Creative and life partners John Cage and Merce Cunningham wrote separately and, hair-raisingly, didn’t bring their music and dance together until performances. It brought a chaos, poetry, and life to the stage that was, by definition, not replicable. But re-creations have their own lives. Today’s free performances of excerpts from Cunningham pieces—Roaratorio (1983, based on Finnegans Wake, which happens to contain a character called Merkyn Corningwham), Fabrications (1987), and Enter (1993)—will happen alongside an ongoing exhibition of Cunninghamania, the first to look at his artistic ties to his native Northwest (where he attended Cornish), with Cornish’s Indeterminacy Ensemble performing Cage’s music. (Cornish College of the Arts Main Gallery, first floor, 1000 Lenora St, www.cornish.edu/merce, 12:15 and 1 pm, free)

Jen Graves (The Stranger’s former arts critic) mostly writes about things you approach with your eyeballs. But she’s also a history nerd interested in anything that needs more talking about, from male...