Over their past year-plus of productions, the Haus of Ruckus team of T. Green and Calvin Vo have treated audiences to no end of surprises: blends of classical-Greek and disco stylings; mixed martial arts competitions peppered with video-game sound effects and glow-in-the-dark puppets; a talking cactus. But with their latest comedy Are We There Yeti?, running March 3 through 12, Green and Vo have made a most unexpected presentational switch: They've gone educational. Sort of.

A doc can get away with an unexciting, even bland presentation so long as the story it tells captures and holds your interest, and directors Mila Aung-Thwin's and Daniel Cross' 2014 documentary Atanasoff: Father of the Computer kept me interested, and quite invested, through the whole of its too-short 45 minutes.

With the professional company's annual, yet all-new, presentation of Love Stories – being staged at Davenport's Outing Club on February 10 and 11 – audiences for the 2023 edition will be treated to a little bit of everything: classical dance, modern dance, lyrical dance; Bach, Debussy, Sonny Rollins with the Modern Jazz Quartet. But while the performances come with either a served dinner or desserts available for purchase, Artistic Director Courtney Lyon has has another food reference for what patrons can expect: “It's kind of like a buffet,” she says. “You get to try to a lot of different things.”

While the announcement itself provided a bunch of welcome confirmations and surprises, as well as the obligatory less-welcome ones, the most gratifying thing about the roughly 20-minute presentation of Oscar nominees was our again being able to hear in-the-moment gasps, whoops, and even, for one category, laughs with the lists of names and titles. Especially titles. But we'll get to that.