You’re reading the Goings On newsletter, a guide to what we’re watching, listening to, and doing this week. Sign up to receive it in your inbox.It’s taken me some days to write about Theresa Hak Kyung Cha’s show at Artists Space, because I didn’t want to face the fact that she’s no longer around to keep growing as an artist, a thinker, and a woman. Cha explored her deep interest in language among distinct cultures—including that of her native South Korea, where she grew up, and of the United States, where she moved, in 1962, when she was eleven—with video, performance, and multimedia installations. “Theresa Hak Kyung Cha: Multiple Offerings” (organized by the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, and on through Nov. 21) is the first retrospective of Cha’s work in twenty-five years, and I can’t imagine a more beautiful curatorial vision. Everything about it—placement, context, sound, moving image—works to create a kind of holistic portrait of an artist who was as devoted to image as she was to language, and to show the ways in which each amplifies the other.A slide from the multimedia installation “Other Things Seen, Other Things Heard,” from 1978.Art work by Theresa Hak Kyung Cha / Courtesy Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film ArchiveIndeed, her mysterious and uncategorizable book “Dictee,” from 1982, features a number of women talking, ranging from Joan of Arc to the artist’s mother, who lived through Japanese rule, when Korean could not be spoken in public. In “Dictee,” and in her performances, many of which are featured in “Multiple Offerings,” Cha’s and other women’s voices rise out of bodies that have lived through some form of oppression to come out on the other side as whole and true. One walks away from this historic show deeply moved by its singularity, and angry: in 1982, shortly before her first exhibition at Artists Space was scheduled to open, Cha, who was working on a series of photographs about her time employed at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, was murdered.—Hilton AlsAbout TownDanceThe first part of “Adaku”—a dance-theatre trilogy by Okwui Okpokwasili and Peter Born that spools out a speculative vision rooted in a pre-colonial African village—ended with wailing, as a beloved daughter was caught up in the transatlantic slave trade. Part 2, “She Shivers with It,” which has its New York début at BAM, starts with that choral cry and fast-forwards into an alternate present, tapping into embodied memory to trace the lineage of the lost daughter. Amid two hundred feet of snaking red coil, the ritualistic performance lingers in pain but also mines the humor in a magical hairdresser.—Brian Seibert (BAM Fisher; Nov. 11-15.)DancePaul Taylor Dance Company has lately diversified its repertory considerably. This season includes new and recent pieces by the resident artists Robert Battle and Lauren Lovette; an example of mid-century psychedelia by Alwin Nikolais; and “Messengers, Maidens and the End of Something Else,” by the jokey postmodernist Pam Tanowitz. A tongue-in-cheek exploration of the classical-music repertoire, the dance pairs the first and fourth movements of Schubert’s “Death and the Maiden” quartet with a bright palette of movement and color. Those who come for Taylor will be rewarded with rare revivals of “Arabesque,” from 1999, which is set to a Debussy composition that suggests prettiness but soon reveals something darker, and “Byzantium,” from 1984, which probes the degenerate sides of society.—Marina Harss (David H. Koch Theatre; through Nov. 22.)BroadwayFrom left, Crystal A. Dickinson, Hiram Delgado, and Bill Irwin in “The Imaginary Invalid.”Photograph by Joan MarcusMolière collapsed onstage while performing the lead role of his last play, “The Imaginary Invalid,” and died hours later. That it’s a sendup of doctors and medicine is an irony worthy of its author. Brandon J. Dirden’s revival, for Roundabout, features Bill Irwin (who also adapted the text from Doug Skinner’s translation) as the lead: a perfectly healthy hypochondriac exploited by greedy, bullshitting physicians. Irwin’s performance is a marvel of physical and vocal comedy, complemented by Crystal A. Dickinson as his sweet-talking, gold-digging wife; Rachel Bloom as the sly servant who sees and fixes all; and a bloviating Brooks Ashmanskas, double-cast as two of the quacks. In its whirligig puncturing of pretense, this sumptuous production not only honors Molière’s spirit but makes it felt, offering us ninety minutes with him in comedy heaven.—Dan Stahl (Haimes; through Nov. 22.)Off BroadwayIn the new musical “Midnight,” Rail (Todrick Hall, who also wrote and directed), an enslaved Black man, falls in love with Richard (Jeremy Beloate), a white man he works for; in the second act, they swap social placements, so that Rail is the wealthy landowner and Richard the enslaved worker. (They remain in love.) Even if the songs go on twice as long as is necessary to the plot, the singing is a considerable pleasure, with Kennedy Caughell bringing a spirited assurance to her turn as Scarlet, an imperious Southern belle, while Charlotte Odusanya imbues Lily Rose—a young woman wooed by Rail’s “pretty eyes”—with a lambent sweetness. Hall’s ambitious show is concerned with racial legibility and manipulation, but he’s threading with a dull needle.—Rhoda Feng (DR2; through Jan. 3.)MoviesMichelle Mao and Haley Lu Richardson in “Zi.”Photograph by Benjamin LoebReappropriating the means of production after two elaborate movies, the director Kogonada filmed “Zi” in Hong Kong, shooting on the fly with a main cast of three and a scant crew to match. The results are as daring as the method; the title character, a Hong Kong-born violinist (Michelle Mao), is awaiting test results about a possible brain tumor. In a variation on Agnès Varda’s “Cléo from 5 to 7,” Zi has hallucinations—seeing flashes of her future self, as though mentally stuck in her own past—but a chance connection with an American wanderer (Haley Lu Richardson) and a Korean scientist (Jin Ha) offers hope: the trio’s lurching, passionate overnight ramble helps diagnose a metaphysical malady. The filmmaker’s ardently curious vision of the cityscape links inner lives to history, self-images to aesthetics.—Richard Brody (Metrograph through Nov. 15, and in limited release.)Post-PunkSince its inception, in 2019, the torrid band Sweeping Promises has been a project about the act of creating. Its partners, Lira Mondal and Caufield Schnug, started up on a whim when a jam sesh in an abandoned science lab conjured their first song, which became the title track for their 2020 début, “Hunger for a Way Out.” The band was imagined as a space beyond the duo’s other musical projects to “capture the exhilaration of writing songs in the moment,” as Mondal put it, and the music is governed primarily by impulses—it’s lo-fi and punk, possessing a free spirit and a resourceful nature. Their most recent album, “You Say I Romanticize,” reaffirms their core drive with songs more explicitly about committing to an artistic life.—Sheldon Pearce (Baby’s All Right; Nov. 11.)Bar TabTaran Dugal excavates cocktails in Bushwick.Illustration by Patricia BolañosBrooklyn night life is full of imposing figures: brutish bouncers, cool-kid carousers, the rare haughty bartender. But it wasn’t until this summer’s opening of the Museum, a low-lit cocktail lounge in Bushwick, that barflies had to contend with a T. rex—or, at least, a replica of one, whose skull is mounted on a table in the back room. On a recent weekend, three friends sat to the dino’s right, trying their best to ignore his unmistakable glower. They’d begun their evening in the Gift Shop, a cozy parlor up front serving drinks and finger foods, before making their way through the establishment’s Exhibition Hall, a narrow space lined with engraved skulls, Egyptian figurines, and a kaleidoscopic array of gemstones and crystals. In the back, the friends perused the menu, which consisted of cocktails inspired by different aspects of natural history. The most adventurous of the group ordered the Insectarium, an earthy honey-gin Negroni with a cricket-infused tincture, accompanied by a small piece of ant-ridden chocolate. The queasiest, looking away, opted for the Crystal Pass, a velvety Old-Fashioned incorporating oaky Scotch, bourbon, and mole sauce. The third friend, between sips of his Birds of the World (a tangy tequila-based concoction of elderflower, sunflower seeds, guava, and pineapple), began eavesdropping on a couple nearby, whose discussion had turned to mammalian politics. “Hyenas get a bad rep from ‘The Lion King,’ ” a man said to his date, “but they’re just kind of taking care of the leftovers, you know?” The eavesdropper, busy finishing a delectable pepper-chicken skewer, couldn’t agree more. Eventually, the place emptied out, and the trio took their leave to the hazy groove of a Khruangbin track. After all, the sun had set, the T. rex was still glowering, and one can never be too careful in a museum at night.P.S. Good stuff on the internet:Seven generations of broom makingTom Hiddleston says: close the toes“Like a hug in a dish”