For the past 16 years Joe Chvala has melded diverse forms of percussive dance into dramatic spectacles. He's created everything from Scandinavian epics with pagan Nordic heroes reconfigured as post-industrial punk stompers, to plainspoken Appalachian folk tales with the hardscrabble fatalism of Walker Evans's Depression photos. Now this master of percussive fusion goes all Gallic with an international dance/theater pastiche inspired by vaudeville, tap dance, cabaret, follies, opera, hambone, and clowning. Imagine a foppish French monarch slapping out rhythms on his fancy brocade, or decadent Parisians rhythmically seething in underground nightclubs. The show serves up an eclectic brew of new (live) music, dance, and comedy, and old favorites including the mad madrigal medley "All Creatures Great and Small," a piece that does for English madrigals what Savion Glover did for Bach in "Classical Savion." And all performed by un ensemble extraordinaire, the Flying Foot Forum, which includes Chvala, his muse Karla Grotting, rhythm-wizard Peter O'Gorman, and a host of performers who beautifully blur the line between music and dance. — Linda Shapiro

When thinking of spoken word, storytelling, and poetry readings, you probably don't think of things like time allotment, scorecards, and judges. But that is part of the charm of the poetry slam. Whether or not it's human nature to want to turn everything into a sport, or to somehow qualify artistic value with a score, poetry slams give an urgency, a sharpening sense of the moment, that a casual reading will never have. This Monday will be the qualifying event for the Olympics of the spoken-word world when the Artists' Quarter hosts the Soap Boxing Poetry Grand Slam. Although most Soap Boxing gigs allow for open-mic spoken word, tonight's event is a closed performance, featuring eight of the top performers of the season. The four best performers, determined by five judges picked at random in the audience (you could potentially be one!), will form a national team that will represent St. Paul at the 2008 National Poetry Slam in Madison, Wisconsin, this August. As Soap Boxing states on its website: "The competition will be ugly; the poetry will be beautiful." 18+. — Jessica Armbruster

"Fusion" is the buzz word in the arts these days, and dance is no exception. Choreographers infiltrate one another's forms, mixing ballet and hip hop, modern dance and gymnastics, Flamenco and Indian dance. While such dynamic melding can be exhilarating, it can also be as skin-deep as Botox. But not when Ragamala Music and Dance Theater mix the classical Indian dance form Bharatanatyam with Japanese Taiko drumming. Once again, Ragamala's adventurous artistic directors Ranee and Aparna Ramaswamy show how culturally different forms can create a new and vibrant dialect. "Sva (Vital Force)" brings together the superbly articulate Aparna Ramaswamy and the Wadaiko Ensemble Tokara drummers. It's fascinating to watch Ramaswamy, an amazing dancer, demonstrate a sensual interplay of rhythmic precision, sculptural form, and spontaneity. By contrast, the Taiko drummers work in big, bold gestures, striking barrel-like drums. It's a bit like watching the turbulent power of a thunderstorm offset by a sinuous tapestry of interlocking patterns and textures. Both forms have a tradition of powerfully articulated and complex rhythms, and both are spiritual disciplines expressed through a vibrant physicality. Aparna will also dance "Ardhanareeshwara Stotram," the origin of creation, in which she reconciles the Divine Feminine with the Divine Masculine. A third work, "Yathra," fuses cello and sitar music with lighting by local master Jeff Bartlett and live drawing by New York-based artist Terry Rosenberg. Special Ragamala Gala and Benefit is $75-$80 from 5 p.m. to 10 p.m. Saturday, May 3, at the Weisman Art Museum (333 East River Rd. Minneapolis; for more info call the Southern Theater). — Linda Shapiro