Jan. 15 - 21 - NYTimes.com Ben Brantley The urge to hibernate is strong in January, when the weather is frightful and bed looks like the most inviting place in town. But heat-seeking theatergoers can avoid brain freeze with stimulating alternatives to Broadway blandness. You might, for example, venture into deepest Brooklyn, where the temperature's rising at the two-year-old Bushwick Starr, home to theatrical experiments that have included zombie flesh fests and one man's meditation on alcoholic impotence. Next week it contrasts the facts and fictions of military life in "GONNA SEE A MOVIE CALLED GUNGA DIN," which was originally scheduled to open this Wednesday. The play contrasts cinematic depictions of men and women at war with the testimonies of real-life veterans. Mark Sitko conceived this production for the Van Cougar company. Jan. 24 through Feb. 11, Bushwick Starr, 207 Starr Street, No. 4, between Irving and Wyckoff Avenues, Brooklyn, (800) 838-3006, thebushwickstarr.org, $15. A more venerable specimen of avant-garde-style biography can be found in Chelsea, where the experimental auteur Anne Bogart pays tribute to the experimental auteur Robert Wilson in "BOB," at New York Live Arts. First staged in 1998, this Obie-winning production stars Will Bond as Mr. Wilson, whose hypnotic visual style (and glacial pace) became the dernier cri in theatrical chic in the 1970s. Expect visual exquisiteness and elliptical exposition. As Mr. Bond's Mr. Wilson says: "I draw pictures. I don't draw meaning. Thursday through Jan. 29, New York Live Arts, 219 West 19th Street; (212) 924-0077, newyorklivearts.org, $32 to $40. Kathryn Shattuck When the second season of "MISTRESSES," the delicious BBC America soap opera about four women in Bristol balancing best friendship and extramarital intrigue, wrapped in May 2009, I eagerly awaited news of Season 3 and was met with a funk-inducing silence. There were so many loose ends to tie up, I wailed. Katie (Sarah Parish), the doctor who'd helped her fatally ill, married lover commit suicide in Season 1 - only to embark on an affair with his son and then with an old, also-married flame - had been greeted in the cliffhanger by her latest swain, who either would or would not sweep her off to Australia in the consummate act of forgiveness. Trudi (Sharon Small), a Sept. 11 widow who'd discovered that her dead husband was still living, was struggling with remarriage to a man who wasn't what he seemed. And Jessica (Shelley Conn), an event planner in an open relationship, was now pregnant with a spouse who'd decided to go monogamous. Or had he? Well, haul out the wineglasses and summon your girlfriends: They're back. A final, four-episode season has its premiere on Wednesday at 10 p.m., with an opener in which the women's icy demeanors make it clear we're venturing into frenemy territory. The series also introduces Joanna Lumley as Katie's widowed mother, Vivienne, whose imperious streak just may be softened through her own sexual healing. In "Questions About Angels," the title poem of his collection of the same name, BILLY COLLINS notes, with a touch of irritation, that the only question regularly asked about angels is "how many can dance on the head of a pin?" But he can think of many more questions. For instance, "Do they fly through God's body and come out singing?" and "Do they swing like children from the hinges/of the spirit world?" Inspired by Mr. Collins, a former United States poet laureate, the choreographer JOSEPH MILLS has created a suite of related dances, also called "Questions About Angels," in which he ponders some of Mr. Collins's angelic notions and offers some of his own, including, among other matters, that although theologians have pronounced angels asexual, artists have often made them look extremely sexy. So too, although the Bible tells of Jacob wrestling fiercely with an angel, angels also have been envisioned as ethereal, luminous beings in diaphanous robes. Mr. Mills has made his angels both athletic and shimmering, and his production unites movement with yards of voluminous fabric, unusual lighting effects and glittering shards of reflecting surfaces to create a realm of eternal wonder. Whether anyone in Mr. Mills's company, Mills/works Dance, will cavort on the head of a pin remains to be seen. Through next Sunday, 8 p.m., Sundays 3 p.m., Theater for the New City, 155 First Avenue, at Ninth Street, East Village, (212) 254-1109, theaterforthenewcity.net; $12. The programming at the Landmark Loew's Jersey Theater in Jersey City is always interesting, and the lineup Friday and next Saturday is no exception. The theme is movies about movie theaters. Friday's screening is "Cinema Paradiso," and the early show Saturday is "The Purple Rose of Cairo." The capper, though, makes the bill. It's "SHERLOCK JR.," a Buster Keaton silent classic in which Keaton plays a projectionist with a vivid imagination who climbs into the movie screen. The film, from 1924, is showing with a Keaton short called "The Playhouse" and live organ accompaniment. 8:30 p.m., next Saturday, 54 Journal Square, (201) 798-6055, loewsjersey.org; $10. Steven Soderbergh will be on hand Tuesday when the Film Society of Lincoln Center provides a sneak peak at his new movie, "HAYWIRE," which opens later in the week. Also sitting in: Gina Carano, the mixed-martial-arts fighter, who stars in the film. It's an action thriller, and Ms. Carano plays an undercover operative who is betrayed. The character is, understandably, rather grim faced. "There's only one time in the movie that she smiles, and that's when she's pretending to be drunk," Ms. Carano said in a recent interview with The New York Times. Off the set, Ms. Carano no doubt did some smiling about the supporting cast Mr. Soderbergh assembled to help her through her first major film role. It includes Michael Douglas, Antonio Banderas, Bill Paxton and Ewan McGregor. 7 p.m., Walter Reade Theater, 165 West 65th Street; (212) 875-5601, filmlinc.com; $20. Daniel J. Wakin MOHAMMED FAIROUZ, an Arab-American composer, is strikingly prolific for someone still under 30. He also shows a remarkable ability to draw from different cultures, giving klezmer overtones to a clarinet work, placing an opera in Upper Egypt, setting songs to words by Alma Mahler and using Aramaic, Hebrew and Arabic texts for a large-scale vocal piece. Established performers have championed his music, including the clarinetist David Krakauer and the Imani Winds. They and others, like the TransAtlantic Ensemble, the baritone Christopher Thompson and the soprano Mellissa Hughes, will join Mr. Fairouz, on piano, as performers for an evening of chamber and vocal music by this important new artistic voice. 8 p.m., Thursday, Weill Recital Hall, Carnegie Hall, (212) 247-7800, carnegiehall.org; $15. "STRAVINSKY OUTSIDE RUSSIA" is the latest program by the American Symphony Orchestra, led by the always intellectually ambitious Leon Botstein. The evening features, along with "Symphony of Psalms," a group of works that are heard less often, like "Mavra," "Requiem Canticles," "Babel," "Zvezdoliki" and the "Canticum Sacrum." Together they convey Stravinsky's range and shifting identity, depending on his milieu, Mr. Botstein writes. Friday, Carnegie Hall, $12.50 to $25. Nate Chinen The pre-eminent Cuban pianist CHUCHO VALDÉS hasn't been a total stranger in these parts, but he appears infrequently enough to make each pass feel like a comet sighting. This week he begins a monthlong North American tour, drawing from "Chucho's Steps" (Four Quarters), which earned a 2010 Grammy Award in the Latin jazz album category, since discontinued. Mr. Valdés is a briskly commanding improviser, discursive yet decisive, and some of the best moments in the concert, as on the album, will surely involve his high-wire pianism. But there's a special reason to hear him at Carnegie Hall on Saturday: BUIKA, a k a the magnetic Spanish singer Concha Buika, with whom he made a sublime 2009 album, "El Último Trago." For his two other appearances in the New York region, Mr. Valdés shares the bill with a blazing piano prodigy: ALFREDO RODRIGUEZ in Princeton, N.J., on Friday, and HIROMI in Newark next Sunday. But only at Carnegie Hall is there assurance of a collaboration. Friday, McCarter Theater, Princeton, N.J., mccarter.org; $42 to $71. 8 p.m. next Saturday, Carnegie Hall, carnegiehall.org; $25 to $75. 3 p.m. next Sunday, New Jersey Performing Arts Center, Newark, njpac.org; $29 to $80. Roberta Smith The New York art season's second semester moves into high gear this week. Tomorrow the METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART unveils its expanded and refurbished American art galleries. On Tuesday the AMERICAN FOLK ART MUSEUM opens "Jubilation/Rumination: Life, Real and Imagined," 100 works that highlight acquisitions from the past decade. Friday brings the MORGAN LIBRARY & MUSEUM's exhibition "Rembrandt's World: Dutch Drawings From the Clement C. Moore Collection," whose 90 sheets will include portraits, landscapes and genre scenes by Rembrandt and his contemporaries. Next Saturday the Met will open "Chinese Art in an Age of Revolution: Fu Baoshi (1904-1965)," the first American survey of an artist who revitalized the centuries-old tradition of Chinese landscape painting when the Communist regime tended to favor Social Realism. The week has more than its share of fairs, including the venerable Winter Antiques Show at Park Avenue Armory (Friday to Jan. 29), the New York Ceramics Fair (Tuesday to next Sunday) at the Bohemian National Hall and a newcomer, The Metro Show NYC (Thursday to next Sunday) at Metropolitan Pavilion. Don't forget Master Drawings New York (next Saturday to Jan. 28); 23 dealers will spread several centuries of mostly European material throughout 18 commercial galleries on the Upper East Side that, unlike the fairs, charge no admission.