Even though the tourist season is winding down in Miami, the performing arts calendar is packed with a diverse schedule of (almost overlapping) performances that mirrors the diversity of our community. The only drawback: you’ll need a few hits espresso to keep you going as you bolt across town to see all of these performances on May 12th.

First stop: New World School of the Arts. On Saturday, May 12th at 4 p.m. and 8 p.m., Karen Peterson & Dancers (KPD) will perform two new genre-bending and stereotype-breaking works combining classical music with contemporary dance in collaboration with the CrossTown String Quartet. In “Empty Rooms/Open Window,” Karen Peterson’s dancers will manipulate moving panels of silk strung eight feet off the floor. Symbolic of the passing of time and death, the dancers will move with the panels to express this transition of time.

The Miami-based CrossTown Quartet, besides providing classical music, will also switch places and perform duets with Peterson’s dancers in the second new work – ”Potpourria.” What makes “Potpourria” fascinating is that it will feature dancers and musicians with and without disabilities from KPD and Tampa-based Revolutions Dance Company. I saw an excerpt of this performance last weekend and it is a delicate, yet forceful reminder that the performing arts, in all its splendor, is even more perfect as it becomes more inclusive and open to performers from all walks of life.

“Potpourria” will be presented Saturday, May 12 at 4 p.m. and 8 p.m. and Sunday, May 13 at 4 p.m. at the New World School of the Arts, 25 NE 2nd St, 8th floor, downtown Miami. General admission is $20, $15 dollars for seniors over 60 and a 50 percent discount for mothers with families on Mother’s Day only. A special $5 student ticket is available to NWSA, MDCC and MDPS students with proper ID. Tickets available at the door. For more information, call Karen Peterson at 305-298-5879 or Michelle Hammontree at 786-250-8088.

“Out in the Tropics,” billed as a different kind of performing arts series, features works by a diverse line up of contemporary GLBTQ performers. The series opens this Saturday, May 12th at 8 p.m. at the Colony Theater on Miami Beach. This gives you enough time to catch Karen Peterson & Dancers and then head to South Beach for “The Secret History of Love” by Sean Dorsey Dance.

Sean Dorsey, a San Francisco-based choreographer, writer and dancer, will engage audiences with a universal narrative of love from a GLBTQ perspective. “The Secret History of Love” is based on the LGBT Elders Oral History Projects in San Francisco and Boston, where interviews chronicled the love, heartbreak and longing of a community to have its love validated and vindicated. “The Secret History” tells the story of love, but also the story of a generation that paved the way for greater acceptance of the GLBTQ community.

“The Secret History of Love” by Sean Dorsey Dance is part of the “Out in the Tropics” contemporary performing arts series. Saturday, May 12th, 8 p.m., Colony Theater, Miami Beach. Tickets: $20 general admission; $15 students and seniors. For more information, contact [email protected]; for a full listing of “Out in the Tropics” events, including dance workshops and panel discussions, visit www.fundarte.us/fundarte_event.php?id=137.

After “The Secret History of Love,” head back across Biscayne Bay, and you should be in time for a commando style “pop-up” show in the Wynwood Arts District created by a collective of Miami dancers and performers. I can’t reveal too much about the performance or who will be performing. What I can say is this: there will be Miami bass sound propagated from the trunk of a car, continuous, non-stop movement, a pack of humans, socks and shoes. The premise: each dancer will change “characters” every time they are handed a new pair of shoes. Each dancer must continue moving. Mysterious, yes, but exactly what we need more of in Miami.

“Pop Up” show, somewhere under the stars in Wynwood on May 12th at an undisclosed time.