Five Reasons to Leave the House This Weekend

Photo via Urbanity Dance

Dance
World Music/CRASHarts Presents: Urbanity Dance

Urbanity Dance’s unique blend of athleticism and visually arresting precision will go on display during this two-night showcase at the ICA. “Bend” will be Urbanity’s first full performance at the museum, a coming out event for the young company that’s already gaining an industry following. For founder and director Betsi Graves, the show is all about playing with visibility, using infrared lighting technology to underscore choreography that toys with the audience’s perceptions of light and darkness.

$40, Friday and Saturday, February 20 and 21, 8 p.m., Institute of Contemporary Art, 100 Northern Ave., Boston, icaboston.org.

Groove
Do Your Thing: An Eclectic Dance Night with the Whiskey Barons

Leave the grinding and twerking to downtown’s club beat devotees, and spend a night with Boston’s Whiskey Barons. This dance night at the Middle East boasts a wild mix of Latin, dance, funk, and disco. “Timeless global tropical party vibes” are promised to be on tap.

$5, Friday, February 20, 11 p.m., Middle East, 472-480 Massachusetts Ave., Cambridge, mideastoffers.com.

Art
Drapetomania: Grupo Antillano and the Art of Afro-Cuba

The most unlikely inspiration behind this Harvard exhibit of an Afro-Caribbean visual art movement from the ’70s? Pseudo-science. Coined in the 19th century, “drapetomania” supposedly diagnosed a slave’s urge to be free. This exhibit, on view through March 29, pairs the cultural contributions and diasporic concerns of Grupo Antillano with the group’s artistic contemporaries of today. “Grupo Antillano was thinking about Africa’s centrality to Cuba and the Caribbean,” says Alejandro de la Fuente, the exhibit’s curator. “but their concerns and their messages connected with wider struggles for cultural affirmation and recognition.”

Free, open Tuesday-Saturdays, 10 a.m.-5 p.m., Ethelbert Cooper Gallery of African & African American Art, Hutchins Center, Harvard University, coopergalleryhc.org.

Theater
The Second Girl

Playwright Roonan Noone’s latest work to arrive at the Huntington Theatre Company is The Second Girl, a play that tells the story of two Irish immigrant servant girls. One of them, a Titanic survivor named Cathleen, is played by actress Mackenzie Meehan (you might recognize her from The Wolf of Wall Street). “She wants to acclimate, she wants to become American,” says Meehan, whose research even led her to a similar story of hopeful immigration in her own family. A work of poignant historical fiction, The Second Girl is a billed as a “moving Irish drama” that’s an artistic lesson in history and the immigrant working class.

$15+, Friday and Saturday, 2 and 8 p.m., Calderwood Pavilion, 527 Tremont St., huntingtontheatre.org.

Comedy
Loni Love

Love’s satire-laden standup act lands at the Wilbur this weekend. A co-host of Fox’s The Real, Love’s jokes have nabbed her gigs as a frequent guest correspondent on Ellen and charmed audiences at the Vegas standup show Lipshtick. If you don’t recognize Love from the trailer of Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2 or as one of Variety’s “Top 10 Comics to Watch”, then get a taste of her funny from Love Him or Leave Him, But Don’t Get Stuck with the Tab, Love’s blend of relationship advice and cautionary tales.

$20+, Friday, February 20, 7:30 p.m., 246 Tremont St., thewilbur.com.