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Best Theater Season

Denver Center Theatre Company

After thirty years, the Denver Center Theatre Company is still going strong, with many more triumphs than stumbles in this past season. While Dracula may have been boring and Othello underwhelming, the company gave us a hilarious Hitchcock spoof, The 39 Steps, as well as The Catch, an excitingly theatrical world premiere about baseball, the farcical Reckless, and an absolutely gorgeous — beautifully designed and wonderfully acted — Midsummer Night's Dream.

Best Tiny Package

"Here an incline so known to cause defeat, next a decline thunderous and bad for knees"

There aren't enough three-inch CDs out there, but there's a logical explanation for that: Fewer and fewer people have CD players with trays in them, so it can be tough to even track down a way to play a three-inch CD. In typical Ash From Sweat style, this EP was released with lovely, hand-assembled packaging, a lyric sheet and even a spray-painted CD cover. It's hard to top the boys at Ash From Sweat when it comes to handcrafted design, and it's nice to know that even though their releases have slowed down a bit, they still have it in them to create the most original, creative packaging in town.

Best Traveling Musical

South Pacific

While the exquisite songs — "Younger Than Springtime," "Some Enchanted Evening," "Bali Hai" — continue to delight, the action in South Pacific often feels fragmented and dated. Barlett Sher's revival, which won several Tony awards, added intelligent interpretive touches and pulled everything so brilliantly together that Rodgers and Hammerstein's musical gained a new cohesion and vitality. Both musically and visually, the show was a feast. The casting was extraordinary, too, giving us a smart, quirky Nellie, a gravely dignified De Becque and an entirely original Bloody Mary.

Best Two-Part Solo

Emilio Lobato

Keeping abstraction new and different has led to the development of neo-modernism, which harks back to the mid-twentieth century but looks thoroughly modern at the same time. That's surely the case with Colorado's own Emilio Lobato, the subject of not one, but two solo shows right now. At the venerable Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center, there's Mi Linda Soledad/My Beautiful Solitude, a retrospective of Lobato's work from the early '80s to 2009, while the William Havu Gallery here in Denver is featuring Casi, Casi, showcasing work done after that. Lobato's pieces invariably refer to his roots in the San Luis Valley, typically through the use of Spanish titles and somber palettes — but the paintings themselves have an international flavor incorporating various abstract influences, notably minimalism and expressionism. And he resolves these opposites brilliantly.

Best Unnerving Addition to Denver International Airport

Anubis

The Denver International Airport has long been a hotbed of hand-wringing conspiracy theories — the Leo Tanguma-painted mural featuring gas-masked Nazi-ghouls and multicultural children in caskets, the giant laser-eyed Mustang of Death that murdered its creator, and the Masonic capstone have all led wingnuts far and wide to speculate that our airport is in fact the future site of a New World Order-administered alien concentration camp — and given that legacy, its isn't hard to imagine that a certain tie-in to the Denver Art Museum's Tut exhibit had those hands wringing in overdrive. For two unsettling months, a thirty-foot-tall Anubis, the ancient Egyptian jackal-headed God of Death, presided like the world's least inconspicuous stalker just outside the floor-to-ceiling window of the Jeppesen terminal's security check-in, and though Anubis (along with Tut) has since moved on, the terror in our hearts is not so easily erased.

Best Unofficial Biennial of the Americas Show

Perceptions

Not only were Colorado artists marginalized by the Biennial of the Americas, but so were local galleries. This situation inspired Bobbi Walker to mount an unofficial Biennial entry at her namesake gallery. Perceptions included abstract wall installations by Sabine Aell and sculptures by Kim Ferrer and John Murphy. But the tour de force was a hyperrealist installation of people around a tree made of paper by Emma Hardy, which was both staggeringly accomplished and very ambitious. Just like Walker's effort to go it alone alongside the Biennial.

Best Update of a Longstanding Colorado Tradition

At the Edge of the World

For whatever reason — maybe because of the way the mountains stand out crisply and firmly against the sky — hard-edge abstraction has deep roots in Colorado, going back more than half a century to the work of Aspen's Herbert Bayer. Other artists in the state who have embraced the approach include Angelo de Benedetto, Otto Bach, Bev Rosen, George Woodman, Clark Richert and David Yust. And straight lines and sharp edges still have their fans, as evidenced by the work of Pard Morrison, a leader in the current generation of Colorado artists who could be called hard-edged abstractionists. At the Edge of the World, his show at Rule Gallery when it was still located on Broadway (it's relocating to RiNo this spring) represented something of a breakthrough for Morrison, with his checkerboard paintings turning into checkerboard sculptures. Based on the sumptuous works in this show, that was clearly the best move that Morrison could have made.

Best Use of Fog to Blind the Audience

Page 27

Fog is a dangerous entity for fans, especially when the band using it is hell-bent on filling the venue with so much that nobody can see a foot in front of them. Page 27 loves fog, and would use the tool to a degree that would cause permanent blindness if it could. Combined with the chaotic, often headache-inducing music, the fog creates a perfect aural trip that's sure to cause disorientation, fear, claustrophobia and possibly a little nausea. The effects, though often befuddling, are truly astounding to behold. This is gloom with a view.

Best Use of Music for Good

Indulgent Space Folk, Vol. 3

Mike Marchant is on the short list of Denver musicians who seem like they write great songs in their sleep — but no one is as generous with his talent. In addition to his prolific work as a guitarist-for-hire, Marchant has greatly increased the production of his own band over the past year. Recognizing the increasing impracticality of trying to make money off of releases, he gave his most recent release a different priority: Everything he made from the characteristically brilliant Indulgent Space Folk, Vol. 3 went to benefit local arts charities. Wherever there are people who are passionate about music, Marchant will be there.

Best Use of the LP Format

Polaroid in Reverse

Eric Peterson's final record in his brief but influential career as a Denver musician was lathe-cut rather than pressed in the traditional manner. As a consequence, the record is more delicate and will bear the marks of repeated listens; the songs will become fuzzier and eventually disappear entirely into white noise. And in that way, the record embodies its message: Polaroid in Reverse offers a contemplation on the world's ceaseless entropy. As physical mediums become more fleeting, many bands are returning to the LP — but rarely does anyone find a way to use vinyl to do something that an MP3 or even a CD simply cannot do.

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