Each year the Broadway Center for Performing Arts in Tacoma brings in a circus-based troupe, and they always pick a good one. This year it’s Galumpha, an East Coast trio of dancers who combine acrobatics, physical comedy and truly beautiful visuals in a Sunday afternoon show that will appeal to all ages.

Formed ten years ago, Galumpha’s success (including appearances on “The Late Show,” MTV, theaters and festivals around the world and plenty of awards) springs from a combination of inventive choreography and a light-hearted take on the world. Pieces like “Velcro” take an everyday item and explore the hilarious fall-out from over-applying it; others like “Human Fly” balance the dancers impressively on each other’s backs and feet while using perfectly-timed choreography (angled arms, fussing hands) to imitate another creature.

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It’s been nearly 40 years since the Flying Karamazov Brothers got their start touring small festivals during the original members’ college days – but some things never change for this master group of jugglers and comedians. The theater is still madcap-vaudeville, the humor is still college-level (some of it) and the juggling is still simply astounding. But if you head along to ACT Theatre in Seattle this weekend to see their latest incarnation, be prepared for quite a few gasps – and maybe a bit of red-faced explaining to any pre-teens you take with you.

Let’s start with the gasps. As FKB veterans will know, this is not your average troupe of jugglers. These guys are what you’d get if you mated a glee club with four drummers and the fifth-grade class clown: They can juggle, yes, in the same way that Andrea Bocelli can sing, and they can do it while creating a rhythm with whatever comes to hand. Read more »

One person’s trash is another’s art – or music – and Olympia’s Matter Gallery are collaborating with the Washington Center for Performing Arts and Vancouver, B.C.-based ScrapArtsMusic to show us exactly that, with an art opening tonight and music show tomorrow night, all based on trash.

Tonight’s art show in the WCPA lobby is a kind of celebration of everything Matter Gallery has done in Oly since it opened a few years ago: highlight local and regional artists using recycled and reclaimed materials to make art that ranges from serene to funky. Among the artists in tonight’s show is Olympia’s Bil Fleming, working with Christine Malek to produce a large-scale installation from leftover plastic.

Then tomorrow night ScrapArtsMusic brings five virtuosic drummers together to produce energetic and extraordinary sounds from accordion parts, artillery shells and other industrial scrap. Read more »

Last week for Kittredge tempera show

It’s the last week to see works in tempera by Nathan DiPietro at UPS’ Kittredge Gallery. DiPietro paints a bleak Northwest where lush native forests are replaced with developments and greenbelts. 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Monday-Friday, noon-5 p.m. Saturday through Feb. 11. Free. Kittredge Gallery, University of Puget Sound, 1500 N. Lawrence St., Tacoma.www.pugetsound.edu/kittredge

“The Pirates of Penzance” at UPS

It is indeed a glorious thing to be a Pirate King, at least at the University of Puget Sound this week, where vocal music students are putting on a production of Gilbert and Sullivan’s immortal comic operetta “The Pirates of Penzance” with orchestra accompaniment. 7:30 p.m. Feb. 9-11, 2 p.m. Feb. 12. $12/$8/$5 UPS students. Schneebeck Concert Hall, 1500 N. Warner St., Tacoma. 253-879-3419, tickets.pugetsound.edu Read more »

In an announcement this week, the Tacoma Art Museum was one of 58 cultural organizations in five states to receive 2012 grants from the Paul G. Allen Foundation, a non-profit granting organization founded in 1988 by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen and Jo Lynn Allen. This cycle of grants totals $6.6 million, focusing on Native American communities and innovative projects.

The Tacoma Art Museum received $75,000 to organize their 2014 exhibit “Art, AIDS, America,” a collaboration with curator Jonathan Katz at the Brooklyn Art Museum. The show is intended to travel around the country.

“It’s an early grant, but …

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Female folk-bluegrass group The Good Lovelies are making a stop at Fox Island on a U.S. tour that stretches from Minneapolis to Las Vegas. The five-year-old band has garnered a good rep in their native Canada, with spots at the Mariposa, Hillside and Montreal Jazz festivals, and are taking their third CD “Let The Rain Fall” on tour to the U.S., U.K. and Australia.

Swapping instruments and singing three-part harmony, band members Caroline Brooks, Kerri Ough and Sue Passmore blend roots, folk, bluegrass, Americana and swing with light-hearted lyrics. Their first album, “The Good Lovelies,” won them Best …

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Collective Visions Gallery in Bremerton has just opened the exhibition from its annual statewide juried competition, the CVG Show. Juror Kathleen Moles, curator of the Northwest Museum of Art, chose 137 artworks from around 800 entries from around the state for the show, which opened last Saturday.

Prize-winning artists include William Turner, Todd Houghton, Counsel Langley, Jon Schmidt, Claudia Pettis, Naomi Smith, John Kane, David Colon, Harry Longstreet and Dawn Sagar. Best of Show Award ($1,500) went to Justin Gibbons for “Golden Hydra.”

CVG is an artist cooperative supporting 20 area artists which was founded in 1994, the …

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Amid the snow and ice, a couple of Tacoma galleries stood staunchly open last week – and Brick House was one of them. The upper downtown gallery had just opened a self-portrait show by 20 established local and regional artists, and while there are a few unremarkable works, most take on the topic of self from unusual viewpoints.

Two of those come from Alan Hopkins: The Bay area artist uses himself as a metaphor for larger human issues with inventive grace. In “Painting Through It,” Hopkins positions an iconographic, waist-up nude of himself behind a thick wire screen. Despite interesting composition (a Buddhist-inspired pose, with arms bent at 90 degrees holding a paintbrush and mirror with tapered, delicate fingers) the portrait is static and uninspiring, until you realize that Hopkins has in fact painted it through the screen itself. The crisscrossed wire casts prison-like shadows on Hopkins’ body, the flatness of the portrait takes on a new metaphorical dimension, and paint dabs on the wire blur the boundary line. Read more »