Arts and Culture: Your guide to this season’s theater, exhibits, music and more

The new theater season is a loaded lineup, with offerings from Ivo van Hove and Anna Deavere Smith.

It’s payoff time: Los Angeles’ dance community, after decades of slow progress, is poised to have a season that’s unprecedented in its breadth and quality.

Since he switched to singing baritone roles in his late 60s — an age at which many opera stars have already retired — Plácido Domingo has embarked on a second career of sorts, performing parts in Verdi operas that include “Simon Boccanegra,� “Il Trovatore� and “La Traviata.�

For those who like a little song with their dance and vice versa, here’s a rundown of new and classic musicals headed to Southern California stages in the coming months — including the much-anticipated arrival of the 2015 Tony winner “Fun Home.�

Jeffrey Kahane will step down from his position of 20 years as music director of the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, and his parting gift is, fittingly, a musical one: a lovingly curated 2016-17 season punctuated by an ambitious three-week festival centered on themes of social justice, tolerance and peace.

It’s break time in rehearsals at the Music Center Annex in downtown L.A., and director Phylicia Rashad and actors Lillias White and Keith David exude familial warmth and ebullience as they unpack the musicality of August Wilson’s “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom� — not just the blues of singer Gertrude “Ma� Rainey, but the poetry, purpose and lyricism of Wilson’s dialogue.

Some of the best music of 2016 has come as a surprise, most notably — and recently — the relatively secretive release of Frank Ocean’s “Blonde.�

Some promising works to read and watch for this fall, including a pleasant discovery at UC Davis: Sept. 22 “Eyes on the Street: The Life of Jane Jacobs� Robert Kanigel’s new biography of the pioneering social critic and author Jane Jacobs takes its title from the phrase most closely associated with her life and work — one suggesting that the most crowded city blocks, those with the most “eyes� on them, tend thanks to that collective attention to be the safest and liveliest.

Sometimes a book is not enough.

Just as higher temperatures typically arrive first, festival season gets a jump start every year in Southern California thanks to Coachella, the annual desert blowout (and surefire celebrity magnet) against which a summer’s worth of less-glamorous events will inevitably be measured.

March 30-April 2 AWP Conference The spring literary event season is upon us.

The 2015 Tony-winning musical “Fun Home,� based on Alison Bechdel’s bestselling graphic novel about growing up in a dysfunctional family, won’t see its national tour touch down in Southern California until summer 2017 (Aug. 1-6, 2017, at Segerstrom Center in Costa Mesa).

Spring dance performances on our radar. MARCH 25-26 Evidence, A Dance Company Ronald K.

MARCH 20-21, 23 Justin Bieber Last year, the teen-pop star celebrated the release of his vaguely Christian-themed album “Purpose� with a Staples Center show that felt more like a church service than a concert.

Times theater critic Charles McNulty’s picks for promising spring productions, compiled by Matt Cooper.

Times art critic Christopher’s Knight’s list of spring exhibition highlights, compiled by Grace Krilanovich.

Times critic Mark Swed’s list of spring classical music concerts of note, compiled by Matt Cooper.

In a remote desert in northwestern China, about 20 minutes outside the city of Dunhuang, a wealth of ancient Chinese artworks is squirreled away inside a mile-long stretch of caves that were carved more than 1,700 years ago.

The “dossier� landed in the hands of Joshua Homme with an unexpected jolt.

Hauser Wirth & Schimmel