Each year around the holidays, the Colorado Ballet presents Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s The Nutcracker, and Gil Boggs, the company’s artistic director, notes that the latest version, which debuts today, isn’t terribly different than its predecessors. “As we like to say, we do your grandmother’s Nutcracker,” he concedes. Boggs insists that…
My freshman year at Colorado College was peppered with disappointing social exchanges. I didn’t like keggers quite as much as I’d imagined, and yoga class turned out to be a bad way to meet boys. So when my roommate invited me to the hockey match against the University of Denver…
Improv is an art form. It takes skills to garner tidbits of information from audience members and weave them into a narrative that actually makes sense — and that’s actually funny — in spontaneous sketches and games. The folks at Bovine Metropolis Theater do improv very well — so well,…
Tony and Tina must really love each other. After all, the two have been married hundreds — if not thousands — of times since Tony n’ Tina’s Wedding opened off Broadway in 1988. And although their wedding is a little different every time, it’s still the craziest, funniest affair you’re…
How do you escape the pressures of the holidays, like, really quick? Bundle up, drop your packages in the trunk, pinch your cheeks until they glow and strap on a pair of silver skates, Hans Brinker, for a glide across the frozen expanse at one of the region’s many old-fashioned…
Not unlike the homeless denizens of Barbara Lebow’s Tiny Tim Is Dead, the Theatre Group found itself on the street after being evicted last May from its longtime home, the Theatre On Broadway. But the troupe’s heavily gay-centric fan base from the old days at TOB aren’t the only folks…
The holiday shopping season is is in earnest full gear, but there’s more than one way to combat its exhaustive toll. For one, you could turn it into a mini vacation in your own town, a trick that just got easier thanks to a promotion sponsored by the Denver Metro…
Thanks to another year of early openings, the ski and ride season is officially here. If you’ve been dreaming about floating in powder or trying out telemark skis, now’s the time to get in line. The trend all over Colorado is steep and deep, with sky-scraping backcountry and extremes. Resorts…
Tori Amos: Earth Mother, faerie songstress, suckler of pigs, piano goddess. The 44-year-old singer has worn many a persona over her two-decade-plus career, but never so literally as on her latest concept album, American Doll Posse, in which Amos is joined by four alter egos — each female archetypes based…
Most well-known Viking rock has come out of Scandinavia. Long before Mayhem murderously imploded, though, Poland’s Vader played some of the darkest, most brutally intense death-metal thrash to ever emerge from behind the Iron Curtain. In the early days, the act promoted itself through an underground network of tape trading…
The three members of Porter Batiste Stoltz have a lot to live up to on their own. Collectively, the funk-fueled trio has amassed an impressive pedigree that includes stints backing the Meters, the Neville Brothers, Dr. John and New Orleans musician, songwriter and producer extraordinaire Allen Toussaint. With the departure…
When Gym Class Heroes frontman Travis McCoy spoke to Westword in September 2006, his band was searching for a niche between youth rock, represented by the group’s patrons in Fall Out Boy, and hip-hop, whose aficionados regularly attacked the outfit for watering down the medium. Since then, McCoy and his…
There’s never been the slightest doubt that Trans Am drivers Nathan Means, Phil Manley and Sebastian Thomson have a sense of humor. But the question remains: When are they joking? Founded in 1990, the band has a lengthy discography stuffed with electro-oriented tracks that alternately encompass homage, pastiche and loving…
Australia’s Dukes of Windsor — heralded as the best thing to come from Down Under since the Minogues — finally brings its dance-crazed international noise conspiracy to the States. You’ve heard the nasal vocals, twitchy guitars, caffeine-fueled beats and stinging synths before, but this quintet brings a fresh brattiness and…
Unlike most singers cast in the diva role, who are all about pipes and persona, Alicia Keys is a multi-faceted artist adept at songwriting and arranging as well as vocal emoting. For that reason, she’s among the current performers least in need of help from studio pros — yet the…
While Mike Fitz-maurice is best known as the bassist for Colcannon, his latest release looks toward the Middle East, not the Emerald Isle. Inspired by The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan, a book first published in 1824, Continuing Adventures provides a soundtrack for an imagined sequel as rendered by…
BJ Serekis, former drummer of the Bedraggled and the Skivies, has finally issued the followup to his 2003 release, The Colors Bleed Through. While that record was a disturbing, claustrophobic portrait of a mind and soul consuming itself, Eat My Brain is about reaching out into the world rather than…
Ali “Dubfire” Shirazinia is half of the legendary DJ duo known as Deep Dish. Striking out on his own, he’s crafted an appealing sound that recalls his work with Dish while expanding those horizons considerably, like a wild-eyed, experimental side of Deep Dish — still in service to the beat,…
Once “Mad” Max Rockatansky became an action-movie archetype of stoic masculinity and righteous anger, some heavy band was bound to reference him in its name. One of the area’s better post-stoner rock bands staked claim to that moniker, only it knocked off the e at the end before claiming it…
Baby Bash, Cyclone (Arista). The Basher plays up his Latin roots on “Mamacita,” but the sauce he uses is mild instead of spicy. The other tracks couldn’t be any more radio-friendly if their lyrics promised DJs $1,000 a play. Still, only the title cut, boosted by Lil Jon’s signature synth…
Saxophonist Marcus Strickland was listening to John Coltrane, Stevie Wonder, Parliament and Jimi Hendrix before he was even born. While Marcus was still in the womb, his father, a DJ and classical percussionist, played tunes on a open reel deck and placed a speaker near his mother’s belly in hopes…
Mike Relm is single-handedly introducing turntablism to parts of middle America on his second stint with Blue Man Group, opening its current production, How to Be a Megastar Tour 2.1. With between 7,000 and 12,000 people at each show, it’s the San Franciscan’s biggest gig. He’s already a YouTube celebrity…
