The Here & Now festival, Miami Light Project’s annual look at promising dance, performance and multimedia talent, opens Thursday for a two-weekend run.

This year’s lineup includes musician, dancer and actor Shira Abergel with the Prohibition-era tale Appalachian Squall, Ivonne Batanero with the cancer-inspired dance piece Project: Invasion, dancer-choreographer Liony Garcia with the performance piece In Lieu of Flowers and composer-musician Matthew Evan Taylor with Elvrutus Fall.

Selected artists receive $4,000 plus rehearsal space and production support. Since 1999, the festival has commissioned 70 Miami artists including major talents such as Rosie Herrera, Teo Castellanos and Rudi Goblen.

Performances are at 8 p.m. Thursday-Saturday and Feb. 14 -16 at the Light Box at Goldman Warehouse, 404 NW 26th St., Miami. Tickets are $25, $15 for students and seniors; 866-811-4111, miamilightproject.com.

Jordan Levin

Summer at Arsht

Miami’s Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts has unveiled a spectacle-driven, two-show summer lineup at its Ziff Ballet Opera House.

First up, June 20-30, is 8CHO (“ocho”) created by Argentine choreographer Brenda Angiel and featuring dancer-aerialists performing to music ranging from hip-hop to tango by an onstage orchestra.

“This is as theatrical, as grand and as spectacular” as the center’s popular Fuerza Bruta, said Arsht executive vice president Scott Shiller.

The second offering, July 31-Aug. 25, is a reprise of Slava Polunin’s wintry and wordless entertainment Slava’s Snowshow, a big all-ages summer hit for the Arsht in 2008.

Tickets — $35-$75 for 8CHO, $55-$75 for Slava’s Snowshow — go on sale Feb. 11 to Arsht members and in the spring to others; 305-949-6722, arshtcenter.org.

Christine Dolen

Visual arts

• The Coconut Grove Arts Festival kicked off its 50th anniversary festivities last week by unveiling a poster by Romero Britto. “Coconut Grove was home to my very first studio in Miami, and I am truly humbled to be a part of the 50-year celebration of one of Miami’s oldest tradition in the arts,” Britto said in a statement. The festival takes place Feb. 16-18; cgaf.org.

• StoryCorps, a national initiative to document Americans’ stories, will be at North Miami’s Museum of Contemporary Art this week to interview arts leaders, artists, students and volunteers. The visit is part of the museum’s 2012 National Medal Award. StoryCorps segments are heard on NPR’s Morning Edition.

Jane Wooldridge, Galena Mosovich

Watts at Arsht

Pianist Andre Watts will perform Beethoven’s “Emperor” Concerto with the Philadelphia Orchestra under the baton of Rafael Fruhbeck de Burgos at 8 p.m. Thursday at the Arsht Center’s Knight Concert Hall. Bach’s Wachet auf, ruft uns die Stimme” (“Sleepers Awake”) and Brahms’ Symphony No. 1 are also on the program. Tickets are $50-$130; 305-949-6722, arshtcenter.org.

Dancer lectures

Dancer Gelan Lambert, a New World School of the Arts graduate and YoungArts Presidential Scholar who left Miami in 1995 for the Juilliard School and success on Broadway, returns to his hometown March 19-24 for the Arsht Center run of FELA! At 7 p.m. Tuesday he will pay tribute to Nigerian musician and political activist Fela Kuti, the inspiration for FELA!, and legendary expatriate dancer Josephine Baker in a talk at the World Erotic Art Museum, 1205 Washington Ave., Miami Beach. Museum owner Naomi Wilzig will display her collection of Baker memorabilia. Tickets to Gelan’s talk, “The Bottom, the Derriere, and the Nyash,” are $15; 305-532-9336, weam.com.