Getting their grooves on at the White House

You’ve settled into your classes and routine, so now it’s finally time to get out and do those artsy things that Columbia boasted about on your info tour. Come, dip your toes into the sea of culture with the aquatic Arts Editor, Alex Katz…

Ongoing

• Say Cheese! Portraits to Pics at the Brooklyn Historical Society. Portraits to Pics explores more than 150 years of family portraiture, from the earliest daguerreotypes to digital photography today. So that’s what my great-great-great-grandma wore? Free with valid CUID.
• Habit at Essex Street Market, Building B from 1 pm to 9 pm. Actors perform a text on 90 minute cycles from within a fully-functioning ranch-style home. Audiences circulate around the exterior watching through the windows, coming and going as they please. Ends Sunday. Free.
• Island: Or, To Be or Not to Be at The Connelly Theater at 7 pm on Tuesdays and Wednesdays or 8 pm from Thursdays to Saturdays.  Shakespeare Exchange invites you into a world of mistaken identities, star-crossed lovers, bumbling constables, an exiled king…all in the vaulting verse of iambic pentameter. $18.

Thursday

• Control Top! in Held Auditorium, 304 Barnard Hall. At 9 pm, Columbia and Barnard’s only all-female longform improv troupe, Control Top, opens its season with new members and special guest Fruit Paunch. Free.

Friday

• Afropolitan: The Pulse of Africa Culture Show in Roone. Food will be served at 7:15 pm and the rest of the event begins at 8 pm. Afropolitan is a culture and fashion show hosted by the African Students’ Association, celebrating the beauty and diversity of African cities through dance performances, comedy, and skits. $8.
• Postcrypt Presents in Postcrypt Coffeehouse at 8 pm. An amazing weekend with some cool artists and even cooler music. Free.

Saturday

• Morningside Lights Procession in Morningside Park at 8 pm. Enormous and luminous sculptures will parade through Morningside Heights in this one-of-a-kind event, co-presented by the Arts Initiative and Miller Theatre at Columbia University. Free.

Sunny smiles via Wikimedia Commons