Sept. 9 - 15 - NYTimes.com THE Zimbabwe-born NORA CHIPAUMIRE, now working out of New York, has spent most of her (still relatively short) choreographic career exploring ideas about African identity - and even more specifically, ideas about female African identity. Until now her pieces have been largely abstract, even if they have dealt with Zimbabwean history and her experience of it. But in "Miriam," which opens on Wednesday in the Fishman Space of the Brooklyn Academy of Music's new Fisher Building, Ms. Chipaumire turns to the life of the South African singer MIRIAM MAKEBA, taking inspiration from her dramatic narrative - first as an exiled, worldwide symbol of protest against the apartheid government, later as the beloved artist known as Mama Africa. The idea of Ms. Chipaumire taking on Makeba's complicated life and art is compelling. Ms. Chipaumire too is an artistic protester against the politics of her country (South Africa's neighbor) and is effectively in exile; she too is a performer of intense vitality and charisma. But Ms. Chipaumire's work suggests that she is unlikely to do anything overly literal in "Miriam," which has an original score by Omar Sosa. 7:30 p.m. Wednesday through Saturday, 321 Ashland Place, Fort Greene, (718) 636-4100, bam.org. THE violinist GIL MORGENSTERN has offered many thoughtfully conceived programs as part of his engaging Reflections series, which explores varied repertory in light of artistic, historic and social contexts. He celebrates the fifth anniversary of the series with an enticing lineup, beginning Wednesday and Thursday at the W.M.P. Concert Hall, a jewel-box salon decorated with Parisian chandeliers and gilded mirrors. Mr. Morgenstern will be joined by the pianist J. Y. Song for "Stravinsky, the Violin Years 1930-1935." The program will include excerpts from the Violin Concerto in D, "Firebird Suite," "Duo Concertante" and "Suite Italienne." 7 p.m. Wednesday, 7:30 p.m. Thursday, 31 East 28th Street, Manhattan; (212) 582-7536, wmpconcerthall.com. The Miller Theater opens its fall season with a presentation by the admirable French early-music group LE POÈME HARMONIQUE. The ensemble will pair Monteverdi's haunting madrigals about love's torments with lighthearted, witty works by Francesco Manelli. The semistaged, candle-lighted production aims to evoke the streets and canals of 17th-century Venice during Carnival. 8 p.m. Wednesday and Friday, 2960 Broadway at 116th Street, Morningside Heights; (212) 854-7799, millertheatre.com. THE new season looms, but the bustling Signature Theater Company is still finishing up last season, which included a tribute to the great South African playwright ATHOL FUGARD. As part of its first season in its new home on 42nd Street the company presented revivals of two Fugards - "Blood Knot" and "My Children! My Africa!" - and now it ends the Fugard season with the New York premiere of "The Train Driver," which Mr. Fugard has said he thinks is his most important play. As with much of Mr. Fugard's recent writing the play depicts the troubled and despair-riddled landscape of post-apartheid South Africa. It's inspired by an actual event that took place more than a decade ago: A poor black woman from a squatter camp stepped, with her three children, into the path of a speeding commuter train. Mr. Fugard's play takes place after the event, as the driver of the train, played by Ritchie Coster, tries to come to terms with the horror of what took place and his inadvertent role in it. Opens Sunday, Romulus Linney Courtyard Theater at the Pershing Square Signature Center, 480 West 42nd Street, Clinton; (212) 244-7529, signaturetheatre.org. CONSIDERING the all-star artists who regularly show at one Gagosian Gallery or another worldwide, it is interesting to see a name on this fall's roster that will not be familiar to American audiences. She is the German artist KARIN KNEFFEL, and when an exhibition of her paintings opens at Gagosian's Madison Avenue space on Wednesday, it will be one of the first times that New Yorkers will have the chance to see her delicate, multilayered canvases. Reminiscent of Gerhard Richter, with whom Ms. Kneffel studied, the paintings imaginatively combine perception and reality, or as the artist once explained, they "create something to hang onto, which disappears the moment you try to grasp it." The exhibition, on view through Oct. 20, will include one painting, from a series of works, based on Haus Esters in Krefeld, Germany, the Bauhaus-style red-brick villa designed by Mies van der Rohe that has become a contemporary art museum. In this painting Ms. Kneffel has incorporated the interior furnishings that the Esters family had in the house, overlaid with semitransparent reflected images of a furniture arrangement consisting of lamps and chairs by Mies and the designer Lily Reich. 980 Madison Avenue, near 77th Street, (212) 744-2313, gagosian.com. A COUPLE of years ago K. MICHELLE seemed like a possible heir to the throne of Mary J. Blige. A deeply able singer with a penchant for overemoting and high anxiety, she detailed the wages of torturous love as well as anyone around. But despite a handful of strong singles she never released an album and appeared to fade away. Her recent return has been improbable. She may have found her ideal creative role as the spitfire character on the uproarious, toxic and riveting VH1 reality show "Love & Hip-Hop: Atlanta." She's been a reliable troublemaker, sparring with other cast members, and also the show's most bruised star, reliving what she describes as abuse at the hands of an ex. While many of her peers on the show are reality stars first, and maybe solely, K. Michelle is looking to use this second career to jump-start her first one, recently releasing a handful of new songs and performing on Thursday at S.O.B."s. 9 p.m., 200 Varick Street, at Houston Street, South Village; (212) 243-4940, sobs.com. PBS viewers can cavort with the gods and ponder the convergence of 19th-century opera with 21st-century technology when the network broadcasts WAGNER'S COMPLETE RING CYCLE - "Das Rheingold," "Die Walküre," "Siegfried" and "Götterdämmerung" - for the first time in more than two decades. This much-debated production, directed by Robert Lepage (rumored price: $16 million and not a few disgruntled critics) and starring Bryn Terfel, Deborah Voigt and Stephanie Blythe, was unveiled in increments at the Metropolitan Opera starting in the 2010-11 season. "Wagner's Dream" (Monday at 9 p.m.), in which Susan Froemke tells the back story of Mr. Lepage's staging of the epic, ushers in this four-night event (Tuesday through Friday at 9; check local listings). This documentary also marvels at the 45-ton set, nicknamed "the machine," of 24 rotating planks that twisted into staircases and walls and threatened to grind everything to a halt. Ms. Voigt, who fell off the contraption early in her run as Brünnhilde, likened navigating the demanding role while the ground moved beneath her feet to climbing Mount Everest. As is watching the spectacle: the operas total 16 hours, with Friday night's installment clocking in at 5. SCREENWRITERS have only lately emerged as respected players in filmmaking, after decades of abuse. Trust the Anthology Film Archives to champion them, with its FROM THE PEN OF ... series. The third installment, through Sept. 18, highlights novelists who have written scripts, including Truman Capote ("The Innocents," 1961); Donald Westlake ("Cops and Robbers," 1973, and "The Stepfather," 1987); and Joan Didion and John Gregory Dunne ("The Panic in Needle Park," 1971). Few novelists have inspired directors like Elmore Leonard, whose works ("3:10 to Yuma," "Out of Sight," "Get Shorty") have been adapted countless times. Mr. Leonard himself is a seasoned screenwriter, and Anthology offers his western "Joe Kidd" (1972), with Clint Eastwood, and "Mr. Majestyk" (1974), a modern-day Charles Bronson vehicle displaying Mr. Leonard's flair for plotting, pungent dialogue and petty-criminal portraiture. Mr. Bronson is a Vietnam veteran and ex-convict who just wants to hire some migrant workers and raise watermelons, but the mob and the law keep hampering him. With help from a strong Mexican woman (Linda Cristal), his pickup truck and his shotgun he finds a way. "Mr. Majestyk," Tuesday at 7 p.m. and Saturday at 4:45 p.m; 32-34 Second Avenue, at Second Street, East Village; (212) 505-5181, anthologyfilmarchives.org.