Regional arts and entertainment events

Sunday

Still-life stories Photographer Ricardo Barros and sculptor Martha Posner explore narratives of the body through manipulated forms. A double exhibition of their work is at the Dalet Gallery, 141 N. Second St., to June 6. Admission is free. Call 215-923-2424.

Smart shtick The wily 1812 Productions presents An Evening Without Woody Allen, a compilation by Jennifer Childs that dramatizes his short stories, such as "The Kugelmass Episode" - in which a professor meets Madame Bovary with the help of a magician ("Make sure and always get me into the book before page 120. I always have to meet her before she hooks up with this Rodolphe character.") - only to find that literary characters are as messily complex as real people once they've seen F.A.O. Schwartz. The show goes on at 2 p.m. at Plays and Players Theatre, 1714 Delancey St., and continues on a Tuesday-through-Sunday schedule to May 16. Tickets are $25 to $32. Call 215-592-9560.

Early opera Henry Purcell's chamber work Dido and Aeneas, originally written for a performance at a girls' boarding school in 1689, contains one of the all-time greatest arias in "When I am laid in earth." The Center City Opera performs the work at 3 p.m. at the Ethical Society Theater, 1906 S. Rittenhouse Square. Tickets are $25. Call 215-238-1555.

Monday

New sounds Fab falsetto Jonsí of Icelandic art-rockers Sigur Rós has gone solo (the infectious "Go Do" is tops on playlist now). He plays at 8 p.m. at the Electric Factory, 421 N. Seventh St. Tickets are $33. Call 610-784-5400.

Tuesday

Chamber music Violinist Soovin Kim and pianist Ieva Jokubaviciute play works by Schubert, Debussy, Prokofiev, and Beethoven at 8 p.m. at the Kimmel Center's Perelman Theater, Broad and Spruce Streets. Tickets are $23. Call 215-569-8080.

Wednesday

Dance quartet In the penultimate program of the season for the Pennsylvania Ballet, the troupe performs Balanchine's folksy Square Dance, Jerome Robbins' Nijinsky adaptation Afternoon of a Faun, Annabelle Lopez Ochoa's "constructed chaos" Requiem for a Rose, and William Forsythe's frenetic In the Middle, Somewhat Elevated. Performances are at the Merriam Theater, 250 S. Broad St., at 7:30 p.m. Wednesday through Friday, 2 and 8 p.m. Saturday, and 2 p.m. next Sunday. Tickets are $21.50 to $126.50. Call 215-893-1999.

Thursday

Super team-up Divine vocalist and violinist Phoebe Hunt (of the excellent Texas-swing combo the Belleville Outfit) teams with audiophile pianist Dave Madden at 8 p.m. at Milkboy Coffee, 2 E. Lancaster Ave., Ardmore. Tickets are $10. Call 610-645-5269.

Friday & Saturday

Future world The Rebecca Davis Dance Company adapts the dystopian visions of Aldous Huxley and George Orwell in their ballet Braving the New World, performed at the Suzanne Roberts Theatre, Broad and Lombard Streets, at 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday. Tickets are $25. Call 215-755-9510.

Nowhere man The life of cult exploitation filmmaker J.X. Williams would make a pretty good movie in itself: The son of a Communist set designer at Warner Bros., he was a high school dropout who started in the RKO mail room and rose to become a confidant of production chief Dore Schary. After being blacklisted, he drifted into the L.A. underworld, started making mob-backed stag films and writing pulp novels, made a bundle, was targeted by the FBI, and decamped to Europe to make movies such as E.S.P. Orgy, Mondo Vietnam, and Supermaniacs. He now lives in seclusion in Switzerland.

Then again, he may not exist and instead be an elaborate hoax by a group of grad students and film archivists. But we choose to believe: It's a story that should be true, even if it isn't.

The Secret Cinema presents a program of J.X. Williams Films hosted by Noel Lawrence, curator of the J.X. Williams Archives. On offer: Excerpts from Psych-Burn, a deliberately addled 1968 TV variety show; Satan Claus, an unbalanced 1975 holiday treat; and The Virgin Sacrifice, a 1969 big-budget horror film that ruined the filmmaker in Hollywood. The feature is Peep Show, a classic 1965 faux-documentary on paranoia constructed of clips from 1950s film noir. The program goes on at Moore College Art and Design, 20th and Race Streets, at 8 p.m. Friday. Tickets are $7. Call 215-965-4099.

Bumps, grinds, grins Wild weekend at the Trocadero, 1003 Arch St. (call 215-922-6888): Lucha VaVOOM, a mix of Mexican masked wrestling and burlesque that may just be world's most perfect art form, goes on at 8 p.m. Friday. Tickets are $24. . . . Aqua Teen Hunger Force Live, based on the surreal cartoon starring fries, a milk shake, and a meatball, features the show's creators, Dave Willis and Dana Snyder, singing, telling jokes, and screening film clips. The show goes on at 8 p.m. Saturday. Tickets are $24.