49 MORE THINGS WE WANT TO DO THIS MONTH
MAY 1 | ELECTRONIC
Juan Atkins
▪ This Detroit musician invented techno in the early ’80s as part of the trio Cybotron and in his solo work as Model 500. At this live performance (rather than a more common DJ set), you might hear genre-defining techno classics like “No UFOs” or atmospheric recent material; either way, it’ll probably sound like the hoverboard-filled future we used to dream about.
Details Pilsen. Thalia Hall. 8 p.m. $18. eventbrite.com
MAY 2–3 | DANCE
Dance Shelter
▪ Expect resident artists Rachel Bunting and Ayako Kato to make challenging, imaginative work for Chicago Moving Company’s annual dance incubator, which at times hinges on delightful absurdity. In the same vein, former Chicagoan Jessie Young, now based in Brooklyn, returns with a performance about orifices: Her movements aim to project invisible lines of energy that connect her ears, nose, and mouth to … elsewhere.
Details Lake View. Hamlin Fieldhouse. $12–$15. chicagomovingcompany.org
MAY 2–7 | CLASSICAL
Muti Conducts Pines of Rome
▪ The Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s music director, Riccardo Muti, brings two works on his native Italy to the first of two programs in his May residency: Bizet’s Roma Symphony and Pines of Rome, an orchestral suite by Muti favorite Ottorino Respighi. But the curiosity of the program is the characteristically oddball Berlioz’s operatic minidrama The Death of Cleopatra, sung here by the sensitive mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato, who is uniquely suited to pulling off Cleopatra’s dramatic extremes.
Details Loop. Symphony Center. $37–$241. cso.org
MAY 3–JUNE 2 | THEATER
West Side Story
▪ Lyric Opera’s spring stagings of classic Broadway musicals have become a welcome opportunity to hear masterly scores played by an ample orchestra. Glimmerglass Festival artistic director Francesca Zambello helms Leonard Bernstein and Stephen Sondheim’s 1957 street-gang riff on Romeo and Juliet; Broadway actor Corey Cott and newcomer Mikaela Bennett play star-crossed lovers Tony and Maria.
Details Loop. Lyric Opera House. $20–$219. lyricopera.org
MAY 4–JUNE 9 | THEATER
The Winter’s Tale
▪ When Goodman artistic director Robert Falls tackles Shakespeare, the results tend to be ostentatiously imagined affairs. So his staging of , one of Shakespeare’s
