Live performances are bountiful in Kansas City. KC-style jazz is featured nightly at clubs across the city. You'll also discover a mix of choices from comedy clubs and casinos to opera and symphonic concerts.

The area’s stages are rarely dark.

As in the days of old, you can still listen and fall in love with live jazz in the 18th & Vine Historic Jazz District. Both the Blue Room and the renovated Gem Theater offer an array of local and national talent. Dinner theater delights audiences at the New Theatre Restaurant  in Overland Park, Kan.

At Crown Center, Broadway-style shows including comedies, dramas and musicals enthrall American Heartland Theatre goers. Also located in the Crown Center is the Coterie Theater. Time magazine recently ranked the theater one of the top five children's theaters in the nation. Crown Center's newest performance arts space, the Off Center Theatre, showcases edgy and innovative productions by some of the area's finest theatre troupes.

Midtown’s Unicorn Theatre offers contemporary and thought-provoking off-Broadway-style productions. And some of the best professional plays and musicals in the country are productions by the Kansas City Repertory Theatre.

The Kansas City Repertory Theatre operates two theaters in KC; the Spencer Theatre, located on the University of Missouri-Kansas City campus near the Country Club Plaza, and the new Copaken Stage, located in the heart of the new downtown entertainment district.

You’ll discover many entertainment options in the new downtown Kansas City Power & Light District. The Kansas City Live! stage features free outdoor concerts throughout the year. Across the street, the new Sprint Center is downtown’s new home for concerts, sporting events and family shows.

Dance also has enjoyed a solid following in Kansas City. The highly regarded company of the Kansas City Ballet performs at the Lyric and Midland theaters, as well as at annual free concerts in the parks.

Summer brings outdoor theatre to Southmoreland Park with the annual Heart of America Shakespeare Festival. Enjoy Broadway's hottest musicals performed under the stars on Starlight Theatre's grand outdoor stage in Swope Park. And the season's biggest outdoor concerts play at Sandstone Amphitheatre in Bonner Springs, Kan.

The stars shine in Kansas City, and they’re as close as the nearest stage.