MUSIC

BRICK BY BRICK Singer Kate Nash performs selections from her debut album, “Made of Bricks.” Ms. Nash has been widely compared to the chart-topping singer Lily Allen but beyond a shared affinity for high-top sneakers paired with vintage dresses, the two British natives are sonically quite different. Ms. Nash’s brand of hybrid pop music tends to be more lyrical, with storytelling sensibilities and proficiency on the piano. “[A]t the foreground is [her] expressive voice, a soulful middle-class British accent that she can bend and spike into working class slangs,” Bret McCabe wrote in the January 8 New York Sun. Tonight, 7 p.m., Bowery Ballroom, 6 Delancey St., between Bowery and Chrystie streets, 212-260-4700, $15.

DANCE

SHINING STARS The Parsons Dance Company celebrates its 20th anniversary with a season at the Joyce Theater. The artistic director and founder of the troupe, David Parsons, stages two eclectic programs, which include his “Caught,” as well as other pieces from the company’s repertory of more than 70 dances. Tonight, 7:30 p.m., and Thursday–Friday, 8 p.m., runs through Sunday, January 20, dates and times vary, Joyce Theater, 175 Eighth Ave. at 19th Street, 212-691-9740, $25–$44.

RUSSIAN TREASURE Russia’s Moiseyev Dance Company performs a program of folk and traditional dances as part of the “World of Dance” series at the Brooklyn Center for the Performing Arts. The selections honor the dance tradition of Russia, as well as other countries, including Ukraine, Mongolia, and Uzbekistan, lending the choreography an international flavor.

Saturday, 8 p.m., Brooklyn College, Brooklyn Center for the Performing Arts, Walt Whitman Theatre, 2900 Campus Rd., between Flatbush and Nostrand avenues, Brooklyn, 718-951-4500, $30–$45.

A TEENAGE LOVE “Romeo + Juliet” is among the featured ballets this season at the New York City Ballet. The recent staging features choreography by the company’s balletmaster-in-chief, Peter Martins, and abstract set designs by Danish painter Per Kirkeby. Shakespeare’s romantic tragedy is set to the music of Prokofiev. Today, 2 and 7:30 p.m., Saturday, 2 p.m., and Sunday 3 p.m., New York State Theater, 20 Lincoln Center Plaza, between West 63rd Street and Columbus Avenue, 212-870-5570, $20–$120.

DRAWINGS

WALK THE LINE The Adam Baumgold Gallery, which specializes in illustrated works and drawings, presents “On Line,” an exhibition roundup of art by some of the most well-known names in illustration. Featured in the exhibit are ink drawings by Pablo Picasso, Saul Steinberg’s “I Do, I Have, I Am” (1971), and a piece by the Swiss duo Elvis Studio (Helge Reumann and Xavier Robel), “Elvis Road.” Other highlights from the show include an untitled work by Matt Leines from 2007. Through Saturday, January 26, Tuesday–Saturday, 11 a.m.–5:30 p.m., Adam Baumgold Gallery, 74 E. 79th St., between Park and Madison avenues, 212-861-7338, free.

FAMILY

TALES OF YORE “Mother Goose in an Air-Ship” at the Brooklyn Historical Society features an extensive collection of 19th-century children’s books and games. Many of the selections included were created in the now-shuttered McLoughlin Bros. Factory, long housed in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn. Early adaptations of children’s classics, as well as instructive — and now, charmingly antiquated — morality tales, including the “Little Slovenly Peter” series, are on view. Many of the pieces in the show were donated to the Brooklyn Historical Society by Ellen Liman, who with her late husband, Arthur, amassed a large body of children’s literature from the 1800s. Ongoing, Wednesday–Sunday, noon–5 p.m., Brooklyn Historical Society, 128 Pierrepont St. at Clinton Street, $6 general, $4 seniors and students, free for children under 12.

FILM

OTTO THE TERRIBLE Film Forum toasts Otto Preminger during a film festival devoted to the director. A Jewish Viennese expatriate, Preminger was among Hollywood’s earliest independent filmmakers. His expansive oeuvre boasts noirs and pop-culture classics such as “Carmen Jones” (1954), a modern adaptation of Bizet’s opera “Carmen,” featuring an all-black cast that includes starlet Dorothy Dandridge and Harry Belafonte. It screens Friday at 1, 4:45, and 8:30 p.m. Other highlights include “Bonjour Tristesse” (1959), which follows a swinging widower named Raymond (David Niven), who falls hard for Anne (Deborah Kerr), drawing the scorn of his daughter, Cecile (Jean Seberg). It screens today at 3:35 and 7:30 p.m. Through Thursday, January 17, dates and times vary, Film Forum, 209 W. Houston St., between Sixth and Seventh avenues, 212-727-8110, $10.50 general, $5.50 for seniors weekdays before 5 p.m., $5.50 children.

MUSEUMS

THE FRESH PRINCE “Richard Prince: Spiritual America,” a retrospective of the artist’s photographs, paintings, sculptures, and works on paper from the past 30 years, concludes its run at the Guggenheim Museum today. The comic (often lurid) artworks are in fact nostalgic odes to Americana. By re-photographing an advertising image of the iconic “Marlboro Man,” he helped to usher in a more critical approach to artmaking, one that questioned art’s privileged status. Today, 10 a.m.– 5:45 p.m., Guggenheim Museum, 1071 Fifth Ave., between 88th and 89th streets, 212-423-3500, $18 general, $15 students and seniors, free for children under 12.

LE BON MOT The Rubin Museum of Art takes a look at one indigenous group of Northern India called the Bon in “Bon: The Magic Word — The Indigenous Religion of Tibet,” an exhibit that explores, through painting and sculpture, the group’s existence from a religious point of view. Despite the popularity of Buddhism in Tibet, Hinduism has had significant influence on the Bon. Through Monday, April 14, Monday and Thursday, 11 a.m.–5 p.m., Wednesday, 11 a.m.–7 p.m., Friday, 11 a.m.–10 p.m., Saturday–Sunday, 11 a.m.–6 p.m., Rubin Museum of Art, 15 W. 17th St., between Sixth and Seventh avenues, 212-620-5000, $10 general, $7 students, seniors, artists, and neighbors, free for children and members.

FEVER FOR THE FERVOR “Rejoicing in Tsfat and Meron: Capturing the Fervor: Photography by Win Robins,” an exhibit at the Yeshiva University Museum, features 11-by-17-inch images of Hasidic men captured in various states of spiritual release, whether dancing, entranced, or deep in prayer. All the images were taken in Israel between 2005 and 2007. Through Sunday, February 24, Sunday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, 11 a.m.–5 p.m., Center for Jewish History, Yeshiva University Museum, 15 W. 16th St., between Fifth and Sixth avenues, 212-294-8330, $8 general, $6 seniors and students, free for members, children under 5, and Yeshiva University faculty, staff, and students.

MUSIC

TWO IS BETTER THAN ONE This year, the annual avant-garde jazz series, Vision Festival, takes place in June. In the meantime, the organization behind the series is producing various mini-festivals around the city: The Vision Collaboration Festival pairs jazz artists with dance companies and visual artists during multimedia concerts. Performers include bassist William Parker, trumpeter Roy Campbell, dancers Patricia Nicholson and Jumaane Taylor, and visual artists Katy Martin and Jo Wood Brown. Tomorrow through Saturday, 7:30 p.m., Symphony Space, Leonard Nimoy Thalia, 2537 Broadway at 95th Street, 212-696-6681, $20 in advance, $25 at the door, $15 students and seniors.

COME FLY WITH ME The 92nd Street Y hosts an evening of song to honor the work of composer Sammy Cahn. The prolific American lyricist began his career writing for the vaudeville circuit in the 1930s. A collaboration with composer Jule Styne earned him four Academy Awards. Cahn’s work with the “Chairman of the Board,” Frank Sinatra, brought additional success: Sinatra recorded 89 songs from Cahn’s catalog, including such memorable tunes as “All the Way” and “Call Me Irresponsible.” Vocalists Julian Fleisher, Laura Marie Duncan, and Karen Morrow are among the featured performers. Saturday, 8 p.m., 92nd Street Y, 1395 Lexington Ave. at 92nd Street, 212-415-5500, $50–$60.

READINGS

WOMEN’S VOICES The experience of Iranian expatriates in America is the subject of a reading by authors Nahid Rachlin and Porochista Khakpour. Ms. Rachlin reads from “Persian Girls” (Tarcher/ Penguin), her memoir life in Iran under the late Shah, her tangled family life, and that of her friend Pari, from whom she is separated when the author and her family emigrate to America. Ms. Khakpour reads from “Sons and Other Flammable Objects” (Grove/Atlantic), about a young man in Los Angeles struggling with his traditional Iranian parents. Today, 7 p.m., McNally Robinson, 52 Prince St., between Lafayette and Mulberry streets, 212-274-1160, free.

THEATER

TALK TO ME LIKE THE RAIN The experimental theater group La MaMa E.T.C. presents “Morning, Afternoon and Good Night,” a program of three one-act plays directed by Oleg Braude. The program comprises the first original play staged by the company in 1962, Michael Locascio’s “A Corner of a Morning”; William M. Hoffman’s “Good Night, and I Love You,” and Tennessee Williams’s “Talk to Me Like the Rain and Let Me Listen…” In Williams’s play, a man and a woman in a dingy flat on the Lower East Side let loose their despair in a stream of monologues. Tomorrow through Saturday, 8 p.m., Sunday, 2:30 and 8 p.m., First Floor Theatre, 74A E. 4th St., between Bowery and Second Avenue, 212-475-7710, $15.

ART

EYE ON SOUTH AMERICA In the exhibit “New Perspectives in Latin American Art, 1930–2006: Selections from a Decade of Acquisitions,” the Museum of Modern Art turns its focus to the early rise and development of the Constructivist movement in Latin America — a movement that concentrated on infusing politics and social issues into art. But as John Goodrich wrote in the November 29 New York Sun, “Visitors expecting abundant signs of social ferment … will be disappointed. Many of the drawings, paintings, photographs, prints, and sculptures have an introspective, cosmopolitan air, though tinged with an earthier lyricism than their North American and European counterparts.” Selections include Guillermo Kuitca’s “Lincoln Center” (2002), above.

Through Monday, February 25, Saturday–Monday, Wednesday, and Thursday, 10:30 a.m.–5:30 p.m., Friday, 10:30 a.m.–8 p.m., MoMA, 11 W. 53rd St., between Fifth and Sixth avenues, 212-708-9400, $20 general, $16 seniors, $12 students, free for children and members.

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