Long before he started dancing, the choreographer Silas Riener preferred reading science fiction novels and dreaming of far-off realms. “It’s part of a queer identity—the ‘otherness’ of aliens or fantasy,” Riener says, noting his penchant for sci-fi. “It attracted me because of being in the closet, growing up with people who are different or ways that the world is different.” A former member of Merce Cunningham Dance, Riener is one-third of the creative trio behind Tesseract, a two-part work based on otherworldly themes that will be performed at the MCA this weekend in conjunction with the exhibit “Merce Cunningham: Common Time....

This weekend the Gene Siskel Film Center kicks off a monthlong retrospective devoted to Italian writer-director Lina Wertmüller with the 1975 black comedy Seven Beauties. One of the most contentious films of its decade, Beauties is a picaresque tale of one man’s survival through World War II; its most controversial passages take place in a realistically rendered Nazi concentration camp. Wertmüller gained her reputation as a provocateur with such international hits as Love & Anarchy and Swept Away, and Beauties is perhaps her most provocative film....

He’s just a boy who can’t say no. And why should he, with so many desirable women anxious to offer him what’s quaintly referred to as their charms? Tom Jones is one of those magical young men whose very passivity is a turn-on. Handsome, earnest, well-mannered, self-effacing, doggedly honorable, puppyishly sweet, oddly innocent, and totally buff, he incites maternal feelings as a prelude to something steamier. Even so, he’s got an excellent reason to keep it in his pants: Sophia Western, the passionate yet virtuous daughter of a country squire and Tom’s one true love....

Michael Gebert Decorators Supply Corp. in Bridgeport As far as I’m concerned Open House Chicago, held this weekend, is one of the great events of the year for inveterate snoops and spies like myself. You get to go inside dozens of buildings all over the city whose insides you don’t normally get to see, and see how all kinds of other halves live, work, or lived and worked a century ago....

Perhaps, in this Trump-addled era, you’re finding yourself more than a little concerned about the direction civilization is going? Disturbed by vanishing jobs, rising plutocracies, melting polar ice caps, not to mention numerous other serious threats to a good night’s sleep and a reasonable life for future generations? During the Iraq war, OUL began screening antiwar videos and saw a bump in attendance that led to programming changes and an affinity for the medium....

It’s songwriter Henry Krieger’s time at Porchlight Music Theatre. The musical-theater composer’s Dreamgirls, a 1981 Broadway hit, is the final show in Porchlight’s 2015-’16 schedule next spring, while his Side Show—a two-time Broadway flop—is the company’s current season opener. Interestingly, both shows examine the loving but conflict-filled relationships between young women who share big dreams of romantic fulfillment and showbiz success. In Dreamgirls, with a libretto by the late Tom Eyen, 1960s soul singers Deena and Effie compete for the same man (their unscrupulous manager) but finally realize that their own bond is more real and durable....

Chicago’s hip-hop scene went into mourning Saturday when news broke that WGCI on-air personality and virtuosic turntablist Timothy Jones, aka DJ Timbuck2, had died. He’d been fighting cancer for a little more than a year and had recently turned 34. Jones, who was also a member of Treated Crew, joined the WGCI team in 2004, and a few years later he launched a Chicago-centric show called GoILL Radio—he not only played new music by artists who rarely received radio exposure, he also brought young talents into the studio for live interviews....

Street View is a fashion series in which Isa Giallorenzo spotlights some of the coolest styles seen in Chicago.

Street View is a fashion series in which Isa Giallorenzo spotlights some of the coolest styles seen in Chicago.

What defined the classic era of Guided by Voices—the stretch from 1990 to ’96 when the lo-fi indie rock kings produced their undisputed best work—was the push and pull between the band’s figurehead, Robert Pollard, and its guitarist and co-front man, Tobin Sprout. The notoriously prolific and scatterbrained Pollard brought countless fractured, loose-limbered ideas to the table, and Sprout injected them with a melodic sense and whimsy inspired by the British Invasion, eventually transforming damaged bedroom recordings into pop majesty....

As we all prepare for Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s proposed property tax hike to pay off billions of dollars in pension obligations, I thought I’d take a trip down memory lane to a not-so-distant era when our leaders acted like we didn’t have a care in the world. “Women wearing serious jewelry and stunning gowns were welcomed upon their arrival by ‘Adam and Eve’ greeters draped in leaves and dragging a snake,” the Sun-Times reported about the $1,000-a-ticket fund-raiser for the park....

Nobody remembers why the Heart O’Chicago Motel was built on Ridge instead of Lincoln like the rest of the north side’s vintage 50s motels. But general manager Scott DeGraf is happy it worked out that way. “We’re not on the strip,” he says. “We don’t want to be on the strip. There are too many drugs and prostitutes and all that.” Have an unusual observation or favorite oddity about a neighborhood?...

Street View is a fashion series in which Isa Giallorenzo spotlights some of the coolest styles seen in Chicago.

Last year the Chicago Jazz Festival uprooted itself from Grant Park, its home since its launch in 1979, and moved to a relatively confined but more comfortable space in Millennium Park. Despite some growing pains—sound bleed between stages, a hard-to-find new spot for the Young Jazz Lions Pavilion on the roof of the Harris Theater—the change was welcome. Pritzker Pavilion has far better sight lines and sound quality than the Petrillo Music Shell, and the side stages got upgraded too—in Millennium Park they have much more seating, and they’re located inside weatherproof tents big enough to shelter the crowd as well as the performers....

On Bully’s second full-length record, Losing (released late last year on Sub Pop), vocalist and guitarist Alicia Bognanno doesn’t fuck around. As suggested by its blunt cover art—a stark black-and-white photo of Bognanno sitting cross-legged with her hair shrouding her face—Losing is sincere but exacting, a record balanced between emotive indie-rock moments and rip cords of grungy distortion that make way for sustain-pedal superriffs. In the latter instances, Bully are at their most rock effective, and Bognanno adds further proof with her scratchy yowl....

This spring, just seven years after her life’s work was sold out of storage lockers for $250 and five years after her nearly anonymous death, the Vivian Maier photography phenomenon is in robust bloom. In case all this has somehow escaped you, here’s the short version: Vivian Maier was born in New York in 1926; spent a good chunk of her childhood in France, where her mother’s family lived; and supported herself most of her life as a live-in nanny....

As far as I’m concerned, the high point of this still embryonic gubernatorial campaign happened a few weeks ago, when alderman Ameya Pawar blasted Governor Bruce Rauner as a “racist.” By contrast, Pawar was pretty much an Emanuel loyalist during the mayor’s first term, sticking with Rahm on many issues even as it infuriated community activists. I’m not picking on Pawar—I still may vote for him. And he’s by no means alone....

Republican U.S. House speaker Paul Ryan is coming to Chicago Thursday for a big-ass fund-raiser! If you have $1,000 to spare, you can join him for dinner at the Chicago Club and offer him your thoughts on the Trump administration and the new GOP health-care plan (known to some as “Ryancare”). Or you can stand outside and protest for free. Or, if standing around and yelling is getting old, you can drink beer on Wednesday night instead....

L.A.T.E. Ride Looking for something to do today? Agenda‘s got you covered. For more on these events and others, check out the Reader’s daily Agenda page.

Alexander Iziliaev BalletX Looking for something to do today? Agenda‘s got you covered. For more on these events and others, check out the Reader‘s daily Agenda page.