and “La Boheme” and punking them up, often mashing them together with music from the likes of the Who and Eminem. As bizarre as it sounds, the show has garnered rave reviews.

Rock Candy

Still To-Doing: High art for the masses

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