Michelle Matlock, a Shakespearean-trained performer, delights in her role as Ladybug in Cirque du Soleil’s production of “OVO.” (Benoit Fontaine photo) | Harvard Law School grad Hill Harper starred in the film “For Colored Girls” in 2010. He was in town in October for a youth symposium — “Bridges to Our Future: The Next Generation of Leaders” — held at Wheelock College. (Photo courtesy of Hill Harper) | The “High Wire Daredevils,” one of the many outstanding acts in the UniverSoul Circus, performed at Northeastern University in June. Formed in Atlanta, Ga. 17 years ago, the UniverSoul Circus continues to surge to the top of the live entertainment ranks with its funky rendition of traditional circus acts. (Don West photo) | Doug Elkins and Friends perform “Do-Re-Mi” from “Fraulein Maria,” a hip hop flavored reworking of “The Sound of Music” that showed at the Paramount Theatre in September. (Sara D. Davis photo) | Harvard University’s W. E. B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research was host to an exhibit titled “The Image of the Black in Western Art” in the fall. The exhibit displays photographs of works of Western art from antiquity to the present day that portray Africans and the people of the African Diaspora. (Rembrandt Harmensz van Rijn’s “Baptism of the Eunuch” (1641), courtesy of Harvard Art Museum, Fogg Art Museum, Gray Collection of Engravings Fund) |