Mountain people love their pups, and the denizens of Breckenridge are no exception. For that reason, the town’s Breckenridge Backstage Theatre is celebrating the holiday season with the regional premiere of Dog Park: The Musical, a family-friendly walk in the park that has nothing to do with Christmas and everything…

“To have seen a specter isn’t everything, and there are deathmasks piled, one atop the other, clear to heaven. Commoner still are the wan visages of those returning from the shadow of the valley. This means little to those who have not lifted the veil.” So begins the “Joan Anderson…

Christmas Eve comes but once a year, and so does Heebonism, simultaneously — because why would any self-respecting young Jewish person want to sit at home watching midnight Mass on television when he or she could be out having fun? This annual night on the town for Jewish professionals, now…

Poet and artist Ed Ward came to Denver nearly forty years ago, with designs of living a Beat life inspired by the earlier escapades of Kerouac and friends. Actually, it was his girlfriend’s wish to pull up eastern roots in order to start a new life in the West —…

Vail’s Paper Lantern Project debuted last winter thanks to the town’s Art in Public Places program. The concept brought local elementary-school children and their families together with an artist to create beautiful paper lanterns with reed frameworks, which the kids then carried aloft, lit by LED lights, at Vail’s annual…

East High students made news as the first of several Denver high-school groups to walk out in protest of police brutality in Ferguson, Missouri. Their actions not only stirred up discussion around town, but inspired a conversation at East, where students Mary Dowling and her friend, Ashia Ajani, began to…

Ugly Christmas sweaters are big. Really big. That’s partly because we are all becoming punch drunk with the holiday spirit, having been bombarded with sappy Christmas music and deals, deals, deals! — ad nauseum — for the last couple of weeks, since the 21st century modern world can’t reconcile the…

If you’re already tired of the holidays, Greater Than the Sum: National Collage Society Exhibition, a collaborative national show that opens today at Metropolitan State University of Denver’s Center for Visual Arts, will give your eyes a fresh outlook. Curated by local folks, including Spark Gallery director and collage artist…

Many would agree that the best way to get through the holiday rat race is by lightening up, and tonight, there’s more than one way to skin that cat. Come downtown to witness the spectacular Grand Illumination (see above), then head over to Bovine Metropolis for Red Is the New…

Local theater companies large and small typically deck their halls with holiday fare around this time of year, including the umpteenth rerun of A Christmas Carol. But Bernie Cardell of Spotlight Theatre decided to buck the tried-and-true by picking Christmas Belles, a holiday comedy about three small-town Texas sisters putting…

Denver artist Sarah Rockett’s roots and close-knit community in New Orleans were torn apart by Hurricane Katrina; now, as a transplant to the West, she’s been looking for ways to re-create the cultural solidarity she left behind. It’s no small task to bring people, specifically local artists, together from a…

Reality shows indulge wannabe wishes all the time, and that’s why So You Think You Can Dance is so aptly named. But only a lucky, nimble-footed few actually get beyond the dancing-in-front-of-the-mirror stage and make it to the little screen to compete and be scrutinized in mid-foxtrot by millions of…

In the 21st century, some people don’t even know what a chestnut is, let alone what one tastes like when roasted on an open fire, notes Four Mile Historic Park spokeswoman Laura Hiniker. That’s one reason – of many – that the rustic living-history park throws its family-friendly A Colorado…

Denver’s Judaism Your Way strives to be all-inclusive during the holidays and all year long, which is just one way the alternative Jewish organization departs from the norm this time of year, when Jewish families are looking for a place to celebrate Hanukkah with others like themselves. “We’re not a…

A few years ago, the LIDA Project proved that an issue-based series of connected performances in peoples’ living rooms could attract a healthy audience; the six-part Now I Lay Me Dawn to Sleep, which focused on health care, was a roaring success. Now, with the help of six seasoned directors…

One of the La Alma/Lincoln Park neighborhood’s most beloved holiday traditions, Luminarias de Santa Fe Drive, brightened up the now-chic stretch of Santa Fe between 5th and 12th avenues for more than seventeen years, beginning well before the street became the Art District on Santa Fe — a First Friday…