The daily digest of Twin Cities culture | Secrets of the City

DANCE
Ghana in Motion

Every year, dance students from the Twin Cities travel to the Dagara Music Center, in Ghana, to study traditional Ghanaian music and dance on the home turf of the Saakumu Dance Troupe. This year, the tables have turned, as the Saakumu Dance Troupe kicks off its first U.S. tour right here, in the Twin Cities. Enjoy a vibrant West African performance that includes local artists the New Primitives and Ibé.

Friday at 8 p.m., Suburban World Theatre, 3022 Hennepin Ave., Minneapolis, 612-822-9000; $12.

ART
Worlds Away: New Suburban Landscapes

Just as the Ash Can School turned to burgeoning cities for subject matter in the early twentieth century, suburbia has proven captivating to artists over the past few decades. But while many of them have tended to look outside city limits with a skeptical, ironic, or even condemning eye, this exhibit, organized around homes, stores, and roads, aims to go beyond stereotypical views. Among the works from some thirty architects, photographers, sculptors, and videographers, one favorite is Stefanie Nagorka, a sculptor who visits Home Depot stores, plucks materials for her pieces from the shelves, and assembles them right in the aisles or parking lot. Other artists look at the people-besides mom, dad, and 2.5 kids-living in all those tract houses (some of them are porn stars); propose revamping dead malls and big-box stores; and steal shots of suburbanites as they zoom around behind their steering wheels. —Julie Caniglia

Preview Party Friday at 9 p.m., Walker Art Center, 1750 Hennepin Ave., Minneapolis; 612-375-7622; $35, members $25.


PERFORMANCE
Exercise Your Creative Demons, Exorcise Your Winter Ennui

Lamb Lays with Lion has organized a six-part series to help stave off the winter blues and keep the creative juices from freezing. Tonight is already the second week, but you have four Fridays left. Enjoy a host of great performances this evening as part of ExerciseEXORCISE. This week's performers include the Mustache Rangers (comedy duo), Mad King Thomas (dance/theater), El Guante (solo word), the Nancy Drew Crew (feminist hiphop), Sally Rousse (avant-dance), Alex Cordoneau (Dracula lecture), and Meg Ashling (mariopaint performance).

Friday at 9:30 p.m., The Bottling House Theater, 79 13th Ave. N.E., 212, Minneapolis.

FILM
Academy Award Nominated Short Films

Starting tonight, you have a rare opportunity to see all five of the 2007 Academy Award nominated animated short films, and all five of the 2007 Academy Award nominated live action short films. Sounds like a party to me. I'd opt for the animated shorts, of course: "I Met the Walrus (Canada), an animated documentary about 14-year-old Jerry Levitan, who snuck into John Lennon's hotel room in 1969 and persuaded him to do an interview; Madame Tutli-Putli (Canada), in which a timid woman boards a mysterious night train and has a series of frightening experiences; Meme Les Pigeons Vont Au Paradis (Even Pigeons Go To Heaven) (France), about a priest who tries to sell an old man a machine that he promises will transport him to heaven; Moya Lyubov (My Love) (Russia), in which a teenage boy in search of love in 19th century Russia is drawn to two very different women; and Peter & The Wolf (UK & Poland), Prokofiev's classical music drama of a young boy and his animal friends who face a hungry wolf."

Opens Friday, Animated Shorts at 2:15 & 7:30, Live Action Shorts at 4:20 & 9:30 p.m., Lagoon Cinema, 1320 Lagoon Ave., Minneapolis; 612-825-6006; $8.25 ($5.75 seniors and children).

Also this weekend:

Romeo Castellucci's theater of the subconscious — Hey Girl, at the Walker (Friday through Sunday).