Returning to live performances in the University of Iowa's Space/Place Theatre for the first time in two years, UI Dance Company delivers four presentations of its annual Home Concert February 23 through 26, evenings that promise to be packed with curiosity, humor, and empathy in a diverse exploration of the human experience through movement and metaphor.

Appearing in an area-wide series of full concerts, pop-up events, and a special performance opposite his father between February 22 and 26, acclaimed pianist Barron Ryan serves as the latest guest in Quad City Arts' Visiting Artists Series, this up-and-coming musical sensation recognized as one of Smithsonian magazine's “Ten Innovators to Watch in 2021.”

A lauded selection in the 2021 Tribeca Film Festival, 2021's Reflection: A Walk with Water serves as the latest presentation in River Action's QC Environmental Film Series, its February 20 premiere at Davenport's Figge Art Museum sure to demonstrate why Framework said that the work “should be screened through every Internet portal, at every bus stop, on every subway line, and in every government office, school, university, and bar."

Winner of the 2001 Pulitzer Prize for Drama as well as that year's Tony Award for Best Play, author David Auburn's brilliant, funny, and moving Proof enjoys a student-produced run in the St. Ambrose University Studio Theatre from February 17 through 19, with the New York Times stating that Auburn's drama “has the pace of a psychological thriller” ans is “as accessible and compelling as a detective story.”

Winner of seven 1977 Tony Awards and one of the 25 longest-running musicals in Broadway history, the iconic comic-strip adaptation Annie will be brought to life – in abbreviated form – in Davenport Junior Theatre's February 12 through 20 run of Annie Jr., its iconic score by Thomas Meehan, Charles Strouse, and Martin Charnin boasting such timeless tunes as "It's the Hard-Knock Life," "Easy Street," "Maybe," and the unforgettable "Tomorrow."

In the Bettendorf Public Library's latest event in its "Community Connections" series, a true-life tale involving social reformer Frederick Douglass, iconic author Harriet Beecher Stowe, and the United States' first public discussions about abolition will be explored on February 17 through scenes from Sons & Daughters of Thunder, the locally produced 2019 drama boasting the talents of Fourth Wall Films' Kelly and Tammy Rundle and more than two dozen familiar area performers.

A collaboration between American photographer Richard Misrach and Mexican-American artist and composer Guillermo Galindo, the pair's combined museum piece Border Cantos / Sonic Borders will grace Davenport's Figge Art Museum through June 15, the artists' work exploring the complexities of the southern border through photography, sculpture, and sound, inviting us to bridge boundaries and initiate important conversations.

A fascinating virtual presentation by historian Russell Baldner, the German American Heritage Center's Our Daily Bread: Martin Luther & a Mansfeld Boyhood Home will, on February 20, deliver insight into one of the most noted figures of the 20th century, its focus on events surrounding the town that currently houses about 9,000 people in a southwest corner of the German federal state of Saxony-Anhalt.

Performing an organic mix of pop rock, progressive rock, Latin pop, reggae, ska, and calypso, a quartet of gifted musicians pays homage to one of the best-selling and most successful Latin-American bands of all time when Revolución de Amor, on February 18, pays an evening-long tribute to Maná in a special touring concert at Davenport's Rhythm City Casino Resort Event Center.

Held in conjunction with Black History Month, a special presentation of massive cultural import will be held at the Davenport Public Library's Fairmount Branch on February 22, with Black History: The Fight for Civil Rights in Davenport celebrating figures of the Civil Rights movement who have a local connection – among them the formerly enslaved African-American who stayed in Davenport, and whose name is etched in history through the notorious "Dred Scott decision."

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