DANCE

A NIGHT AT THE PALLADIUM Ballet Hispanico celebrates its 20th engagement at the Joyce Theater with performances of “Palladium Nights.” The fiery dance, set to the work of composer Willie Rosario, has been updated by Broadway choreographer Sergio Trujillo and features live music by the Afro Latin Jazz Orchestra with Arturo O’Farrill. The dance re-creates a night at the Palladium Ballroom at the height at the mambo craze. A selection of repertory dances chosen by the artistic director of the company, Tina Ramirez, caps off the season. They include Tally Beatty’s “Caravanserai,” which is set to music by Carlos Santana and has not been staged in 17 years. “Palladium Nights” opens tomorrow, 7:30 p.m., through Sunday, times vary, the Joyce Theater, 175 Eighth Ave., between 18th and 19th streets, 212-242-0800, $44 general, $33 Joyce members.

FISHERMAN’S TALE A Japanese contemporary dance company, Pappa Tarahumara, performs “Ship in a View” as part of the Next Wave Festival at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. The piece is inspired by the hometown of the dance company’s director, Hiroshi Koike. The port city of Hitachi was once a fishing town before becoming industrialized. A 16-foot pole stands in the middle of the stage, evoking a ship’s mast. The company’s dances are inspired by Japanese performance art traditions, including Noh, Kabuki, and Butoh. Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday, 7:30 p.m., BAM, Howard Gilman Opera House, 30 Lafayette Ave., between St. Felix Street and Ashland Place, 718-636-4100, $20–$45.

MUSIC

TRADITION IN AMERICA National Heritage Masters is a series designed to commemorate the National Endowment for the Arts’s National Heritage Fellowships. As part of the series, the World Music Institute presents “Ireland in America,” featuring recipients of the fellowships. Performers include button accordionists Liz Carroll and Joe Derrane, Irish rock-folk musician Mick Moloney, and the Donny Golden Dancers. “Tradition and Innovation in Irish Music,” a talk with the artists, at 7 p.m., precedes the performance. Friday, 8 p.m., New York University, Skirball Center, 566 LaGuardia Pl. at Washington Square South, 212-279-4200, $32.

PAINTINGS

CONNECTING DOTS Thomas Downing was a member of the Washington School of painters, Cold War artists who were influenced by the techniques of Morris Louis, an abstract expressionist painter who combined an interest in geometry with the staining of unprimed canvas. Mr. Downing created his paintings in the so-called Hard Edge Abstraction style that was popular through the mid-1970s, covering his canvases in patterns of dots. An exhibit, “Thomas Downing: Washington School Painter,” is the first at the newly re-opened Gary Snyder Project Space. Selections include “Farenheit” (c. 1961), left. Through Saturday, Tuesday–Saturday, 11 a.m.–6 p.m., Gary Snyder Project Space, 250 W. 26th St., between Seventh and Eighth avenues, 212-929-1351, free.

PHOTOGRAPHY

LONDON CALLING Photographer Roger Mayne’s stomping grounds were the industrial streets of West London. On Southam Street in the 1950s and ’60s, he took pictures of teenagers who imitated James Dean, little girls in school frocks, and the dilapidated former industrial buildings of London. Gitterman Gallery celebrates Mr. Mayne’s work, combining photos from his Southam period with lesser-known shots of the English countryside and the Mediterranean from the mid-1960s. Through Friday, Wednesday–Saturday, 11 a.m.–6 p.m., Gitterman Gallery, 170 E. 75th St., between Lexington and Third avenues, 212-734-0868, free.

READINGS

CHEMICAL COOKING A physical chemist, Hervé This, is France’s answer to America’s Harold McGee: a food writer who is equally interested in science and cooking. The James Beard Foundation presents Mr. This, who reads from his latest book, “Kitchen Mysteries: Revealing the Science of Cooking” (Columbia University Press), which probes such questions as why vegetables change color when they cook and why soufflés fall. Mr. This takes these scientific answers and shows how to adapt them to recipes, locally available ingredients, and food preparation methods. Tomorrow, noon, James Beard House, 167 W. 12th St., between Sixth and Seventh avenues, 212-627-2308, $20 general, free for students.

DIVIDED AND UNITED “Alfred Dreyfus: The Fight For Justice,” an exhibit at the Yeshiva University Museum, explores the Dreyfus Affair, which concerned the wrongful imprisonment of a Jewish officer in the French army and divided the French populace between the 1890s and the turn of the 20th century. While detained at the notorious French penal colony of Devil’s Island, Capt. Alfred Dreyfus kept up a written correspondence with his wife, Lucie. Some of those letters are read during a related event on Thursday, “From the Depths of My Heart: The Letters of Alfred and Lucie Dreyfus.” Participants include two professors from the Stern College for Women, Peninnah Schram and Reuven Russell; a professor of English at Yeshiva College, Will Lee, and students from the Stern College for Women and Revel Graduate School of Jewish Studies at Yeshiva University. Thursday, 7 p.m., exhibit through Sunday, February 17, Yeshiva University Museum at the Center for Jewish History, 15 W. 16th St., between Fifth and Sixth avenues, 212-294-8330, free.

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