The circus is coming to town.

Next week, Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey presents Bellobration, a high-energy extravaganza -- Wednesday through Nov. 16 at The Palace of Auburn Hills -- that is hosted by Bello.

Bello is the uber-famous clown who combines delightful antics with daredevil stunts that make your hair stand up just as straight and tall as his 12-inch coif. And his hair is just as real as the 60-foot sway poles from which he swings and glides, all without the refuge of a safety net.

"Bellobration is truly the ultimate reality show," says Ringling Bros. spokeswoman Donna Larkin. "Not only are no safety nets used, but the performers possess athleticism, skill and creativity in every hold-your-breath move that they make. It's all real."

In addition to the circus' hapless clown hero, husband and wife team Brian and Tina Miser are the human cannonballs who are launched from a double-barreled cannon to fly across the arena at 65 miles per hour. There also is the high-wire act performed by the Aguilar Brothers, who hail from Mexico. Perched atop two 25-foot-high wires that are roughly the diameter of your thumb, these two performers execute stunt after stunt, integrating umbrellas, unicycles, chairs and even baskets into their act as they cautiously make their way across the wire.

From the animals that rival the dexterity of their human leaders, to the dueling trapeze artists and acrobats who redefine gravity and flexibility, Bellobration will entertain all ages with the thrills, laughter and fun that only a premier circus act such as the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey circus can provide.

You might want get an early start to the evening: One hour before each show, all ticket holders can take part in the All Access Pre-show to learn circus skills, watch an elephant paint a picture, juggle with the clowns, take photos with the performers and dress up in the colorful costumes that adorn their most beloved circus entertainers.

It's a modern-art tour even your Manhattan friends might envy.

From Sunday through Jan. 18, the Detroit Institute of Arts will host "Monet to Dali: Modern Masters from the Cleveland Museum of Art," a breathtaking show of 75 works, every one of which seems to have leaped right off the pages of your college art-history textbook.

In a year of dazzling exhibitions following the DIA's reopening last Thanksgiving, "Monet to Dali" is hands-down the most magnificent.

The names alone intoxicate: Monet, Picasso, Cezanne, Modigliani, Braque and Dali, to drop just a few.

Nor are these minor pieces.

"This show isn't just about big names," says DIA curator of European modern art MaryAnn Wilkinson. "It's about great works by those big names."

The show neatly complements the DIA's own strengths. As museum director Graham Beal notes, "They've got surrealism. We've got expressionism."

Detroit is rich in German modernism. Cleveland has a treasure trove of French. Taken together, the holdings of the two museums -- temporarily under one roof -- offer a modernist breadth and depth exceeded only by museums in Boston and New York.

The exhibit, which has toured China, Japan, Canada and the U.S. -- Detroit is the last stop -- was originally organized in chronological order.

In keeping with the DIA's new storytelling approach to art, however, they've regrouped the show into five galleries representing themes and moods that weighed on modernists.

Moods from light to dark
We enter the exhibition through a gallery devoted to landscapes -- beloved not just of impressionists, but expressionists and cubists as well.

Greeting us right at the start is Claude Monet's 1881 work, "The Wheat Field." This is, on balance, a show rich in Monets. Just inside the gallery is the 1888 "Gardener's House at Antibes," which fairly crackles with Mediterranean heat and light.

From landscapes, we pass into a darker realm, a gallery devoted to the anxiety and unease prevalent in the early 20th century -- braced as it was, perhaps, for the horrors to come.

Dominant here is the high-water mark of Pablo Picasso's blue period, "La Vie" ("Life"), painted in 1903 following the suicide of a gay friend and admirer, Carles Casagemas.

Vast and funereal, "La Vie" features a naked couple confronting a stern-faced woman in robes cradling a child.

Initially the man in this pair, who appear to cling to one another, was to be Picasso himself.

But after Casagemas' death, the artist substituted the late poet and painter's face -- an ironic insertion, as Wilkinson notes, of a gay man into an ostensibly heterosexual context.

'Radical' works get their due
From anxiety, we pass into a gallery that champions radical works that bent the rules and took significant risks.

In many ways, of course, that's almost the definition of modernism, since virtually every new style or school represented a violent -- and often contemptuous -- challenge to what came before.

The impressionist pieces that strike us as ethereal were, hard to imagine, initially denounced in the late-1800s as "mere daubs."

Worth special attention is the 1916 cubist work, "The Coffee Mill" by Juan Gris, whom Wilkinson calls "one of the great, undervalued painters."

While much of cubism is dazzling and provocative, "beautiful" is an adjective that's applied only sparingly.

But there's almost no other word for this carefully constructed still life, painted in sumptuously rich, dark tones.

Subconcious bubbles up
The final two galleries touch on works that explore the subconscious mind, and the impact on the modern movement of urban life -- that great constant of the 20th century.

Fittingly, the former is introduced by surrealist Salvador Dali's gorgeously creepy "The Dream," painted in 1931. Since the DIA has no Dalis of its own, this is a particular treat for regular patrons.

The gallery devoted to images of urban life -- defined rather broadly -- holds so many delights, it's a little hard to pick favorites.

Of particular note are Henri Matisse's 1940 "Interior with an Etruscan Vase," and Vincent van Gogh's "The Large Plane Trees," an 1889 work in which tree trunks like towering giants march from left to right, dwarfing people and buildings beneath their sheltering branches.

One of the pleasures of the Cleveland exhibit is the inclusion of some relative unknowns.

In the urban gallery, don't miss George Hendrik Breitner's "Construction Site in Amsterdam," a hauntingly beautiful 1902 work in gloomy grays and browns.

Somewhat more famous, of course, is Amedeo Modigliani, whose 1917 "Portrait of a Woman," with her elongated neck and wistful eyes, mesmerizes.

Modern made accessible
At the Cleveland Museum of Art, which is reopening in stages after an overhaul that began in 2005, the man who organized the show says there was a little trepidation at letting such treasures out of their hands.

"When I proposed to our board sending our greatest modern works around the country," says curator of modern European art William Robinson, "there was an audible gasp."

Greatest-hits exhibitions sometimes come in for a little contempt among the fashionable, as if showing works that a majority of visitors might know somehow cheapens the experience.

Rubbish. Very much like going to a live concert, we get an extra zing out of seeing art first hand that we're dimly familiar with.

Given that, "Monet to Dali" is a show that should thrill even those whose background in art history is sketchy, indeed.

Not to worry. By all means, go. You'll be surprised -- and delighted -- at how much you recognize.

You can reach Michael H. Hodges at (313) 222-6021 or mhodges@detnews.com.

Rock the Vote, a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization MTV founded nearly 20 years ago, continues to remind young people that their votes domatter. The organization brings this message in the form of the concert called "Detroit Rocks the Vote" at the Fillmore Detroit on Wednesday.

The event includes a presentation by featured speaker Chuck D of rap group Public Enemy, as well as 12 diverse musical acts, including R&B singer Anthony David, rockers the Volebeats, slam poet jessica Care moore, pop artist Deastro, rapper Black Milk and Detroit bluesy rockers the Muggs. Also performing are local roots rockers the Go.

Bobby Harlow, who shares lead vocal duties for the Go, says an event like this can inspire people to express their political opinion, something that he adds Americans often shy away from.

"What do people always tell you when you're meeting someone new or meeting your girlfriend's or boyfriend's family for the first time? 'Don't talk about religion or politics.' " Harlow says. He added that other countries don't follow that rule.

"I went to England five years ago and spent Christmas with a family and after dinner, watching 'It's a Wonderful Life' and dessert, then talking about politics was on the agenda."

Harlow says he remembers living in a bubble, caring more about buying records, but politics has become important to him.

"People change minute by minute," he says. "As you change as a musician, a part of your audience will change with you. Anybody who says they have it all figured out is a liar. Someone's opinion that you may disagree with will often help you work out your own opinion. We make opinions based on opinions."

In addition to music, Detroit Rocks the Vote will also have representatives from both political parties on site to answer questions, plus nonprofit groups, including the Detroit Urban League and Southwest Detroit Business Association, will stress the importance of voting.

You can reach Ursula Watson at (313) 222-2613 or uwatson@detnews.com