GOINGS ON

What we're watching, listening to, and doing this week.

- Rachel Syme

OCTOBER 15-21, 2025

Sometimes a return is also a farewell. Misty Copeland, the first Black female principal dancer at American Ballet Theatre, may be the most famous American ballerina of her generation, but she hasn't performed a ballet in five years, since before the pandemic. (In the interim, she has not been idle: she published several books, had a child, and established a foundation that provides ballet training to kids.) She’s coming back for one final performance, on Oct. 22, as part of A.B.T.’s fall season, which also includes Antony Tudor’s 1938 “Gala Performance,” a spoof of ballet mannerisms and ballerina airs, and Twyla Tharp’s “Push Comes to Shove,” from 1976, a tour de force of vaudevillian humor and bravura.—Marina Harss (David H. Koch Theatre; Oct. 15-Nov. 1.)

INDIE ROCK | The Burlington indie rocker Greg Freeman quietly released his 2022 début, “I Looked Out,” a masterwork of doomy Americana, sans label or marketing campaign. Influenced by the blue-collar poetry of alt-folksters such as Jason Molina and Jay Farrar, Freeman chronicled union strife, transatlantic drives, communions with nature; his harsh, boyish melancholy garnered cult attention. “Burnover,” his latest—on which he plays ten instruments, including glockenspiel, violin, and concertina—is more boisterous, siphoning gritty exuberance from his live show, where he and his band have caught the attention of the nineties synth-rock legends Grandaddy, who are taking them on tour this fall. Freeman awes crowds with a squealing drawl that threatens to break but never quite does.—Holden Seidlitz (Brooklyn Steel; Oct. 15.)