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Best Dance-Music DJ

DJ Ivy

DJ Ivy is an electronic chameleon behind the decks. Regardless of what he's spinning — house, breaks, down-tempo and damn near everything else — his sets are always tasty masterpieces of dance-floor delight. He handles it all, from smooth and sexy funk to tripped-out space journeys and deep, pumping progressive grooves. Whether he's opening for dance-music royalty or headlining his own residency, he always manages to craft thoughtful, heady sets that ignite the crowd. And no matter what the occasion, Ivy is the consummate professional: He brings it and leaves it all on the floor.

Best Depiction of Virtue

Terry Ann Watts
Dead Man Walking
Denver Victorian Playhouse

Terry Ann Watts gave a beautiful and open-souled performance as Sister Helen Prejean, the real-life nun who has worked for years with death-row inmates, making her exactly the sort of wise, calm woman you would want beside you in a crisis. Watts was quietly dignified throughout Dead Man Walking, but you could see the mingled rage and pity in her eyes when she was confronted with men who claimed to be only doing their jobs: the rigid, callous prison chaplain, the officer in charge of strapping down the condemned man, the governor who used the convict's last chance for clemency as a political photo op. And she made the moment when Prejean finally broke down and wept almost unendurably poignant.

Best Depiction of What It's Like to Be a Struggling Musician

Everyone But You

After completing El Diablo, his fourth album, Eric Shiveley sold his home in Denver and moved to the San Luis Valley to build a house and recording studio. And just hours before he was slated to break ground in November 2005, he purchased a cheap camcorder at Wal-Mart and began shooting Everyone But You, a touching documentary in which he set out to chronicle the process, but instead captured the feelings of exasperation that accompany being a struggling musician. The film, which highlights a number of great tunes from Shiveley and his friends, has been selected for screening at several prominent festivals across the country. If folks have the same reaction we did, Shiveley's days of struggling may soon be over.

Best Design Show — Group

Substance: Diverse Practices From the Periphery Metro State Center for Visual Art

Luxury goods usually dominate design exhibitions, but there are also design items meant to solve social problems. This is what Metro professor Lisa Abendroth gathered together to pull off the thoughtful Substance: Diverse Practices From the Periphery at the Center for Visual Art. The show was divided into sections called Access, Community, Education, Wellness and Shelter (which included an inflatable plastic tent for the homeless). The pieces were predictably functionalist, and therefore doctrinaire modernist in style. But this modern bent was the best part of the show, because it meant that everything was beautiful, even if that wasn't what the designers had in mind.

Best Design Show — Solo

Eames 100: This Is the Trick
Emmanuel Gallery

The late Charles Eames and his second wife, Ray, created furniture classics in the 1940s, '50s and '60s, seemingly hand over fist. Many, like their plywood-and-leather lounge chair and ottoman, are still being made. Eames's granddaughter, Carla Hartman, who lives in Denver, has collected his work for decades and has special access to the still-running Eames Office in Los Angeles. For this show, laid out by Shannon Corrigan, Hartman assembled pieces from her own collection supplemented by those from the office's archive. Interestingly, some of the best things were the one-off structural experiments for chair legs done in metal and wood.

Best Display of Theatrical Integrity

My Name Is Rachel Corrie
Countdown to Zero

Rachel Corrie has been a lighting rod for controversy since her death in Gaza at the age of 23, when she was run over by an Israeli soldier driving a bulldozer while attempting to prevent the demolition of a Palestinian home. And My Name Is Rachel Corrie has proved controversial, too. The play was too hot for the New York Theatre Workshop, which originally planned a presentation in 2006, then postponed it indefinitely. But Denver audiences were able to see it last fall, thanks to Countdown to Zero, Brian Freeland's new company that intends to stage nine more significant works before disbanding. The house was packed almost every night, and Rachel Corrie's parents even came to Denver for two performances, including one that was followed by a panel on the Israel-Palestine conflict.

Best Dive Bar

Brown Barrel

Eric Gruneisen
Save for the jukebox and TVs, the Brown Barrel looks like it hasn't changed since the '60s. Hey, if it ain't broke, don't fix it, right? It's easy to walk past this joint; the exterior is about as nondescript as a plainclothes policeman at a dad convention. And it's even easier to miss at night, since it can close as early as 11 p.m. depending on how busy it is. But if you're an early-morning drinker and need a mug of Landshark Lager instead of a cuppa joe, the Brown Barrel's the place for you — especially on Sundays, when happy hour runs from 8 a.m. to noon.

Best Do-It-Yourself First Friday Event

Mini-Shops
EvB Studio Collection

Anyone can look at art on First Friday. But it takes a dreamer like sculptor and multi-media artist Marie Ev.B Gibbons to understand that some people might prefer to make art, which is why on every First Friday, passersby and art lookie-loos can create their very own miniature ceramic masterpieces at her place. March's project was tiny clocks; past Mini-Shops have featured spring bulbs, baby faces, birds, bugs and more. Participants use molds to form the clay, which Gibbons fires in her kiln; the finished products are ready to pick up after about a week. The cost of each Mini-Shop is $10 — and the feeling that you've created something special with your own two hands? Priceless.

Best Double Bill

LCD Soundsystem and Arcade Fire
Red Rocks Amphitheatre
September 17, 2007

There's certainly no shortage of shows where it's perfectly acceptable to show up fashionably late, just in time to catch the headliners. But anyone who did this in September, when the LCD Soundsystem and Arcade Fire tour stopped by Red Rocks, really blew it, since both of these acts are worthy of headlining. After a vigorous set of pulse-pounding tracks from LCD that mesmerized the enthusiastic crowd, Arcade Fire took the stage and proceeded to all but burn the place to the ground with the sweeping grandeur of its majestic chamber folk.

Best Dramatization of a Novel

Eric Schmiedl
Plainsong
Denver Center Theatre Company

Kent Haruf's Plainsong won critical acclaim for its quiet beauty, and Eric Schmiedl's stage adaptation — miraculously — comes close to doing the novel justice. This isn't one of those theater pieces that wows you on the spot; instead, Plainsong stays with you, settling slowly into your consciousness until it becomes part of the way you see the world. This is largely because of Schmiedl's fidelity to the novel; he keeps much of Haruf's writing, the rhythm of the prose providing a steady pulse beneath the action. As a result, the plot has less to do with forward movement than with a kind of inexorable unfolding that makes you feel as if you are watching a moving, living frieze.

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