Essentials: Entertainment Picks Feb. 26-March 4 

Another Language: Ghost Town
Another Language Performing Arts Company is celebrating its 30th anniversary this year, and co-founders Beth and Jimmy Miklavcic are commemorating the occasion with their newest project, Ghost Town. Unlike the "Interplay" online theatrical performances they've produced for the past decade, Ghost Town is a completely online, crowd-sourced, ongoing project on the subject of Utah's ghost towns—as the Miklavcics say, "remnants of bygone eras where change required the inhabitants to leave their dreams behind." Utah has approximately 150 ghost towns, and 35 have already been explored in this ongoing project that began last year. Responses have come in a variety of media formats. Marden Pond composed the "Sanctuary" suite based on the Great Salt Lake's Gunnison Island; Gretchen Reynolds is creating a puppet piece about the ghost town of Alta; and Barbara Chamberlain is working on a short story based on Bullion Canyon in Sevier County. Anyone can participate, but artists must register online at Another Language's site, and all entries are curated by Another Language. Contributors include Babs DeLay and Bella Hall, Alyssa Kay and Sego Lily School students, Callous Physical Theatre, folk-music duo Hauns Mill, renowned folklorist Hal Cannon and bluegrass band Red Rock Rondo, including composer Philip Bimstein and singer/songwriter Kate MacLeod. By the very nature of its technological medium, Ghost Town also explores the implications of digital "presence" at such sparsely inhabited sites. Another Language provides an opportunity for participants to look back at Utah histories that might have been lost and contemplate how echoes of the past may resonate in the present. (Brian Staker) Ghost Town @ AnotherLanguage.org/projects/2014/ghosttown/ghosttown.html, ongoing

Our America: The Latino Presence in American Art
When subcultures with a diverse community are united, the community as a whole benefits as strengths within that diversity are made manifest. Latino culture in America today is as American as any other culture. The subjects and themes of a new art exhibition at UMFA, Our America: The Latino Presence in American Art, describe diversity within Latino culture—an act of both Latino and American unification—through 80 works by 60 artists. One constant in this work—representing artists of Mexican, Puerto Rican, Cuban and Dominican decent—is unabashed honesty. The art—whether it's documentary photography, colorful and bold painting, abstract art, conceptual art, print or film—is neither glorification nor patronization of the artist's heritage, but truth. Thematic elements including family and the sacred allow viewers to connect with each artist's portrayal of his or her own unique heritage, and to see the beauty in the vibrancy of the whole. "Carlos" (pictured), by Mexican artist Joseph Rodríguez, is a photograph that conveys these unifying truths. The cityscape is a panorama of Spanish Harlem in New York City but, in the foreground, against the sky, a tattooed arm stretches to the center of the image, fingers spread wide. All across America, from every Latino culture, this declaration of individual identity against a hectic urban backdrop might resonate. With a hand reaching for the sky, this is not only a Latino dream, this is the American Dream. (Ehren Clark) Our America @ Utah Museum of Fine Arts, University of Utah, 410 Campus Center Drive, 801-581-7332, through May 17, adult $9, youth $7, students free. UMFA.Utah.edu.

Guerrilla Gallery: Tune In
Since the 2008 economic downturn, art galleries have been forced to reconsider their strategies about how they present and market their works—and, even more practically, how they find space to do it. As in the restaurant industry, "pop-up" has become a buzzword in the art world for temporary artistic venues, and even has become a way of celebrating the transitory nature of these artistic experiences. Guerrilla Gallery is a new local pop-up artistic venture and, for the second of four quarterly shows, founder and curator Cecilia Anthony has opted to create an exhibit that challenges the very physicality of the traditional gallery setting, producing an exclusively online art show. The current iteration of online experience is becoming less about visiting websites and more about social media; the gallery is hosting Tune In on its Twitter, Facebook and Instagram pages. The exhibit will include pieces by photographer Jamie Clyde—Salt Lake City-born but now living in New York City—whose work often comments on economic and social issues ("Visceral Motion No. 7" is pictured); literary work by Salt Lake City poet and raconteur Karl Geiger; and video performances by local choreographers Temria Airmet and Ashlee Vilos. The gallery will come to you—or at least to your preferred electronic device—so, in a sense, there's no "there" there. Without the sometimes intimidating or overwhelming gallery setting, spectators might be freer to embrace the sheer imagery of each work. Artists will upload their work 6-9 p.m., and the entire collection will be taken down at midnight. (Brian Staker) Tune In @ Guerrilla Gallery, Feb. 27, 6 p.m.-midnight, free. Twitter: @popupartutah, Facebook.com/PopUpArtUtah, Instagram: guerrilla_gallery

click to enlarge

Alton Brown Live
When Alton Brown first started out in show business, he was behind the camera instead of in front of it. As a cinematographer in the 1980s, Brown filmed music videos for bands such as R.E.M. ("The One I Love") and served as a camera operator on Spike Lee's School Daze. So how did he become the face of Food Network and an everyman patron saint of home cooks all over America? It took a career shift in the 1990s, when Brown, dissatisfied with what he saw in television cooking shows, enrolled at the New England Culinary Institute. Within a year of graduating, he created a pilot for what would become his signature show Good Eats. The show aired on PBS before it moved to Food Network for a decade-long run that catapulted Brown to fame as host of popular competition shows like Iron Chef America and Cutthroat Kitchen. It takes a very particular kind of celebrity chef to turn his renown into a live stage production. Alton Brown Live certainly offers the useful kitchen-wizardry tips for which Good Eats was known, but Brown takes his multimedia theater version of a cooking class in an audience-participation direction, giving attendees a chance to don aprons and learn side by side with the pro. Music, comedy and showy culinary science meld into an event that shows how Alton Brown made the right choice moving his talents out from behind the scenes. (Scott Renshaw) Alton Brown Live @ Capitol Theatre, 50 W. 200 South, 801-355-2787, Feb. 27, 5 p.m. & 8 p.m., $35-$55. ArtTix.org