Ice+Snow Days

I'm a holiday-light junkie and can't wait each year for the season of garish and magical outdoings by the Denver Zoo and the Denver City and County Building and that crazy guy around the corner. But in a way, I'm also setting myself up for disappointment, I guess, because these light shows always end up looking eerily the same, if slightly brighter than the year before. Joy is so fleeting, folks.

Related Content

• Light in the Darkness: The artists of Light Supply speak out at MOA
  November 3, 2011
• Photos: Prepping for Cirque Du Soleil's Dralion
  February 9, 2012
• Denver Zoo welcomes 11,000-pound male elephant Groucho
  January 24, 2012
• Video: Cirque du Soleil Dralion juggler visits Westword
  January 23, 2012
• To Lonnie Hanzon, the King of Hudson Gardens: An open love letter
  September 2, 2011

More About

• Museum of Outdoor Arts
• Denver City
• Denver Zoo
• Lonnie Hanzon
• Rodney Lontine

Tonight, though, I think I'm going to fall in love all over again with the lighting extravaganza Ice+Snow, courtesy of the Museum of Outdoor Arts, which shines on more than twenty acres in and around Coors Amphitheatre. Designed by "visual showman" Lonnie Hanzon — a creative vortex responsible for holiday lighting displays for Neiman Marcus, the Bellagio in Vegas, Denver's Parade of Lights and a Hong Kong mall — Ice + Snow promises to turn a new page in local holiday lighting history.

"If most holiday lighting is Barnum and Bailey, this is the Cirque du Soleil," says the MOA's Rodney Lontine. And it's an astute comparison: The glittering spectacle will include swirling, building-tall projections in a palette of aurora borealis colors; a mosaic tea-party sculpture lit by a floating chandelier; a magnificent Frost King bench and another bench equipped with lighted wings that flap; ice trees; fairies; sequencing colored light tubes; Renaissance figures and masks; and an Alice in Wonderland tour utilizing MOA's famous Alice sculptures — as well as an Old World Holiday Village with music, food and hot chocolate for frosty nights.

Did I mention it's free? Ice+Snow continues daily from 4 to 10 p.m. through December 31. Call 303-220-7000 or go to www.ice-snow.net.
Dec. 3-31, 6-10 p.m.