Arts & Entertainment

Two separate themes connected the artists in The Other Primary Colors, a group show at Space Gallery. First, as indicated by the title, all of them used neutral shades. And second, they all created pieces in the context of contemporary abstraction, with everything owing a debt to either minimalism or pattern painting. Guest curator for this show was Marks Aardsma (who dropped her first name, Jo, for the outing), who invited a wonderful roster of fellow travelers to join her in the realm of conceptual abstraction. That list included Tonia Bonnell, Nancy Koenigsberg, Carlene Frances, Corey Postiglione, David Sawyer and Space owner Michael Burnett. Elegant and impressive, the show lent an unexpected contemplative quality to the sometimes raucous gallery.

Buntport Theater’s Evan Weissman had the urge to do something more, something proactively political that would engage the public in a gentle way. His urge to facilitate a better world led to Warm Cookies of the Revolution, an ongoing series of civic discussions augmented by an element of shared creative fun that Weissman likes to characterize as a “civic health club.” The concept? So simple: Themed discussions about civic and community issues are thrown on the table, along with fresh-baked cookies and milk and something for participants to do with their hands, communally if possible, such as writing letters or knitting or playing board games or cooperating to build well-planned LEGO metropolises. Every Warm Cookies event is different in scope and subject, but all have one thing in common: They get people to loosen up and start talking. Weissman is partnering with the city on some of the events, and they’re beginning to pop up all over the place, though he hopes to eventually find a permanent meeting place, perhaps one with a cafe-like ambience, where cookies and milk and maybe soups could be dispensed for donations. Weissman proves that looking to the future can be fun.

The History Colorado Center has courted controversy with its exhibits, but the powers-that-be at the institution did get a few things right. They commissioned David Tryba to design a spectacular new building — a winner, even before it opened, of a Best of Denver award last year. They also stocked a spacious and handsome gift shop on the main floor, just steps from the front door. The space is filled with books, handmade jewelry and pottery, T-shirts and more, and together this inventory (some of it actually made in Colorado) reflects the cultural, ethnic and racial characteristics of the Centennial State. Best of all, you don’t have to pay museum admission to just go inside and shop.

As a kid in Denver in the ’60s, Floyd Tunson would flip through the magazines his mother brought home from her job as a housekeeper, paying particular attention to the work of the pop artists, notably Warhol. It changed his life, and Tunson has been responding to it in his work for the past thirty years, though he takes on racism rather than consumerism. Last winter, Blake Milteer, the museum director at the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center, mounted one of the best retrospectives ever for a contemporary Colorado artist with Floyd D. Tunson: Son of Pop. The stunning, sprawling show was a fitting tribute.

Last fall, William Morrow was named the Denver Art Museum’s Polly and Mark Addison Associate Curator of Contemporary Art, joining Gwen Chanzit, the department’s senior curator, who was named Curator of Modern Art. The distinction is that art from the early to mid-twentieth century is called modern, while work by artists active from the ’60s to the present is referred to as contemporary. Morrow teethed on contemporary art as the founding director of 21c, a combination hotel and museum in Louisville, Kentucky (with branches elsewhere), that became the first place in the country to specialize exclusively in 21st-century art. He’s currently putting the finishing touches on Nick Cave: Sojourn, a multimedia extravaganza opening in June that will focus on the Chicago-based artist, who pushes together dance, fashion and visual art.

A small private venue in Capitol Hill, the Kirkland Museum has done more to preserve and promote the history of Colorado art than any other museum in the state. In fact, it could be said that the Kirkland, under the direction of Hugh Grant, has done more on this score than all of the other museums combined. One of its specialties is resurrecting the work of deceased and fairly forgotten artists, and that’s just what the excellent William Joseph: Sculptor & Painter did. Put together by Grant and deputy curator Christopher Herron, the show revealed Joseph’s lifelong interest in the figure, which he abstracted in order to come up with his signature style. Best known as a sculptor, with a number of works prominently placed downtown, Joseph also made paintings, which are every bit as good.

The Denver Art Museum has really stepped up its game since the Hamilton Building came on line, giving the facility more space and allowing director Christoph Heinrich to turn the place into an exhibition-driven destination. The homegrown blockbuster Becoming van Gogh was a perfect example: The museum stayed open around the clock at the end of its run to accommodate the crowds. For this show, the DAM’s Gates Foundation Curator of Painting and Sculpture, Timothy Standring, compellingly recast van Gogh as an artist who was at one with his times rather than a madman who stood alone, a common perception. Standring did this by presenting rarely seen pieces showing van Gogh following the same stylistic arc as other artists of the period — first creating dark realist works, then sunny impressionistic ones before he got around to his signature post-impressionism.

With Denver being a key stop in Jack Kerouac’s On the Road, Colorado found its place on the hipster map. Los Angeles-based conceptualist Ed Ruscha, himself a hipster’s hipster, did a series of works on paper that incorporated quotes from the novel and placed them across photos of Western landscapes or related abstracts. They’re classic post-pop Ruschas, with the text floating at the surface and the image receding behind it. Ruscha’s work has been exhibited in Denver many times before, but here it was recast as Western art, simply by having been installed in the Denver Art Museum’s Western art galleries. Indeed, curator Thomas Smith pulled off a sleight of hand, furthering an idea that’s been catching on in the last few years: that by working in the West, Ruscha is just as Western as Frederic Remington was.

“Mustang,” a 32-foot-tall blue fiberglass stallion with glowing orangey-red eyes, has truly captured the public’s attention. The piece conflates the Wild West with lowrider culture and is the greatest accomplishment of its creator, the late Luis Jiménez. When it was unveiled in early 2008, fifteen years behind schedule and two years after a chunk of the then-work-in-progress had fallen on Jiménez and killed him, it generated cheers from some and jeers from many more. This past February, the sculpture turned five years old, which meant the city could start considering any official requests that it be moved — or dumped altogether. But the issue turned out to be a non-starter, because “Mustang” has only gained popularity over the years. Even some of its most vehement detractors have come around. Hold your horses!

Arvada Center curator Collin Parson has redirected the venue’s visual-arts program so that it zeroes in on work made by in-state talent. The resulting exhibitions included solos dedicated to David Yust and Robert Mangold, and group shows focused on representational artists and women. His most successful effort, though, was Art of the State. Parson asked Denver art-world celebrity Dean Sobel, the director of the Clyfford Still Museum, to share jury duty with him. Together they pared 600 entrants down to the 160 who were ultimately selected. Paintings — in particular, abstractions — dominate, but there is also a nice selection of sculptures, photos and ceramics. The show, which is still open, is a great way to encourage the people whose blood, sweat and tears create the community around here.

In remote southwest Denver, art of any kind has been hard to find. But this part of town has finally gotten its first piece of public sculpture: “Bridge,” an elegant minimalist gateway by Stephen Shachtman. Constructed of two Corten steel upright forms connected by a heavy horizontal element made of polished black granite and sheets of laminated glass, the piece looks like an open doorway. “Bridge” is handsomely situated in the median of South Sheridan Boulevard near Lehigh Street, next to Fort Logan National Cemetery. The association of the Shachtman piece with the vast graveyard lends “Bridge” an otherworldly quality, which was apparently the artist’s intention.

When MCA Denver curator Nora Burnett Abrams and Aspen Art Museum curator Jacob Proctor announced that only seven artists — out of 300 considered — would appear in Continental Drift, there was a collective groan heard across the state’s art scene. That reaction would have been understandable had the show been a survey. But to appreciate Continental Drift, which was centered on the theme of “place,” you needed to see it as two solos — one for Jeanne Liotta and the other for Christina Battle — plus a duet pairing Adam Milner with Yumi Janairo Roth and, finally, a trio comprising Edie Winograde, Scott Johnson and Sarah McKenzie. Filled with superb art, the show proved that both the MCA Denver and the AAM have started to embrace the talent that exists right here in our own back yard.

One fine spring morning, we woke up to find that our beloved Big Blue Bear — Lawrence Argent’s “I See What You Mean,”a sculpture of a giant bear peering into the Colorado Convention Center — had taken a big blue dump. It was not the first time our own Ursa Major had been the focus of guerrilla street art (in 2011, the Ladies Fancywork Society attached him to a gigantic blue-yarn ball and chain), but this urban twist on the old adage about a bear shitting in the woods was — how should we say it? — an instance of scatalogical genius, though it left the city in a tizzy about what to do with the perfectly matched papier-mâché turd. As far as we know, the great talent behind the blue poo never came forward, and therefore, the bear pie must have been flushed, as promised, by the city. But the prank left behind at least one enduring message: Denver has a sense of humor.

Yarnbombing is a joyful thing: We look out our windows to find that the trees have grown socks and that flowers have bloomed on chain-link fences, and nobody knows exactly how that came to be — or even wants to know. Yarnbombing is done in secret — although around here, you’d rarely be wrong if you guessed that the deed had been done by members of Denver’s number-one yarnbombing squad, the Ladies Fancywork Society. So it was almost a slap in the face to their fans — a gentle, funny one — when MCA Denver asked the LFS to come out from undercover to knit a huge temporary curtain to protect the museum’s reception desk from piercing winter winds whistling through the building’s open entryway. Titled “Fancygasm,” it’s just that: a knitted patchwork splash of wintry colors that awes and surprises guests before they’ve even entered the museum proper. Oh, what a web they weave.

Michael Brohman, who teaches sculpture at the University of Colorado Denver, is known for being outrageous. For his solo Place, mounted in fall 2012, the longtime Pirate co-op member presented some never-before-seen works that he’d done during a residency at the Jentel Foundation in Banner, Wyoming. The works, mostly made of found materials, represent contemporary takes on Western themes, like the screen door with the missing cross brace that brilliantly expresses its title, “Horizon.” Brohman’s often been on the cutting edge, so even if Western-style contemporary art is one of the latest crazes, it’s important to remember that he’s been at it for more than five years.

BMoCA’s venture into community involvement, Museum of Broken Relationships, is actually the local incarnation of an international movement based in Zagreb, where former lovers Draen Grubiic and Olinka Vitica curate a permanent collection of cast-off mementos left behind when relationships end. Boulderites and other Front Rangers answered BMoCA’s call by donating their own relics of love lost for the exhibit, which is on view through May; after the show ends, the keepsakes will make their way to Croatia for a symbolic eternity in the brick-and mortar Museum of Broken Relationships.

Art museums are getting all experiential these days, and the Denver Art Museum’s Open for Design challenge and exhibit proved just how good that can get. Last summer, regular folks — artists, designers, doers, thinkers, nobodies and somebodies alike — took over the walls of the DAM’s Hamilton Building to show off artful models expressing their ideas on how to make the world a better place. The ingenuity of the concept bled right through to the entries themselves, which included a hanging lamp crafted from plastic spoons in alternating colors; numerous garden ornaments, poo-bag dispensers and other whimsical objects utilizing junk and found objects; and a real-estate brochure box recycled into a streetside “poem box.” People have good ideas; thank the DAM for letting us see some of them at work.

We loved the Denver Art Museum gift shop’s nod to local designers when it displayed and sold Denver-made styles during the Yves Saint Laurent retrospective’s run. But even more enduring is MCA Denver’s shop-local-themed Design Within Denver series, which brings in changing trunk shows on selected Friday nights, giving local artists, designers, crafters and jewelry makers a chance to shine in a museum setting. Like the shop’s own collection, Design Within Denver is carefully curated to appeal to the MCA’s modern-art-loving constituents, mainly by presenting the shop’s regular vendors and merchandise — from whimsical miniature diorama lockets by Becky’s Buttons to the graphic hand-letterpressed stationery by Rick Griffith’s Matter Studio — in a sharper focus. A boon during traditional gift-shopping seasons, the series benefits both eclectic and quirky artists and buyers looking for something different.

The McNichols Building started out handsome when it first opened as a Carnegie Library in 1910, and it remained stately through every changing of the guard, including stints as the Denver Water Board office and the Denver Treasury. It was renamed in 1999 for former Colorado governor Stephen McNichols, and then, sadly, sat vacant for ten years. The first glimmer that there might still be life left in the McNichols came with the first Biennial of the Americas three years ago, when it housed art exhibits and roundtables; since then, the city has at least partially completed renovations that make the space more conducive to showing art, hosting events and being rented out. Since its grand opening in October, the newly anointed cultural center has become the place to go for swanky galas as well as gallery shows and meetings. Book it!

Devon Dikeou’s private Dikeou Collection gallery in a 16th Street high-rise is worth seeking out, but it’s hard to find unless you know what you’re looking for. Far more visible is its adjunct pop-up gallery in the Golden Triangle, which hosts openings and other special events, highlighting new additions to the collection in a more accessible spot. Think of this as a hands-on billboard for the collection itself, a spot in the heart of the museum district where the hustle and bustle brings an audience right to its door. Pop-up openings have introduced such works as Nils Folke Anderson’s sculptural Styrofoam installation and, currently, the doctored photographs of Dutch artist Sebastiaan Bremer; during Denver Arts Week, the debut of Dikeou’s extensive vinyl record collection provided some of the entertainment. The pop-up concept suggests an element of surprise — which means the impermanent Dikeou space is doing a surprising number of things right.

GroundSwell would be a great gallery regardless of its location: Gallery curators Rebecca Peebles and Danette Montoya earned a Westword MasterMind award this year for opening an intimate viewing room that doubles as an arts incubator and a haven where artists can show more daring or experimental work. Since they opened GroundSwell, Peebles and Montoya have hosted everything from Andrew Novick’s pie-in-the-face show Food Face to a recent group show by both emerging and more established local artists. But there’s also a certain urban charm in the fact that they’ve joined forces with one of our city’s growing retail industries, albeit one still a little on the edge. The mingled businesses rock the Colfax vibe, a state of being that inspires cereal bars and taquerias, poetry readings and street-corner prophets…and a wonderful community of budding artists.

Don’t think we’re crowing just because Noah Van Sciver’s work appears in these pages: The cartoonist would have made a name for himself in the comix world with or without our help — he’s that good. Known to the rest of the world as the creator of the Blammo comic book and an accomplished old-school comic artist with a dense, heavily cross-hatched style, an ironic sense of humor and a slight taste for the macabre, Van Sciver has had work published in several compilations, in Mad and The Best American Comics 2011. But he reached his pinnacle — so far — with 2012’s The Hypo: The Melancholic Young Lincoln, an impeccably drawn graphic novel published by Fantagraphics. Mining a little-known period in the life of Abraham Lincoln, when he was treated for a deep bout of depression resulting in a nervous breakdown, the book, which revisits the now-antiquated treatment options of the nineteenth century, is dark, but a glimmer of Lincoln’s future can also be detected in the denouement.

After racking up awards — Nebula and Hugo honors for Best Novel — for his debut book, The Windup Girl, Paolo Bacigalupi followed up with Ship Breaker, set in an equally dismal, dystopian future, and won another round of awards, including a National Book Award nomination and a Printz Award for Best Young Adult Novel. The latest from the Paonia-based writer, The Drowned Cities, hit bookshelves last May. It was originally supposed to be a direct sequel to Ship Breaker, following its lead character, Nailer, but instead turned into a “companion” to that book. “I started really thinking about what it was that was important to me to be writing about,” he told us last spring. “There was a single line from the original draft of that book that still resonated with me: Nailer and his compatriots had been sailing past this wrecked place of perpetual war called the Drowned Cities, and Nailer asks, ‘How did the Drowned Cities get this way?’ The captain of the ship says something like, ‘A nation as strong as this one doesn’t just fall apart. It has to be deliberately destroyed…. The demagogues just whipped up the people and the people bit on their own tails, and they chewed and they chewed until there was nothing left but the snapping of teeth.'” Bacigalupi bit off plenty with this book, but he delivered.

This past winter, four young upstarts transformed Edge Gallery into a very edgy place. First was Estee Fox, represented by videos, disturbing performances and some great figurative works on paper. Then David Sole turned one space into an artificial back yard that included a gouged and graffiti-covered wall. Next up was Harry Kleeman, with some super-successful hybrids of paintings and sculptures that hung on the walls. Finally, there was Daniel Nilsson, who was all over the map with oddball attractions like silvered Coke bottles, a fur-covered ladder and some very elegant sculptures that relied on fluorescent lights. It’s apparent that the next generation of Denver’s art world has already arrived.

Last summer, Denver proved, once again, that it’s a straight-up poetry town — and also that it takes a village to make it that way. Minor Disturbance represents the city’s junior division of slam poets, who, besides being talented beyond their years to begin with, benefit from the expert coaching of the adult brigade. So we’re not surprised that the youth slam team took first place at the Brave New Voices 2012 national slam-off. Keep on rhymin’.

In 2006, Tim Roberts and Julie Carr created Counterpath publishing house. Five years later, they were ready to expand their artistic offerings into a physical storefront, which they fill not just with books, but also with carefully curated events and performances that range from film screenings to scholarly lectures to readings by traveling poets. Between acts, you can peruse Counterpath’s collection of hard-to-find works from small-press publishers.

The anime community, which wraps Japanese animation and video-game fandom up with an exquisite propensity for cosplay and costumery, is tight in Denver, and it showed off with abandon at this fall’s Nan Desu Kan, an annual hotel takeover that’s out of this world. You feel as if you’ve stepped into another world at NDK, where manga characters come alive and jostle in the hallways, and Lolita gear, plush pink Arpakasso alpacas, Gloomy Bears, samurai swords, Totoro T-shirts and kigurumi costumes rub shoulders in one magical place. Need a vacation to another planet? NDK will be back in September.

It takes guts to say you’re going to launch a new major comic convention — but even more, it takes faith, the faint promise of funding, and maybe a wing and a prayer. Still, Comic Book Classroom, a non-profit program that teaches literacy to kids through comics, pushed forward with the first annual Denver Comic Con last June, and the results were fantastic. The convention drew thousands of comic fans, cosplayers and wannabe superheroes to the Colorado Convention Center. And there’s nowhere to go but up this year: The guests, who include Marvel maven Stan Lee and pop-culture hero George Takei, are still being announced, and they’re stellar. It’s enough to bring out the man of steel in everyone.

Pablo Kjolseth, the heartbeat of CU-Boulder’s time-honored International Film Series, is all about analog, and though he’s now being forced to add digital equipment to IFS’s projection rooms (new celluloid is essentially history with the recent passing of the Digital Cinema Initiatives), he promises to still deliver film classics on celluloid whenever possible. Kjolseth stands by the idea that a movie should be viewed in its original medium, and insists that there are plenty of older reels still floating around; he’s collected an extensive archive at IFS over the years. On the other hand, digital projectors will not only allow Kjolseth to continue programming short runs of more current films shot digitally, but will also open up other programming possibilities: “I’m excited to be able to stay current,” he says. “Going digital means that I might eventually be able to add 3-D to the bells and whistles available at IFS. More independent films are being made using 3-D technology.” So at IFS, you can have your 3-D…and your classics, too. Live long and prosper.

In anticipation of Continental Drift at MCA Denver, Jennifer Doran curated a quartet of solos by well-known Colorado artists that focused on new art about the West. Stephen Batura was made up of the artist’s casein-and-acrylic paintings based on historic photos, like his famous train-wreck paintings. Edie Winograde mashed the past with the present through the artist’s remarkable color shots of nerdy re-creations of historic events. Jerry Kunkel featured the painter’s photo-realist pieces depicting Western scenes as though they were placemat images. Finishing things off was Gary Emrich, which combined a video with digital prints of mid-century Western-kitsch knickknacks. The strong foursome presented further evidence that contemporary art in the West is an up-and-coming national trend.

Time is on the Boedecker’s side: The intimate, state-of-the-art film palace opened at the Dairy Center just two years ago, so it includes the most modern of amenities. Its sixty seats are plush rockers, each with four feet of leg room, and the theater also boasts 5.1 Surround Sound and HD DLP projection that rival better sophisticated home-theater equipment. Throw in a well-plotted schedule, with films ranging from hard-to-find classics to more recent must-sees, as well as a sprinkling of live opera broadcasts, themed series and a concession counter that sells beer and wine, and you’ve got a night out that’s more comfortable than the one you might spend on your own couch.

Denver has been on a museum-building boom over the past several years, with the Clyfford Still Museum and History Colorado among the most recent projects. Unlike those glittering edifices, though, the American Museum of Western Art — the Anschutz Collection, which opened last May, is housed in one of the oldest buildings downtown, the Navarre, once a school for young girls. The beautifully renovated building is a fitting setting for Philip Anschutz’s collection of Western art, which opened to the public last year. Anschutz started to gather up Western American art in the 1960s, paying pennies on the dollar by today’s standards — but the collection that resulted is priceless. Anschutz relentlessly does things his way, so you can only see the AMWA by appointment two days a week, but it’s well worth the trouble.

For more than thirty years, Marilyn Megenity’s Mercury Cafe has given this city a movable feast of good works, good food and good entertainment — much of it free. For the last two decades, the Merc has been doing it from the edge of downtown, in an area that was once sketchy and is now heading toward respectability. And you’ll find both sketchy and respectable types at the Merc, where first-date diners sit next to Occupy meetings and poetry slams collide with tango lessons and live shows in the underground community space. From morning ’til night, you’ll find everything from dance to yoga, jazz to cello, with no charge for many programs. And the food, if not free, is locally sourced and made with care. Just eavesdropping on the conversation one table over could qualify as the best free entertainment in town — but at the Merc, there’s always some rising talent on display, too. And if you don’t like any of that, you can always grab a free book from one of the Mercury’s shelves.

Sie FilmCenter programmer Keith Garcia wears his film fanaticism in a bright splash right on his sleeve, and his constituents love him for it — because he’s one of them. Thanks to Garcia, the Sie’s schedule pairs the best in current indie and art films with more esoteric sidesteps into anime and animation, documentaries and genre films he books for his pet late-night project, the Watching Hour. And the Sie always plays to its audience when it specializes, making film-going into a party with a movie as the entree, whether it’s marketed to anime-loving cosplayers or the sophisticated film-festival crowd. For all-around diversity, quality and unexpected quirks, the Sie puts it together best.

The gorgeous front space at Ice Cube Gallery, which is often split so that it can host two shows at once, is one of the best rooms in the local art scene. This past fall, two shows exemplifying post-feminist sensibility were presented side by side. Swank [fool] was an over-the-top duet featuring paintings and installations by Theresa Anderson and sculptural contraptions by Rebecca Vaughan. Continued From the Other Side showcased Pink Collar Glam, a collective with a working-class-women theme. The young members — Nancy Slyter, Holly Johnson, Jennifer Harrington and Christine Buchsbaum — invited Margaret Neumann, the godmother of postmodern in Denver, to join them, a smart move on the group’s part.

The long-awaited Alamo Drafthouse just made its Colorado debut at Aspen Grove, but its fun-loving movie-party reputation precedes it. One big part of the Alamo formula is the food: a full menu of burgers, pizzas, salads, sandwiches and brunch items that brings home-style amenities to the movie-going experience. And fueling up at the Alamo is no problem: You can choose from many wines and an extensive beer list, with an emphasis on Colorado craft brews; there’s also a full lineup of adult shakes, including the Left Hand Milk Stout Shake and a Mexican chocolate version shot through with reposado tequila. And, yes, you can enjoy bottomless popcorn, too, with or without real melted butter — or, for a buck more, a side of herbed parmesan to sprinkle. Want an even homier snack? Order up a baked-to-order warm cookie and a pot of hot chocolate. Whichever way you go, it will be nearly impossible to go hungry during your Big Lebowski quote-along or Oskar Blues Dinner screening of The Jerk at the Alamo.

Co-ops, schools, associations and art groups often mount shows that feature the work of their members exclusively. Material Engagements, at Laura Merage’s RedLine, comprised pieces by the complex’s residents and former residents, and it was definitely a winner. Guest curator Harmony Hammond made the savvy decision to choose material as the organizing theme; this was a necessary call, given that there is no particular stylistic requirement for RedLiners and every artist does his or her own kind of work. Among the best aspects of the exhibition was its intelligent design, with each of the two dozen artists given a dedicated space and plenty of breathing room.

Nearly fourteen years after an aborted tour in support of its epochal and influential album The Shape of Punk to Come, Refused reunited for another tour and the chance to properly present the music live. The black curtain masking the Ogden stage, with clear letters spelling out the band’s name and a white light shining through, helped build anticipation for what would follow once that curtain dropped — and the band’s visceral performance was exhilarating from beginning to end. Vocalist Dennis Lyxzén was a lightning rod of passion and inspiration who never failed to make sharply observed, humorous, incisive social commentary — all without sounding like he was giving a misguided lecture. He and the rest of the band seemed to possess a superhuman level of endurance that never flagged, and fans absorbed that energy, leaving the show feeling reinvigorated about life.

When Randy Roberts opened Z Art Department a few years ago, he decided to focus on artists important to Colorado’s history, including Herbert Bayer, Roland Detre and Winter Prather, all of whom are dead. Then last year, he delved into contemporary art by living artists. One of the first exhibits of this kind was Parson in Perspective, which looked at a decade’s worth of work by important local sculptor Chuck Parson, who creates conceptual abstractions made of sheets of steel, panes of glass and hunks of stone, with the finished pieces held together by nuts and bolts from the hardware store. Z Art Department has kept a low profile, but that is starting to change with crowd-pleasing efforts such as this one.

One Wednesday afternoon, hours before he was to perform a sold-out gig at Red Rocks, Jack White casually tweeted the secret location of a free show that had been rumored but seemed too good to be true. But it was true: The performance, which took place at Isdajo Automotive on West Colfax, drew a throng of excited fans who crowded into the small parking lot to watch the former White Stripes frontman play a few songs. White was gone almost as quickly as he came, but the memories from that monumental day live on.

Best known for his “Face the Sun,” a permanent installation on Tennyson Street, conceptual artist Kevin Curry made quite a splash during the years he lived in Denver. And although he is now in Florida, Curry was the subject of a compelling solo at Rule Gallery (which is now sadly shuttered). Between Chaos and Order was related to “Face the Sun” in that both featured Curry’s signature cut-up found signage. By cutting up the signs and reassembling them, he rendered the lettering unintelligible — and thus was able to overtly refer to various styles, including abstract expressionism and minimalism.

Last summer, the Denver Art Dealers Association mounted a citywide event called “Introductions,” featuring work by artists new to Denver. A standout in the series was Linhas Polimórficas, a solo dedicated to Rosane Volchan O’Conor, a Brazilian-born artist who recently relocated to Boulder. The show was made up of an installation and works on paper, and the relationship between the two was pretty obvious, with the former like a 3-D version of the latter. Both kinds of work included dense skeins of scribbled lines, but for the installation, some of them were done in custom squiggles of neon, while in the prints they were done with inks. O’Conor had originally been a budding scientist, then a musician before turning to visual art, and these previous pursuits are still referred to in her impressive artwork.

The free show featuring Wyclef Jean and hosted by the University of Colorado at the Coors Events Center last April was designed to stamp out unofficial 4/20 observations on campus. The concert was open only to students — and once the doors closed, those students would not be allowed to leave the venue for the duration of the entire two-hour show. The result of this draconian restriction? The venue, which holds around 11,000, drew a paltry 400 people…by the most generous guesstimate. Meanwhile, the pot party went on outside.

With the constant influx of great new bands that flood the scene every year, it’s tough to pick the best of them. But the Dirty Few made that task infinitely easier this year. The trio makes the kind of fun, no-frills, boisterous, beer-can-foisting rock that you thought didn’t exist anymore. The bouncy bombast could inspire even the most bashful of wallflowers to spring up and raise their fists without a moment’s hesitation. And while the music itself is 100 percent pure exuberance, the group’s live shows are even more energetic and engaging. Get Loose Have Fun is the act’s debut album title — and motto — but it also describes the attitude adjustment you’ll experience after a dose of the Dirty Few.

See also: A look at the last decade of Best New Band winners

On the 35th anniversary of Elvis Presley’s death, Jonny Barber — the artist formerly known as the Velvet Elvis, who channels the King perhaps better than anyone else in the world — chose to honor Elvis Presley in the most memorable and fitting way possible. While the rest of the world was in Memphis last August, Barber had the foresight to book some time at Sun Studios, where the King once recorded, and performed ten of the original Sun singles, along with an original of his own and a tune by Willie Lewis, the founder of Denver’s Rock-A-Billy Record Company.

Bill Murray, who just a month earlier had been photographed across Austin at South by Southwest rocking Big Head Todd and the Monsters T-shirts, was at Wrigley Field for the opening day of the Chicago Cubs 2012 season, where he sang an enthusiastic rendition of “Take Me Out to the Ballgame.” Accompanying him? Todd Park Mohr, one of Colorado’s favorite sons.

While most DJs spend a great deal of time, effort and money pursing their craft — only to learn the biggest lessons through trial and error — Walt White has created a school at which would-be DJs not only get instruction in how to mix and match beats, but can also try out their skills in a live club setting using the same tools as the big-name DJs. Along with that firsthand experience, students get tips and tricks from those who are already in the game. While purists may blanch, the Global DJ Academy offers an affordable alternative to anyone interested in taking this career for a spin.

Whether you’re hanging out before a movie, between film-festival showings or after an unrelated event, Sie FilmCenter always has the makings of a great party. The FilmCenter makes good use of its indoor and outdoor space, hosting shindigs on the rooftop, cocktail hours and yoga classes in Henderson’s Lounge, concerts on the front steps, and trivia nights in the lobby. More than just a theater, the Sie has become the place to hang out, mingle, celebrate birthdays and, of course, catch some of the best movies to come through Denver.

Landing an opening gig for a big-name band on tour is a big deal. Opening for a legendary act in an arena is an even bigger deal. Ask Flashlights and Lipgloss DJ boyhollow (Michael Trundle), who garnered a highly coveted slot opening for New Order during its visit to the 1STBANK Center last fall. Both acts owe a significant creative debt to New Order; each of the artists most likely spent significant chunks of their youth listening to the Substance album, or were part of the millions who made “Blue Monday” the best-selling twelve-inch single of all time. But Trundle and Flashlights earned their place in the slot, both having sufficiently developed their own unique styles and personalities in the local scene to warrant their representing our city to their heroes.

Listening to Paper Bird, M & the Gems or Laura Goldhamer and the Silver Nail, you wouldn’t necessarily guess that their female members, some of whom make up the comedy band Harpoontang, have raunchy humor up their sleeves. But after witnessing Harpoontang’s live show, with the acoustic funk of “Jingle Me Down,” a song about safe sex with Santa, or the gloriously titled “I Want My Hymen Back,” you’ll be hyperventilating with spastic joy. Still, there’s more than just the novelty of female artists talking dirty at work here: Harpoontang is made up of hilarious and talented women who have shared a bill with some of the city’s best standups.

As any rock historian could tell you, teaming up with an orchestra can sometimes be a thin attempt to disguise a creative lag. But in the case of DeVotchKa and the Colorado Symphony, the pairing has produced an inspired, brilliantly structured melding of two aesthetics that relies less on contrast than it does on similarities. With DeVotchKa’s sentimental landscapes and the Symphony’s climactic rises and powerful, sweeping descents, performances make for a kind of epic storytelling, supplanted with enough heart to afford the grand housing of so many instruments without sounding bombastic. After offering a preview of the material at Boettcher Concert Hall, the players reconvened at Red Rocks last fall, and the results were captured for a live album, which was released in December.

Nestled inside The Surface Beneath, a group show presented last summer, was a hallucination in the form of an installation by emerging artist Brandon Bultman. The unforgettable “Bufalo Blanco” consisted of a derelict upside-down ’57 Buick station wagon with its exposed undercarriage planted with real prairie grasses. A thoughtful young artist, Bultman proved he’s also ambitious with this piece; to get the car through the gallery doors, he had to turn it on its side, which he accomplished with the help of heavy-duty air bladders. He found the car, riddled with bullet holes, on a family farm, where those same kinds of grasses grow. To Bultman, the spectacular installation represented his childhood in Kansas — which apparently was pretty topsy-turvy.

When she’s not tenderizing the muscles of stressed-out working folk in the Capitol Hill Whole Foods, Abby Jane Palmer is often moonlighting at rock concerts, keeping blood pressure low and limbs loose for big-name acts passing through Denver. Last year alone, she methodically kneaded the road-weary backs and shoulders of performers in My Morning Jacket, Band of Horses, Jack White’s touring band, Beats Antique and Thievery Corporation. But Palmer welcomes non-famous clients as well, either in her Massage Spot chair at Whole Foods or through her private practice, where you can schedule a more thorough (no, not that thorough) session.

When beloved local songwriter Mike Marchant was diagnosed with lymphoma last year, the scene immediately rose up to support him. A part of Denver music for the past decade and a half, Marchant is known not only for his never-ending creative endeavors — in Widowers, Houses, Mike Marchant’s Outer Space Party Unit and more — but also for his kind heart. Like many creative types, Marchant is uninsured, but the amount of support coming in from the numerous benefit concerts, comedy nights and variety shows that sprung up within weeks of his diagnosis has been nothing short of miraculous. It pays to be kind, and this selfless musician would surely do the same if he were in someone else’s shoes.

Berk Gibbs started Elm & Oak in 2005 while living on the East Coast; since then, it has grown from an artist collective of sorts to a monumental player. Backing artists like Two Fresh, Cherub, Black Actors and fellow Elm & Oak owner Alex Botwin’s solo project Paper Diamond, the label also provides space for boutique art and clothing sales at its Boulder location. In keeping with a community mindset, the imprint has teamed up with the University of Colorado to hold semi-regular lectures and classes for CU students interested in all facets of art and the music business. Thanks to the constant flow of releases from its artists, Elm & Oak has established itself in the community as a force to be reckoned with.

William Havu brought together three of the state’s top abstract artists last spring. The main event was Amy Metier. Metier begins with an actual subject, and then, using her expressive brushwork, turns it into an abstract composition; though more representational than usual for her, these paintings were still very much a part of her classic style. Meanwhile, the floors at Havu were filled with small, simple sculptures based on organic shapes by Michael Clapper. One of Clapper’s greatest strengths is the way he combines different materials. Finishing off the trio were Emilio Lobato’s recent wall relief sculptures made of found materials.

Nick Guarino, founder and owner of ThisSongIsSick.com, didn’t expect his obsession with music to take off the way that it did. After attending the University of Colorado at Boulder for a couple of years, Guarino found himself at a crossroads: continue higher education, or press on with the blog. Like any smart entrepreneur, he followed his passion, and as a result, his humble blog has become a multimillion-hits-per-month juggernaut, paving the way for the creation of a record label and a handful of successful productions, including a debut sell-out event with Big Gigantic, Macklemore and Ryan Lewis, Dillon Francis, GRiZ and Raw Russ that closes out the 2012 season at Red Rocks. With regular posts featuring new-music submissions from all over the world, ThisSongIsSick is the go-to source for EDM-philes in search of a new artist, a new beat, or just an influx of fresh dance tunes for the playlist.

Month of Photography hit a kind of critical mass this year, with one wonderful show after another, but RedLine served as the event’s unofficial heart by hosting Reality of Fiction, put together by MoP founder, photographer and arts advocate Mark Sink. He included artists from around the world but relied on local talent for most of the inclusions. Everything in this show, which is still open, is about the relationship of true to false, with lots of things that fool the eye — even without the use of digital magic.

Katy Taylor was an unassuming resident of Rhinoceropolis for a year or two, but her quiet, thoughtful demeanor hid a vivid imagination. Her project with Alphabets’ Colin Ward, Sex Therapy, is a jarring and electrifying foray into confrontational performance art. As Crablab, however, Taylor reveals her own unique creative voice, utilizing unconventional guitar noises, synths and tape loops and effects on her voice to make the kind of collage music many other people use computers to achieve. Emotionally, Crablab can be disquieting and quietly unnerving in a fascinating fashion, with the way Taylor creates unexpected sounds with her voice. But mostly the music sounds like a vehicle with which to express and dispel a deep sense of loneliness and melancholy. At other times, Taylor’s sound experiments seem to come from that primal part of the subconscious mind that operates outside of language.

Jen Korte has been on the radar of the Denver music scene for some time now, but it was only last year that she introduced us to the Dirty Femmes, her Violent Femmes tribute band. Korte embodies the Femmes’ gender-bending songs with a passion and accuracy that could only spring from a devoted fan. The pleasure she gleans from performing each memorable tune is only surpassed by the strident roars delivered by the fanboys and fangirls in the audience, clearly buzzing with delight at hearing their favorite album tracks live. And in a pleasantly bizarre act of postmodern transcendence, last November the band was joined by original Violent Femmes singer Gordon Gano for a pair of shows in Denver, backing up the Dirty Femmes on fiddle and approaching the mic for a song or two.

Denver’s got plenty of venues, but when it comes to sound quality, not all rooms are created equal. For a sure bet, though, walk into 3 Kings Tavern almost any night of the week and see a show with John Fate behind the board. From sparse folk to the heaviest of metal, the soundman extraordinaire makes the music of every act that steps on stage here sound incredible. Even during summer festivals, when Fate’s juggling band after band, he devotes his attention to every instrument and mic, from sound check to finished product. A nice dude, to boot, Fate’s a pleasure to work with, making sure that the bands are happy with the mix, the monitors are on point and the audience is having a good time. Whether you’re on stage or in the crowd, Fate brings the best sonic experience to all parties.

Taking advantage of the Wildlife Experience’s massive forty-by-sixty-foot HD screen, the Movie and a Martini series keeps selling out the house with its monthly film and food pairings. Coupling classics like Casablanca, Sixteen Candles or Strange Brew with specialty cocktails makes the grownup soiree worth a trip to Parker. And the museum’s companion series, Whiskey and a Western, offers double-barreled fun with screenings of movies like Blazing Saddles accompanied by adult beverages from such local businesses as Black Canyon Distillery.

Few bands put out their strongest album ten years into their career. But that’s what happened when the Swayback released Double Four Time. Not only is the album an artistic leap forward for this already noteworthy band, but it sounds like a complete reinvention that incorporates what the group has been developing over the past few years. A diverse yet coherent collection of bluesy, psychedelically tinged post-punk, Double Four Time works through some heavy emotional territory with a rare grace, power and sensitivity. “St. Francis” sounds like a murder ballad as performed through the lens of Lee Hazlewood, while “Steamrolling” sounds like some boogie-rock song of old. Even the reworking and re-recording of older songs like “Die Finks” and “What a Pity Now” are imbued with an energized spirit. A startlingly bold and confident rock-and-roll album.

Conjuring up imaginary worlds, especially Utopia, has always been popular, but there is also plenty of art involving dystopian visions, where the imaginary world is terrible — or at least difficult. Susan Meyer’s evocatively titled Plato’s Retreat — named for a swingers’ club in New York that was closed in the face of the AIDS epidemic in the ’80s — was dominated by two crowded miniature “cities” made of stacked acrylic sheets in forms that looked both ancient and futuristic. These cities were populated by little people and accented with clear plastic windows and actual living plants. The tiny worlds — intelligent conceptual takes on doll houses — show that Meyer is really on to something.

Scott LaBarbera has a very diverse booking policy at the Oriental Theater, and he and his team have brought in some impressive acts, including Crime and the City Solution, Dead Prez and Woven Hand. Part of what makes these shows such a rich experience is the projection screen that occupies the entire back wall. With it, even local bands on a small budget can turn an otherwise standard show into a multimedia extravaganza. Using the entire back wall makes for an immersive environment than can truly transport an audience.

Although it was tiny, the Sandra Phillips Gallery on Santa Fe Drive established itself by focusing on important artists from the state’s art-historical past. But when gallery owner Sandra Phillips moved to the Golden Triangle last fall, she knew she had to pull out the stops to recapture the exhibition-going crowd. Frank Sampson, dedicated to one of the best-loved and most established painters in the state, did just the trick. The eighty-something magic-realist from Boulder is still at the top of his game, as his show of recent paintings made clear. And the exhibit was a great way to get people to notice Phillips as well.

A weird mix of Confessions of a Dangerous Mind and The Tonight Show, the Denver-centric variety show Late Night Denver has a bit of an intentionally awkward, surrealistic vibe. But that just adds a bizarre classiness to a program that, in another era, would merely have been a well-produced cable-access show. Hosted by John Rumley, of Urban Leash and Slim Cessna’s Auto Club fame, and Heather Dalton, familiar from her stints on Teletunes and in the punk band the Pin Downs, this long-overdue show includes interviews with local underground music celebrities like Richard Groskopf (Boss 302, The Agency), Lisa Cook (The Emmas) and Magic Cyclops. The connecting sketches are as irreverently and darkly self-effacing as an inside joke. Visually rich, smart and clever without being smug, this series is an affectionate peek into Denver’s underground music scene.

During the twentieth century in Denver, typically only one building was constructed each decade in the greater Civic Center area. That’s changed, though, and since 2000, we’ve seen no fewer than eight new landmarks. Add to this exalted group the Denver Police Crime Laboratory, designed by the Durant Smith Group. Though relatively small in size, it’s big in visual appeal, with folded plate walls zigzagging and cantilevering out above the ground, all carried out in mirrored glass, masonry and panels. And although the designers showed a clever disregard for symmetry, they gave the building a spectacular sense of balance. Only employees can get inside the crime laboratory, which is too bad, because a pair of impressive suspension sculptures, “Suspect” (which can be seen through the windows on West 14th Avenue) and “Bullet,” both by Cliff Garten, have been hung above the main floor.

In the second half of the ’90s and the early part of the ’00s, Kathryn Ellinger was one of the primary songwriters in experimental rock band Worm Trouble. The charismatic frontwoman, a multi-instrumentalist with a strong yet girlish voice, had a knack for crafting pop songs with avant-garde underpinnings. Ellinger renamed the band Sleepers around 2003, and focused on songwriting that was no less diverse, but heavier in terms of instrumentation. Worm Trouble and Sleepers both garnered a good deal of critical acclaim, but Ellinger found it necessary to take an extended break from the world of music. Five years later, a reinvigorated and newly inspired Ellinger has returned, along with her pronounced ability to write songs that ignore any divide between conventional and outsider aesthetics.

Any show with Chuck D as the host would qualify for this award, but this one sparkled like it was taking place two decades ago. Flavor Flav stole the show, providing the crowd with some truly memorable moments — now grabbing the bass from Davy DMX and slapping intensely, now stepping behind the drums to drop an incredible solo. X-clan, Schooly D, Leaders of the New School, Awesome Dre and Son of Bizerk all brought high energy to the night, which was anchored by Chuck D’s personal stories about each act. Some would say the stars of the Hip Hop Gods Tour are past their prime — but you couldn’t prove it by this show.

Some of the best shows are the ones that no one seems to see — and this was definitely the case for Uphollow’s original-lineup reunion last April. As part of the Wax Trax 33 1/3 Birthday Blowout — set over Record Store Day weekend — the band came together for an amazing revival of its pop-punk past. Uphollow’s post-’90s incarnations took the group to new heights: a conceptual double album, Soundtrack to an Imaginary Life, the multimedia collaboration Jackets for the Trip and the welcome addition of Ian Cooke all added to its dynamism and continued growth. The Wax Trax show might have only been half full — but it meant the world to the collection of fans who were there to see the band step back in time, in all its Mission to the Moon-era glory.

When ska was ascending to the peak of its popularity, Five Iron Frenzy was in the right place to ride that wave. There was a glut of ska in the ’90s, and before Five Iron broke up, what set it apart was the fact that it was punk and rock as much as it was ska. It was also a thoroughly non-judgmental Christian band, and the music it wrote was legitimately good. Plus, the band was genuinely funny, and its relationship with fans was one based on real human connection. All of this earned the group admirers wherever it played. When Five Iron announced it was getting back together, expectations were high, and while the New Year’s Eve show at Casselman’s may not have been as frantic as in the past, the performance was vibrant, fun and endearing in a way that few ever are.

Jesse Sola has been producing interesting ambient music on an international level since the 1990s. And because his music has been picked up by various ambient labels over the years, Sola, who still plays live occasionally, has had access to some of the most important and influential artists of the genre. Over the past decade or so, he’s hosted Hearts of Space regular Robert Rich at his house, and last summer, Rich was set up with banks of synths and electronics in Sola’s living room, with a small group of ambient aficionados in attendance. Having Rich there in person, manipulating the electronics and playing a homemade PVC flute and a lap steel to create expansive sonic spaces, grounded music that can often be too abstract and ethereal for some tastes.

In fall 2012, the University of Colorado unveiled a small but elegant building called the Fulginiti Pavilion for Bioethics and Humanities, named for former chancellor Vincent Fulginiti. Designed by NAC Architecture with Stuart Crawford, the building includes a good-looking little gallery. In an inspired move, freelance curator Simon Zalkind was hired to set up the first year’s schedule. He started with a show focusing on Soviet dissident Ernst Neizvestny, then followed up with an exhibit about AIDS that paired the work of the late Wes Kennedy with that of Albert Winn. (Pieces by Judy Chicago and her husband, Donald Woodman, will fill the space through May.) That’s quite a roster for a small gallery, and it proves that Zalkind, who also curates at the Singer Gallery, can always be counted on to do something worthwhile.

Having an anarchist collective host musical events is not a new or unique occurrence in Denver: The Breakdown Book Collective put on multiple memorable shows at both of its locations, and the Pitchfork House was one of the very few places where you could see crust-folk outfits like the Fainting Fansies in their element. Post Pony Palace benefited from the habitation of Magee Headley of the Haircut and her diverse musical tastes, so we saw the likes of avant-garde duo Dark Blue Dark Green (from Columbia, Missouri), Kitty Crimes, Cap’n Fresh and the Stay Fresh Seals, and noise artist Lockbox all in a living room with a P.A. Naturally, Headley’s own band played the house on more than one occasion, and when you went to the place, you really did feel like you were visiting a friend who invited punks and other weirdos in to play music.

Kalyn Heffernan of Wheelchair Sports Camp felt the need to create a quasi-clandestine hip-hop showcase as a way to stay connected to the art form’s true creative sources. With the assistance of longtime friend and collaborator Qknox, Heffernan put on the inaugural Quantized Fitness at a local DIY venue in late December and used the occasion to release Qknox’s debut mixtape. Inspired in part by L.A.’s Low End Theory, Quantized Fitness will be a monthly curated event for which Heffernan and her crew bring in noteworthy artists from across the hip-hop underground.

Giving movies that might otherwise never be seen a chance on the big screen, the Sie FilmCenter’s ongoing Cinema Q series and annual film festival focuses on the wide-open world of GLBTQ cinema. I Want Your Love, which screened last year, might have been too pornographic for any other festival, but at Cinema Q, it got the attention it deserved. Programming director Keith Garcia continues to seek out topical and often controversial narratives, booking films by gay writers, directors and producers, documentaries about pivotal GLBTQ figures, and romantic comedies with complex plots, removing any notion that these are simply “gay” movies.

Among the amazing coups by the Denver Art Museum last year was landing Yves Saint Laurent: the Retrospective; in fact, it was the traveling blockbuster’s only stop in this country. Curator Florence Müller, with backing from the late couturier’s partner, Pierre Bergé, surveyed Saint Laurent’s career, with the dramatic exhibition design by Nathalie Criniére setting a new standard around here. Some of the most remarkable pieces were those that referred to paintings, like the luxurious jackets based on van Gogh’s work and the stylish cocktail dress that took on a Mondrian. Saint Laurent didn’t do these kinds of things on a whim; he and Bergé were art connoisseurs of the highest order. And this show may represent a new trend at the DAM, which is opening a new textile gallery this summer.

The mainstream and underground arts communities don’t come together often enough, much less in collaboration with the city. But when the organizers of Unit E were approached about doing a music festival on the grounds of the Denver Performing Arts Complex, they jumped at the chance. With the help of the city, which shut down part of Champa Street for the occasion, they put together an impressive one-day event that included acts like Cody ChestnuTT, Wild Pack of Canaries and Nurses, as well as street art, interactive sound art and a tent featuring local noise artists. The festival gave many people a taste of a world they would not otherwise have seen or gotten to experience. If we’re lucky, the event paved the way for future collaborations between the city and street-level artistry.

There are a lot of great parties in the art world, but they usually attract very specific crowds. Design After Dark attracts all kinds, however. The annual February event supports Darrin Alfred’s Architecture, Design and Graphics department at the Denver Art Museum, and the 2013 version took place inside the newly rehabbed McNichols Building, with Design After Dark favorite James Holden flying in from L.A. to serve as DJ. The theme was “Cirque,” and in addition to such circus fare as stilt walkers and mini-hot dogs, it featured an auction of artist- and designer-made projects, with the likes of DoubleButter, Jonathan Saiz, tres birds workshop and more than a dozen others donating pieces.

Kurt Bauer (Super Secret Messengers and Animal/Object), a fixture in the Denver avant-garde going back to at least the ’80s, curated this event. He asked people in the scene who’d built their own sound-making devices to put together a set showcasing the capabilities of those home-crafted instruments. With numerous performances that included entomologist Aaron Spriggs’s portable theremin, a piece performed by Mark McCoin and a partner called “In Utero,” and Jacob DeRaadt’s amplified piece of metal, this wasn’t your typical concert. Not since S/O/A (bject) and the Carbon Dioxide Orchestra last performed has anything like it been seen in Denver. Gorinto was proof that outsider art of the sound variety is alive and well in our city.

A couple of hometown boys — Trey Parker and Matt Stone — made good, very good, with The Book of Mormon, which debuted on Broadway two years ago and started its tour in Denver last summer, with tickets selling out within hours of going on sale. The story of a couple of Mormon missionaries sent to Uganda, the show was just as mocking and funny as you’d expect from the creators of South Park, and also just as clever. It took on Mormonism and the horrors of poverty and violence, and somehow — without racism or callousness — made it all hysterically funny. The songs were tuneful, and the big, show-stopping numbers did indeed stop the show. Everything from the acting to the costumes to the tech was bright and tight, and it all worked together to create a blast of music, dirty jokes, color and hilarity. Miss it the first time around? The Book of Mormon is coming back this fall.

Anyone who saw the Dirty Few early on and thought it was just a half-decent garage-rock band should see it now. At an album-release show at 3 Kings Tavern this past January, the bandmembers not only played the show like rock-and-roll wildmen, but they really got the crowd fired up, then fed off that energy with increasing intensity throughout the night. Crowd-surfing alternated seamlessly between audience members and bandmembers as momentum and excitement continued to build to the very end. It would be difficult to point to a more salient example of people having pure, unadulterated fun at a rock show.

Brandy Darling of Girlwreck Presents worked with Doug Kauffman, owner of the Lion’s Lair, to bring a handful of shows to the storied bar that may not have otherwise come to town. This began in January with Garland Jeffreys, who was an early friend of the Velvet Underground and whose song “Wild in the Streets” has struck a chord with numerous punk bands across time. Two months later, Flipper performed an in-store at Wax Trax, followed by a pair of memorable nights at the Lair. And two weeks after that, Mojo Nixon played a rare, highly amusing two-night run. These were the kinds of shows that could have easily taken place at a much larger venue, but the intimacy of the setting made the Lion’s Lair an ideal fit.

Curious had a rocking season last year, and this year the company did it again, mounting three of the season’s must-see shows. Time Stands Still was an incisive examination of the way the media covers war — and the resulting indifference of the public — in the very human context of a relationship between a photographer and a writer who were both profoundly damaged by a stint in Iraq. Then there was Red, a two-man piece about the relationship between Mark Rothko and an apprentice-disciple that told us much about the narcissism of the great painter and what it takes to make art. The Elaborate Entrance of Chad Deity, a play about race, wrestling and ambition, charged into your consciousness, jolted you to attention, picked you up in a front face-lock and set you down breathless. Then there was the mordant humor of Becky Shaw and the — sorry about this — forgettable Maple and Vine. Generally speaking, everything at this theater — sets, lights, costumes, acting — is top-notch. If you’re looking for a present for a theater-loving special friend, you can’t do better than a Curious season ticket.

With the emergence of dubstep — sometimes falsely referred to as “fast drum and bass” — other EDM genres have taken a side seat. The tried-and-true plate-traders at Recon don’t subscribe to this. Recon DNB has maintained prominence in Denver by bringing real drum-and-bass to the people who know and love it. Whether you find yourself in the dampest of underground clubs or in the spotlight at the hottest dance venue, it’s likely that Recon DNB is responsible for bringing the producer who’s pumping out tracks at 180 BPM, thus forcing you to dance your ass off.

The members of Buntport don’t just put on plays; they create the plays they put on through a communal process of idea swapping, testing and rehearsing. Since these shows are never critic- or audience-tested, every one represents a big risk. And they’re all staged in Buntport’s convention-busting style. Sweet Tooth was a take on the turn-of-the-century decadent movement — think Oscar Wilde strolling along the Strand with a lily in his hand — but you didn’t have to know anything about the decadents to enjoy this piece about a wealthy woman who created her own artificial reality. The Roast Beef Dilemma, though less successful, had an equally creative premise, involving an eighteenth-century clown sent to prison for uttering the words “roast beef” on stage. Tommy Lee Jones Goes to Opera Alone featured the actor in the shape of a giant puppet, and Wake was a soulful and serious take on Shakespeare’s The Tempest. We can’t wait to see what Buntport comes up with next.

Being plugged into the local dubstep scene is one thing, but having your finger on the pulse internationally is a whole other feat. The Sub.Mission crew has done just that by bringing the biggest names in the burgeoning genre stateside for half a dozen years now. Utilizing their in-depth knowledge of the dubstep scene, the folks at Sub.Mission have opened the eyes of newcomers and faithful dubsteppers to established U.K. talent as well as newer faces in the local scene. You may not like all of the music that’s being churned out of the mainstream EDM mill, but you can be sure that when you see the Sub.Mission name on a flier or an event, the music will be pure and the talent will be top-notch.

When a small dinner theater decides to take on a huge, glitzy Broadway show featuring dozens of tapping feet, it’s asking for trouble. Where will the director find all those triple-threat performers, the people who can sing, dance and act equally well? For 42nd Street, Michael J. Duran enlisted the help of talented Boulder’s Dinner Theatre regulars, mixed in a slew of young people — including one who’d performed for the company as a child — and found Johnny Stewart, a business student at CU who can tap along with the best of them. Combine this cast with the theater’s usual first-rate tech and Neal Dunfee’s excellent small orchestra, and you’ve got all the glitter and glam of a Broadway show — but with a lot more intimacy and heart.

It’s been a banner year for electronic music in Denver — after all, the metro area is home to Communikey and the Great American Techno Festival, so we’ve grown to expect headliners that should make EDM fans in many larger metropolitan areas green with envy. But Afterhours Anonymous produced consistently amazing shows throughout the year, bringing in internationally renowned DJs and producers like Radio Slave, Chris Liebing, Max Cooper and Pan-Pot, who set local dance floors aflame with their sets. AA producers even landed a stage showcasing top-notch EDM acts at the massive Global Dance Festival rave at Red Rocks — and they’re keeping the momentum going in 2013, with Maya Jane Coles lined up for a 4/20 show at NORAD (named one of Rolling Stone‘s 25 DJs Who Rule the Earth, Coles is flying out in between Coachella slots) and big plans for this year’s Global stage. We can’t help being addicted to Afterhours Anonymous.

Tracy Warren is a warmly appealing actress with a fine singing voice. And during Boulder Dinner Theatre’s 42nd Street, we learned she also has a deft touch as a choreographer who can handle dozens of swiftly tapping feet as well as soulful solos and silly-funny two-performer numbers.

The people bringing DJs and producers to town have gone above and beyond during the past year, proving that you can put a city that’s not on either coast on the international map if you play your cards right. In a year of music that also included such artists as legendary techno superstar Chris Liebing and illustrious underground names Rrose and Radio Slave, it was a tough call to pick Pan-Pot, but there are two primary reasons that the group’s set at NORAD (and the surprise showcase at the after-party at Cluster Studios) beat out the competition: The crowd ate up the Berlin duo’s blend of tech-house, dancing furiously with ear-to-ear grins the entire time; and the members of Pan-Pot had an equally fine time, saying that this was the best show they’d played stateside. No one who was lucky enough to be present will forget this one for a long time. Talk about positive energy!

You wouldn’t think a Tuesday night would be the hottest night for finding fresh music, but when Nicole Cacciavillano and her team got ahold of it over a year ago, it quickly gained popularity. Sub.Mission has garnered an unprecedented Tuesday following for new talent in Colorado at Cervantes’. Hosting producer competitions, battles and the occasional headliner (in the past, we’ve seen the likes of Caspa, Netsky and Sub.Mission’s own residents), Cacciavillano and crew prove that no matter what you’ve got going on during the week, there’s always time for fresh new beats. Tuesday nights at Cervantes’ are filled with hard-hitting bass lines and complex layers of production from tomorrow’s biggest names.

Unit E was shut down briefly last year when the cops took issue with the venue’s donation-only bar. But that didn’t stop the unassuming multi-purpose space from thriving. Once co-habitant Gregg Ziemba took care of the resulting fines, he and the rest of the collective went back to work. Delivering on the group’s mission to bring art together with punk, hip-hop, noise, folk, funk and everything in between in an all-ages environment, Unit E hosts some of the most diverse local shows around. Biding its time until the legal issues subside, Unit E continues to serve the Santa Fe Arts District as a place where kids can see local and national touring bands in the midst of Denver’s burgeoning art scene.

As a Colorado-based film organization, Design Onscreen functions on several levels: as a film-making entity, as a festival organizer, and as an advocate for the restoration of post-World War II architecture. The non-profit foundation also curates the Architecture + Design Film Series, culling documentaries that showcase architecture in film and include historical, cultural and stylistic subject matter. Design Onscreen then takes these movies around the world, to push a dialogue on America’s recent architectural past.

When Ethan McCarthy stepped away from Blast-O-Mat, Aaron Saye, a longstanding supporter of local underground culture and music, stepped in and prevented the building that housed it from potentially returning to being the auto-repair shop it had been in its previous life. Recruiting a group of volunteers from the underground scene, Saye transformed Blast-O-Mat into Seventh Circle Music Collective. The initial mission of the newly christened venue was to provide a safe space for all sorts of music and a meeting place for cultural and artistic endeavors, and it appears that Saye and company have kept true to that goal. As host to numerous shows each week, Seventh Circle has filled an important gap for those who prefer an alternative avenue for presenting their music.

A veteran of the Denver music scene, Jack Hadley has fronted his own blues-based act for close to a decade; he also spent a year and a half as lead guitarist in Otis Taylor’s band, and played reggae with Rude Culture and R&B and funk with Network. Hadley knows his way around the blues, and he definitely adds a sense of professionalism to his weekly Monday jams at Jack’s. While other blues jams around town attract their share of novices, Hadley’s jams bring in more seasoned players, who come to play on the venue’s pro sound system. A limited backline is also provided.

We’re guessing the ancient pot that dispenses bitter coffee has been around since artistic director Ed Baierlein founded Germinal Stage Denver in 1973, and went along for the ride when he moved the company to West 44th Avenue 26 years ago. The man isn’t fond of change. But over the years, he’s staged some of the most interesting theater in town in his tiny, intimate venue, everything from Ibsen to Albee, Shaw to Arthur Kopit, gut-busting farce to thoughtful tragedy. The walls of the auditorium are lined with photographs from past productions, in which you can see a generation of Denver actors coming of age — and some growing old. But the building is in need of repair, and Baierlein, now 69, is reluctant to undertake the Herculean task — so he’s sold the place to a real-estate developer. The final season, which includes Long Day’s Journey Into Night, starring Baierlein himself, ends in August. Baierlein is looking for a new space, and this time he plans to rent rather than buy — but we’re sure the coffeepot will go with him.

For a long time, guitarist Dan Schwindt ran the “Tuesday Session” jazz jams at Dazzle, one of the few spots in town to hold such get-togethers. Now hosted by drummer Todd Reid, these jams attract some of the heaviest players in town, as well as younger music students, who get to hone their chops in a live setting with Reid, bassist Ian Hutchison and a different special guest every week on guitar or piano.

The quality of the food varies, and the shows range from hilariously creative to the occasional damp squib. But over its 25 years, Heritage Square Music Hall has always been worth a visit. The melodramas and songfests feel like a wonderful party where your friends get up, one by one, to tell jokes or sing songs — though your friends aren’t likely to be as talented as director T. J Mullin, who maintains a soft-spoken dignity on stage, right up until the moment he turns into a wailing baby; Rory Pierce, who’ll play it straight for a while and then pop up in drag, showing off the best legs in the business; Alex Crawford, a grandfather who can still do the splits; Randy Johnson, who pounds the piano keys with such skill and enthusiasm that you have to sing along. And where will we go after December 31 — when the place closes — to see Annie Dwyer, the crazed comedian who made her mark snatching glasses of booze from customers’ tables and downing them, impersonating singers from Janis Joplin to a fat-suited Mama Cass, terrorizing male audience members with sticky red forehead kisses and then yelling at their female companions? There is still a season’s worth of shows to see, but the fun will stop at the end of the year, with Merry Christmas to All and to All a Good Night.

Starting in 2001, father-and-son developers Mickey and Kyle Zeppelin began developing a campus of buildings meant to serve as offices, ateliers and residences for Denver’s creative class. They started by renovating the 28,000-square-foot former Yellow Cab dispatch center — hence the name TAXI — before adding several new structures to the group and rehabbing other existing buildings. The latest structure to come on line is the sleek Drive building, set behind the famous landscraper (a horizontal skyscraper) called TAXI 2. Drive, designed by Stephen Dynia Architects with Barker Rinker Seacat Architecture, is very cool, with jutting forms covered in dark metal cladding that’s set against raw concrete. The artful pattern of slit windows and window walls creates a contemporary-looking constructivist composition.

Now in its fifteenth year, Dazzle has secured its spot as the premier place for jazz in Denver. But it’s not just here that the club’s been praised: Downbeat magazine listed it as one of the top 100 jazz clubs in the world — and with good reason. The level of talent that’s brought in week after week makes it a really great venue. In the last year alone, Dazzle has hosted Joe Lovano, Esperanza Spalding, the Bad Plus, Vijay Iyer, Kurt Elling and the stellar trio of Ron Miles, Bill Frisell and Brian Blade. To top it all off, the walls here are acoustically treated, so the sound is top-notch, and sight-wise, there’s not a bad seat in the house.

Since opening in 2008, Beta has shown time and again that it’s the best dance club in the city. Sure, a big part of that is having a state-of-the-art Funktion-One sound system that’s unrivaled by virtually any club in North America, but the other reason Beta has been named one of the best dance clubs, here and around the world, is the caliber of talent it brings in. On any given week, there’s bound to be at least one internationally renowned DJ on the calendar; in the past few years, that list has included Paul Oakenfold, Richie Hawtin, Deadmau5, David Guetta, Skrillex and John Digweed, for starters.

In addition to being one of the state’s best spots for country music, the Grizzly Rose has hosted its share of ’80s hair bands. But when owner Scott Durland opened the Grizzly Rock last year in the former After the Gold Rush space, he started bringing hard rock back, starting with bands like Slaughter, Skid Row and Winger. And in addition to national and local rock groups, the 1,200-person Grizzly Rock has begun to book the occasional hip-hop act, like Naughty by Nature and Vanilla Ice.

Following a stretch as the third incarnation of the venerable Muddy’s coffeehouse, the triangular building at 22nd and Champa was home to quite a few dance clubs, including Club Evolution, the Loft, Club Ra, Gallery 22 and 2200. No one seemed to be able to make the venue work — until NORAD moved in. Owner Preston Douglas, who formerly wore multiple hats at Beta, clearly knows what he’s doing, and he’s hosted some of the biggest names in underground music since opening NORAD. With a sound system comparable to that of some of the biggest local dance clubs, this place keeps things pumping big time.

Skip “The Funktologist” Reeves, who hosts KZKO’s Funk Above the Rest show, knows the funk inside and out. If the dude had his way, Denver would be one city under a groove. So it made sense when Reeves set up shop at Jazz@Jack’s five or so years ago and started his own funk night there. It’s still one of the few places in town where you’re guaranteed to hear the best in funk and soul on a weekly basis.

Musician and multimedia artist Adam Stone played Ariel as a gray shadow in Buntport’s phenomenal play Wake, and provided a haunting and evocative soundscape as well. Stone has composed music and songs for several of the group’s best shows. Now Buntport has announced it will be sharing its theater space with Stone’s new company, Screw Tooth. Starting in August, the two companies will alternate program slots — and who can predict what the melding of these fertile imaginations will bring?

Theater is great. Food is great. Both are forms of artistic expression. So why are the snacks at most theatrical performances so bad — nothing but stale chips and candy bars and a cup of popcorn if you’re lucky? At the opening night of the Catamounts’ hip tragicomedy Jon, vodka was served in glasses with a rim of blue Kool-Aid and cherry-juice ice cubes. Afterward, a lights-strung cart pulled up in front of the theater to serve sliders and mac and cheese. Directors Amanda Berg Wilson and Lauren Shepard Wilkinson plan to continue exploring Boulder’s rich food culture and offer special dinners in which each course is paired with a performance piece and a drink. It’s a wonderful thing when passions collide.

Hu$$la Entertainment’s Saturday-night hip-hop party at Club Level attracts hundreds of people every week. One of the secrets to the night’s continued success is its organizers, who treat every week like it’s the first. They further foster goodwill with customers by treating them with grace and respect: While DJ Juanito and DJ RX spin the tunes, host Thomasito Vasquez greets each customer with a smile and MC Money keeps the crowd entertained. There’s usually a line around the building by 11 p.m. — and it’s easy to see why.

Buntport was a lock for this award — but for which of the season’s offerings? The sad-funny Sweet Tooth? Wake, a profound musing on love and time inspired by Shakespeare’s The Tempest? In the end, inspired by the images and scraps of dialogue that keep coming to mind months after the play’s closing, we decided on Tommy Lee Jones Goes to Opera Alone, which featured an ungainly five-foot-tall puppet animated by four Buntporters as Jones; a lively waitress called Jane; and a lot of talk about cowboy boots, the evolution of human speech, and opera. The production was absorbing, entertaining, funny yet profound.

Long before he was a reality-TV star, Duane Chapman was a bounty hunter based in Denver — and he even won an early Best of Denver award, for his work on the mean streets of this city. Since then, of course, he’s gone on to much bigger and better things. And although he and A&E parted ways over his successful Dog the Bounty Hunter series last year, he and his wife, Beth, have been staying plenty busy. This March, they guest-starred — as themselves — on Hawaii Five-0. And they have a new series starting, with son Leland, in April; Dog will be helping struggling bail bondsman companies across the country — and, as always, taking down dangerous criminals. This Dog still has plenty of bite.

In Buntport’s Tommy Lee Jones Goes to Opera Alone, waitress Jane, played by Hannah Duggan, was the only actual, freestanding human being. Everyone else was busy animating the large Tommy Lee Jones puppet or, in the case of Eric Edborg, providing his voice. So Jane served him pie and responded with down-to-earth humor and some skepticism to the bits of wisdom and information he doled out. Flirty, wise and brash, she was completely unintimidated by her famous customer. And also by opera, singing along with an aria and coming up with ideas to complete the plot of Puccini’s unfinished masterpiece Turandot,with the help of a bottle of ketchup, a syrup dispenser and a fork. Duggan’s intense focus on everything she did on stage, along with her protectiveness toward Jones, made her portrayal both touching and hilarious.

Magnificently stagey and at the same time deeply sincere, Deborah Persoff is a mainstay of the local theater scene and always a pleasure to watch, whether she’s being wryly sophisticated, dead serious or What-Ever-Happened-to-Baby-Jane crazy. She got to strut all her comic stuff as Woman, half of an older couple determined to disabuse a younger couple of their illusions in Edward Albee’s The Play About the Baby at Germinal Stage Denver this season. At one point she delivered a fabulous monologue about living the artist’s life in Europe that described the painter who hanged himself for love of her and used every cliché author that Albee could get his hands on. Like almost everything Persoff does, it was pitch-perfect.

After debuting Lipgloss as an indie-rock, ’80s-underground dance night in 2001, co-founders Michael Trundle (aka boyhollow) and Tyler Jacobson slowly built their once-monthly dance night into an award-winning weekly Denver institution, one of the first to embrace the dance-punk craze of the mid-2000s. More recently, however, Trundle felt the night’s original theme was being eclipsed by the dubstep and hard electro sounds of the modern scene, so last spring he moved Lipgloss to Beauty Bar, where it’s returned to its original, more rock- and punk-fueled sound.

In the Boulder Ensemble Theatre’s Ghost-Writer, Laura Norman played Myra Babbage, the secretary of a major writer, who continued work on his unfinished novel after his death because she believed she could still hear his voice dictating the words to her. Playing a woman who lived to serve others and kept a tight rein on her own feelings, Norman made an art out of stillness and silence; only her eyes revealed the deep currents of emotion within. Even the movement of her fingers on the clacking, old-fashioned typewriter keys was eloquent. When the writer, making a point about the work, placed a light hand on her arm, Babbage neither moved nor spoke — but the electric current that pulsed through her body was felt through the entire auditorium.

It requires a lot of daring to take on the role of Mrs. Daldry in In the Next Room, or the Vibrator Play, about a Victorian doctor who, in accordance with the practices of the day, cures hysteria by providing orgasms. As Mrs. Daldry in Equinox Theatre’s production, Aimee Janelle Nelson had to portray complete sexual innocence and also deliver periodic on-stage orgasms — the kind of orgasms a woman might have if she’d never known such things were possible or been exposed to the sexual imagery we see everywhere today. Nelson has the kind of little-girl sweetness and vulnerability we associate with Marilyn Monroe. Her laughter is silvery and infectious; her hesitations speak volumes. To top it off, she plays the violin. Beautifully.

At this point, the Solution is well on its way to becoming a Denver institution. But it isn’t just our town’s longest-running and most revered hip-hop night — it’s also a testament to quality and resilience. Despite having moved virtually all over town since it was founded half a dozen years ago by DJs Low Key and Sounds Supreme, the Solution continues to draw a faithful crowd wherever — and however — it goes. Even after the Solution took a hiatus from weekly parties, the Solution crew continued to offer showcases featuring a parade of the best local MCs and producers, along with lauded acts from elsewhere. And last month, when the Solution returned to a weekly format at its new home at the Meadowlark, all was right in the cosmos again.

Mile High Soul Club is a monthly event, and while once a month would hardly seem enough to make it a destination, this club night packs more than enough good times and great music into one evening to hold you over until next time. Launched in 2008 at Rockbar, the night, helmed by Tyler Jacobson, DJ DogBoy and Creeper Steve, features a choice blend of hand-picked Motown and Northern and vintage soul. Not only has the night survived a succession of moves over the years, but it continues to thrive and grow. It’s grown so much, in fact, that in February, Mile High Soul Club set up shop at Beauty Bar — which has plenty of room for the many fans who flock to Denver’s best club night.

In Time Stands Still, at Curious Theatre, Tara Falk played Sarah, a photographer wounded by a roadside bomb in Iraq who has returned to the United States with her relationship with magazine writer James, both physical and emotional, nearly in pieces. In an intelligent, restrained and unsentimental performance, Falk made you believe fully in Sarah’s injuries and slow recovery. She communicated every shading of her confused love for James, as well as the adrenaline hunger that drove her to venture into war zones again and again.

In the musical Next to Normal put on by Ignite Theatre, Natalie was the confused teenage daughter of a bipolar mother. During the course of the action, she changed from a disciplined, Mozart-loving pianist and conscientious student into an angry, aimless, self-pitying drug abuser. Madison Kitchen brought a fine soprano to the difficult score, and her Natalie was the epitome of the troubled teen: innocent and jaded, gawky and beautiful.

Although the men’s restroom at 3 Kings Tavern was never the worst in town, it was far from the best — just two small urinals and a stall with a makeshift shower-curtain divider. But then it got a stunning, Extreme Makeover-worthy overhaul. With the wall between the bathroom and a storage closet removed, the pisser is now twice the size, fitted out with an industrial-sized sink, an additional stall and a trough in place of the urinals. What a relief!

Cigars on Sixth is the ultimate man cave — decorated in dark wood, antique chairs and a flat-screen TV, and stuffed full of every cigar- and pipe-related knickknack you can imagine, not to mention a set of antlers and a fake mounted fish. Here you’ll find old boys in suits and ties, lawyers, accountants, politicians and Hawaiian shirt-clad silverbacks trading throaty stories and jokes at just about any time of day. The humidor is well-stocked, as are the shelves of ashtrays, humidors, cutters and other paraphernalia. Wanna feel even more manly? Make your way through the thick air to the back, where you can get a shave and a haircut from the one-seat barbershop.

Geoffrey Kent is the go-to fight specialist for almost every theater in the region, which means he’s a very physical actor. He also tends to be a cheerful, high-spirited presence on stage. We knew all this before he played Garry in Noises Off, a 2012 Colorado Shakespeare Festival production. Even so, we couldn’t possibly have anticipated the level of his brilliant, manic energy in the role. He was fun to watch throughout, but the play’s climax was the killer. It required him to hop up a set of high stairs with his shoelaces tied together, fall precipitously down the same stairs, tumble over most of the furniture and come to a thumping stop on his back on the floor. Here’s hoping the thunderous applause made up for the bruises.

What’s the best way to teach students how to run a hotel and events center? By having an actual hotel and events center right on campus, of course. And that’s exactly what the Metropolitan State University of Denver’s Hotel and Hospitality Learning Center accomplishes by doubling as a SpringHill Suites Marriott hotel. The swanky-looking combination classroom building and boutique hotel commands the corner of Speer Boulevard and Auraria Parkway. It was designed by Denver’s venerable RNL architectural firm, which created a series of intersecting boxes set at various angles to one another. The walls are covered in a luscious purply-gray brick on the street sides, with buff brick used where the planar walls face the campus. In between is mirror-tinted glass, including a Mondrian-esque passage marking a doorway.

If you haven’t been to Herman’s Hideaway in a while, it’s high time that you headed over there to see the renovations that have taken place, from swanky bathroom makeovers to sound upgrades. The most startling change, however, is the addition of a new outdoor smoking area — more like a patio, really — just adjacent to the stage. With floor-to-ceiling windows (and a garage door that will open during the warmer months), you don’t have to miss any of the action when you step outside for a quick smoke. And you don’t have to freeze when it’s cold outside, either, since a massive area heater keeps things relatively comfortable.

You’d be hard-pressed to find a dance-club patio in Denver with a better view of the mountains and the skyline than Vinyl’s indoor/outdoor rooftop patio. And the view here isn’t the only amenity. This patio, one of the biggest in town, has heaters, fire pits and comfortable booths and chairs, making it a great year-round spot to sit and chat, have a smoke or just chill.

The story behind The Elaborate Entrance of Chad Deity is told as a series of monologues by a Puerto Rican kid called Macedonio Guerra, or Mace. Mace was fascinated by professional wrestling as a kid and grew up to be a part of that world. But only as a literal fall guy — the opponent routinely demolished by such stars as Chad Deity, a man who knows how to put on a terrific show but can’t really fight worth a lick. It takes a lot of charm to keep audiences engaged through these long, often expository monologues, and serious acting chops to bring across Mace’s emotional life and the way he longs less for his own turn in the spotlight than for some kind of truth in the over-hyped, stereotype-ridden sport he loves. Lopez managed all of this in the Curious Theatre production and pulled off some cool wrestling moves in the process.

James O’Hagan Murphy provided a complex portrait of a complex man in RFK. Robert Kennedy is remembered for his tragic assassination and venerated as the ideal president-who-should-have-been. But he possessed less pleasant characteristics, too: utter ruthlessness in pursuit of power; spurts of pettiness and jealousy; a profound loathing (entirely reciprocated) for Lyndon Baines Johnson. Kennedy tapped Martin Luther King’s phone, and it took him some time to become an advocate for civil rights. But once he did, he fought for them passionately. In Murphy’s authoritative performance in this Vintage Theatre production, all of the man’s depths and ambiguities were made clear. And Kennedy’s grief as he stood over the coffin of his murdered brother seared the soul.

Variety is key to a great jukebox, and the juke at the Lion’s Lair has it in spades. From the blues of Muddy Waters and Howlin’ Wolf to the classic rock of the Stones and Zeppelin — and pretty much everything in between — it’s one of the more diverse collections in town. And since the Lair brings in its fair share of punk acts, you’ll find a good dose of punk, as well, whether it’s coming from the Clash or one of the many mix CDs in the box. Rounding out the lineup? Soundtracks from Curtis Mayfield’s Super Fly and the reggae-centric The Harder They Come, as well as country from Willie Nelson and Merle Haggard.

While the intimate Meadowlark hosts a stellar jazz jam on Mondays, its long-running Tuesday-night open stage has attracted a number of the city’s finest singer-songwriters, who come to test new material or refine older songs. In more recent years, it was where Churchill and the Lumineers — then a duo from the East Coast — played before moving on to much bigger venues.

Eden is a garden of lesbian delights. Thanks to a diverse menu of vegetarian- and vegan-friendly options, Eden is as green-friendly on the inside as the grass-colored building is on the outside. But it’s the after-dinner fare that makes Eden a standout on the nightlife scene: In addition to regularly supporting the women of Denver with events dedicated to roller derby, women in slam poetry, female fundraisers, International Women’s Day and the like, the restaurant also offers fun, one-night-only events that cater to the double-X-chromosomed. Did you miss the Lady Gaga tour documentary on HBO? Eden’s got a bad romance with the singer. You might also encounter diva-centric dance jams, sapphic sirens burlesque, yoga over brunch, or your favorite lesbian reality star.

In Curious Theatre’s Red, Ken was the kid who apprenticed with the overbearing, narcissistic artist Mark Rothko, making coffee, cleaning up, fetching Chinese food and enduring huge, pointless and unexpected rages. Ben Bonenfant’s portrayal of Ken was vulnerable and self-effacing. But even as Ken soaked up the things the master had to teach, he also began to understand the weakness and self-contradiction at the heart of Rothko’s posturing. You could see all this, as well as Ken’s growing strength as a man and an artist, in Bonenfant’s finely drawn performance.

John Ashton, Warren Sherill, Steef Sealy, Brock Benson and Kevin Hart all gave fine individual performances in Conor McPherson’s The Seafarer, a play about two drink-sodden Irish brothers, their friends, and the enigmatic figure who shows up for a game of cards. But these performances — the bullying, the silences, the moments of meanness, misery or amnesia — also meshed to create a mesmerizing world in this Ashton Entertainment production, a world murky with booze, despair and even menace, but one that showed a flickering hint of tenderness and light.

When you’re designing for a small space like Miners Alley Playhouse on a low budget for a play set in a treehouse, and the actors have to enter and leave through a trap door beneath it, you’ve got yourself a whole lot of headaches. Fortunately, designer Richard Pegg, who has a solid understanding of both aesthetics and construction, was more than up to solving the problems in his design for Sweet Storm. He made the interior of the treehouse welcoming and cozy, and the overall stage imagery — sky, tree branches — elegant. And as the two protagonists played out their difficult relationship, you sensed that the one thing you didn’t have to worry about was their physical safety.

Argo, the Ben Affleck flick about a real-life CIA scheme to rescue six Americans from Iran by disguising them as a fake movie crew, won big at the Oscars, snagging statuettes for Best Picture and Best Adapted Screenplay, among others. But there was one important fact left out of the Hollywood retelling: the daring rescue’s Colorado connection. The script that the CIA used to persuade Iranian officials — and the gullible local press — that the Americans marooned in Iran were a film crew for a movie called Lord of Light was actually slated to be filmed at Science Fiction Land, a planned Aurora theme park that was to include a holographic zoo and a 1,000-lane bowling alley attended by robots. But when that project fell apart, the CIA grabbed the script, changed the name to Argo…and rewrote history.

Ed, Downloaded was a feast for the senses, from James Kronzer’s scenery to Brian Tovar’s lighting to Tyler Nelson’s evocative sound to Charles I. Miller’s video design. And director Sam Buntrock had previously won critical acclaim in both London and New York for his stunning and visually sophisticated revival of Sondheim’s Sunday in the Park With George. But the tech wasn’t just about aesthetics: It was entertainment and information in its own right. It interacted with the script and kept your brain alert — contrasting, inferring, making connections. Images lingered afterward of two lovers in a snowy, silver-blue woodland, a woman cutting up oranges, the spare lines of a modern kitchen, rows of bubbling stands topped by glowing boxes that supposedly contained human memories.

Autobiographical one-person plays can be tedious, but when Luciann Lajoie decided to create Date, a piece about her online dating experiences, she avoided narcissism by asking a hundred people for their stories and then intertwining these vignettes with her personal narrative. As a result, the audience in this Denver Center Theatre production at Off-Center@The Jones learned what it’s like to brave the world of Internet dating for people of different ages and races, for someone desperately lonely, recently widowed, HIV-positive or just goofing around. Some of Denver’s best actors appeared on the videos reading these pieces: Longtime real-life married couple Sallie Diamond and Ed Baierlein played a pair who met happily online; Karen Slack was hilarious as a good Jewish girl looking for a good Jewish guy. It all made for a highly entertaining Date.

Tracks is more than just a gay bar — it’s a veritable multiplex of GLBTQ-centered activities. The decades-old nightclub has it all, from Denver’s largest ladies’ night (First Fridays) to RuPaul’s Drag Race watching parties to DJs from across the globe rocking its multiple dance floors. The adjoining EXDO Event Center space allows Tracks to offer the best live drag shows in Denver — when it’s not serving as the premier party destination for corporate events, nonprofit fundraisers, weddings and more. At both venues, the door and bar staff are friendly and efficient, and the sound system keeps every party going, no matter the size of the crowd. From spring-break underwear parties to Pride weekend blowouts, Denver’s vibrant GLBTQ community is in the spotlight at Tracks.

What can a bar do to keep its customers entertained? There are trivia nights all over town almost every night of the week, most operated by independent trivia companies; some bars attempt to offer their own trivia nights, but those attempts usually turn out to be trivial. Not so with the Tavern Hospitality Group, which offers an original, high-tech trivia show once a week at five of its locations — Tavern Uptown, Tavern Lowry, Tavern Tech Center, Tavern Wash Park and Tavern Littleton. The seven-round game plays on 42-inch TVs throughout each Tavern and features music questions, movie clips, visual rounds and more. There are prizes each week, with winter and summer leagues culminating in an annual championship. Next question!

When it opened some twenty years ago, Armida’s hosted karaoke one night a week. But the Mexican restaurant soon focused in on the entertainment option, and for years it’s been one of the few spots in town to host karaoke seven nights a week. It’s also grown into one of the most popular venues for people to strut their stuff — so much so that it recently opened another karaoke room on the weekends and upgraded the main floor.

Despite the fact that Joe Biden called transgender rights “the civil-rights issue of our time,” standup comedy is still a world crawling with pre-Stonewall bigotry — which makes for some great tension when Jordan Wieleba lays her autobiographical transitioning stories on a mainstream comedy audience. Formerly of locally celebrated punk band Forth Yeer Freshman, Wieleba spent the first five years of her comedy career as a man, publicly becoming a woman both on the stage and in an in-the-works documentary, set for a 2014 release, that will conclude with her reassignment surgery this fall. While Wieleba is frequently seen in Denver’s gay-friendly comedy scene, she can also be found in traditional comedy venues, where beer-pong bros may drop a heckle or two at her feet. Yet she has a brilliant resilience, with a graceful routine that somehow makes a polarizing issue universally funny.

Disappointed by open-mic nights at bars frequented by judgmental drunk dudes, writer Erica Adams and artist/musician Sara Century created Baby Hair, a monthly night at Deer Pile that encourages queer and female artists to step on stage. Unlike open mics that center on just comedy or poetry, Baby Hair is more free-form: On any given second Tuesday, artists perform everything from narrated text-message conversations to PowerPoint presentations about psychedelic mushrooms, all in a safe community space.

Every now and then, Equinox Theatre, known primarily for camp humor, gets serious — as it did last year with Sarah Ruhl’s In the Next Room, or the Vibrator Play. A play about orgasms and Victorian attitudes toward women, this would have been a gutsy choice for any company, let alone one with severely limited resources, but director Deb Flomberg took it on wholeheartedly. She scoured antique shops and put together a display of antique vibrators for the lobby, assembled a good cast, called in a feminist historian to discuss sexuality in Victorian times, and asked her actors to search their souls for the deepest and most honest way to perform the scripted orgasms. The result was a celebration, sweet and sexy and tender.

Steven Cole Hughes played Millet in Is He Dead?, a Creede Repertory production presented at the Arvada Center, but he spent most of his time in drag as Daisy — and he did it deliciously. Despite the frilly dress and golden wig, he avoided the usual mincing walk, smeary clown lipstick and high-pitched giggle. Millet-Daisy was earnest and bemused, and trying desperately to remember her backstory — whether she was married, for example, and how many children she had. Eventually, surrounded by suitors offering jewelry, she began to relax and enjoy the power of the skirt. Best of all was her drawn-out, coltish, rocking attempt at a curtsy, which had the audience almost puking with laughter.

Over the past five years, Drag Nation has become the premier queen catwalk for moving local performers onto the national stage. Once a month, contestants pull out incredible stops: Birdcages drop from the ceiling holding radiant queens; human pieces of art strut their stuff; a bevy of dolled-up backup dancers creates a show with a Fame vibe. In addition to serving as a stepping stone for Denver’s best talent, Drag Nation also attracts world-renowned performers like Amanda Lepore and Ongina. RuPaul’s Drag Race favorite Nina Flowers is to thank for the fun: The supreme queen and expert DJ created the show’s precursor, Drama Drag, and set the tone for Drag Nation. You queens rule!

Two men play 26 roles in Love Child, a play about a couple of actors who decide to stage Euripides’s Ion in a sausage factory. Steven Burge played the actor’s agent, who sits in the audience watching him and his own mother and father…oh, wait, maybe that was Damon Guerrasio. With the two men switching roles so fast and so often in this Avenue Theatre production, you pretty much forgot who’d done what within seconds of leaving the theater — though it all seemed completely clear while you were actually watching. Burge and Guerrasio are not only two of the most versatile and quick-thinking actors around, they’re both snort-beer-through-your-nose funny.

Since its start as the annual signature fundraiser for the Colorado Gay Volleyball Association four years ago, the Queen of Aces pageant has grown into an entity all its own. For a chance to win a sparkling crown and carry out do-good missions throughout the year, this old-fashioned drag blowout attracts contestants of all impersonation skill levels. The costumes may be imperfect and the talent and lip-syncing portions of the pageant a little lopsided, but each queen gives it her all — and the audience applauds the effort.

The Downtown Denver Partnership sprung a sweet surprise on 16th Street Mall strollers last summer when it threw the mall’s first Make Music Denver street festival, a participatory free-for-all that celebrated beats and blasts and reverberations from masses of musicians of all skill levels and age groups. Inspired by an international event with roots in France’s Fête de la Musique, which started more than ten years ago, Make Music Denver invited professional ensembles, independent bands and armies of instrumentalists to gather on the mall and perform for free. There were mass-appeal, same-instrument combos throughout the day, featuring groups of ukuleles or fiddles or guitars. There were drum circles. There were teen rock bands. There were jazz combos and symphonic sections, and plenty of opportunities to join in or just sit back and enjoy. The basic idea behind Make Music Denver — that everyone, from concert pianists to three-year-old toddlers beating on a pan, makes music — is a winner; the fest will return on June 21.

Hosting several shows a year that emphasize its family-friendly nature, the Mile High Freedom Band provides a festive party alternative for kids and adults alike on holidays ranging from Halloween to St. Patrick’s Day to Martin Luther King Day to Pride. Comprising a full concert band, a marching band, a swing band and smaller ensembles, the GLBTQ-inclusive group works with both seasoned musicians and instrument newcomers to provide all-ages entertainment. And the applause is nationwide: This year the group was chosen from hundreds of marching bands to participate in the 2013 presidential Inauguration Day parade.

When Adam Perkes, the intense actor who played the lead in Bat Boy for Equinox Theatre, was found dead in a Glenwood Springs hotel early this year, the rest of the cast was devastated, and it looked as if the show would have to be canceled. But director Deb Flomberg felt that if that happened, everyone involved would remember the production with nothing but pain. So she contacted Nick Sugar, who had previously both played the role of Bat Boy and directed the show, and he agreed to take over. After a frantic six-day rehearsal, Bat Boy reopened to an enthusiastic audience and a standing ovation. Campy, funny and touching, the musical tells the story of a creature that’s half bat, half human, and his attempts to make a place for himself in the world. Flomberg relates the theme to Perkes’s life: “It’s about someone who feels very alone, isolated and rejected.” In Sugar’s interpretation, she adds, you saw “a little bit of Nick and a little bit of Adam.”

The Mutiny Words Night free-for-all, hosted by comedian and devil’s advocate Onus Spears on Thursday nights, invites poets, musicians, comedians, storytellers and raving lunatics to talk, read or sing about what concerns them — or simply dispense their activist screed. Mindless haters, Spears warns, are not tolerated, so take your anger elsewhere unless it’s directed into a cogent, arguable point of view that’s less about finger-pointing and more about cultivating change. Otherwise, there’s no censorship (or alcohol or drugs) at this all-ages forum, which begs participants to “SAY IT,” whether their causes be personal or communal: sexuality, war, guns, bicyclists, pot-litics, local and world issues — it’s all fair game. Talk may be cheap, but Mutiny Words Night is free. Rant on.

Erick Devine exuded kindness and humanity as Kris Kringle in the Arvada Center’s Miracle on 34th Street. He has a big, rich baritone, and his portrayal brought so much warmth to the show that when he told little Susan he really was Santa Claus, you didn’t doubt it for a moment.

Doris in Miracle on 34th Street is a young single mother, a spunky, supposedly cynical professional who nonetheless has an easily breached heart — in other words, she’s a pretty generic musical-comedy heroine. The script is on the nondescript side, and the songs are so-so. Nonetheless, in large part due to Lauren Shealy’s fine soprano and strong performance in this Arvada Center production, the musical was one of the tastiest Christmas treats around.

Nate Kissingford is only six years old. Still, we can’t remember seeing an actor stop the action quite the way he did when little Tommy took the courtroom stand in the Arvada Center’s Miracle on 34th Street and, with devastating innocence, utterly destroyed his prosecutor father’s case against Kris Kringle. Cute kids often bring down the house, as Kissingford did. But it’s a rare child who can perform with this much poise, timing, concentration and sweet lack of self-consciousness.

Joannie Brosseau can sing. She can dance. She can play a wide range of roles, most of them with an irrepressible comic edge. Most of all, she has an indefinable quality that makes audiences snap into high alert whenever she steps on a stage. You could call her perky, but perky sounds mindless. Can you be smartly perky? That’s certainly what Brosseau was in Boulder’s Dinner Theatre’s 42nd Street, bringing all her shine and energy to the part of Maggie Jones, kicking the action into high gear and encouraging her chorines to “Go Into Your Dance.”

The Denver Jewish Film Festival is about much more than Jewish themes, Jewish directors, Jewish actors or even Jewish storylines. Nothing is off limits in this smartly curated festival, which brings together movies that cross cultures, topics and lifestyles. For its seventh season, the festival showed films ranging from A.K.A. Doc Pomus, a documentary on an unsung songwriter, to Melting Away, the saga of a transgendered child’s family struggles. Bigger and better, this year’s JFF filled the newly renovated Elaine Wolf Theatre with a twelve-day don’t-miss event for film buffs of all denominations.

Queen Elizabeth is usually one of the more forgettable female roles in Shakespeare, a sad figure who sweeps around in a long dress weeping for her murdered child — though she does have one highly charged scene when Richard III, who murdered that child, asks for her daughter’s hand and she appears to give in. But Mare Trevathan packed one hell of a wallop when she played the part for the Colorado Shakespeare Festival’s Richard III. Her Elizabeth was smart and tough and the only person in the play who proved a match for Richard. She may have been half-crazed by grief, this woman, but you knew she’d find a way to protect her daughter — and so she did.

Onus Spears, local character and a man of the people, is also an avid fan of Denver’s writers, musicians, comics, artists and poets, on whom he bestows lots of love at Rawlitix, the intimate live talk and variety show he hosts monthly at the Deer Pile. In a casual, salon-like, house-party atmosphere, Spears, a born yakker, focuses on people who don’t necessarily spend time in the spotlight; like any good talk show, each installment features live music and comedy, tied together by a guest interview. Denver has recurring comedy shows like the Grawlix and the Fine Gentleman’s Club. We have storytelling and readings, the Narrators and My Teenage Angst. But until now, we didn’t have a talk show…and certainly not one like this.

We always like to see our homegrown talent on national TV, and when standup extraordinaire Adam Cayton-Holland landed a spot on Conan O’Brien’s show in January, his fans tuned in to watch. Cayton-Holland even made it to the couch, but not before he quipped about, among other dandy topics, why we shouldn’t name children after cities lest they become strippers and why Wendy’s new slogan is like testicular cancer. Watch it, Adam: It’s lonely at the top.

When Lady Anne confronted Richard over the coffin of her father-in-law in Richard III and railed that his presence was making the corpse bleed anew, Nigel Gore, playing Richard, stuck in a finger to check. When she spat in his face, he tasted her spittle. This Richard wasn’t kingly. He was almost clownish, and vulgar in the most undignified and unexpected ways — and yet he was frightening: You knew he was capable of unimaginable evil. Gore’s original interpretation made the Colorado Shakespeare Festival production of Richard III new.

As Sweet Storm began, Boas and Ruthie had just married, and he was carrying her over the threshold. Charming. Except that Ruthie was paralyzed from the waist down, and the threshold was the entrance to a treehouse that the naive Boas had constructed with his own hands as a romantic gesture. No sooner was Ruthie safely deposited on the bed than she said she had to “wee.” Boas whipped out a bedpan. And so began their difficult life together. It took talent, delicacy and courage to act out a scene like this, and it surely helped that the actors were Michael and Rachel Bouchard, who are in fact husband and wife. Their relationship added an undefinable richness to Boas and Ruthie’s struggle for intimacy and trust in the Miners Alley production.

Open Air debuted on Halloween 2011 at the frequency formerly occupied by the legendary KCFR, and the Colorado Public Radio-affiliated station has since established itself as one of the most free-spirited stations around. Its popularity is due not only to its programming, but also to its on-air personalities. The best among them is Alisha Sweeney, whose morning show features a well-curated mix of alternative, indie and classic artists, from Feist and New Order to David Bowie and Brian Eno, that would appeal to anyone. And her banter between songs is just as charming as her selections.

Meet Mark Collins, critic: a temperate, thoughtful fellow, quietly self-effacing. Now check out Mark Collins, actor, as he swaggers around impersonating a boastful Ben Franklin in Square Product Theatre’s 44 Plays fr 44 Presidents, transforms into a big, blubbery baby gobbling spoonful after spoonful of applesauce, and, as Gerald Ford, takes a number of skidding, sliding, arm-spinning falls. Yes, sometimes those who criticize can also act. But don’t look for Collins to re-enter the critical fold: He’s clearly enjoying himself far too much.

Denver loves its standup so much that, after packing themselves into a crowded club for a comedy show, fans will get into their cars and click on the local 24-hour comedy station, 103.1. During any given ten-minute segment, programming is apt to go from Abbott & Costello’s who’s-on-first routine to Louis C.K.’s black-people-can’t-time-travel bit to Chris Rock analyzing women and their crazy ways to Lenny Bruce explaining why kids huff airplane glue. The station is like a hybrid of classic-rock radio’s greatest-hits format and NPR’s cerebral engagement — the difference being that you end up laughing like a hyena while the man in the next car silently judges you. And with its recent partnership with Comedy Works and the promise of local comics being featured, Comedy 103.1 is sure to gain an even wider audience. The yuks stop here.

Funny with a purpose, however absurd, is the new frontier in comedy and improv, and Arguments & Grievances is a perfect example of the trend. Kevin O’Brien’s Sunday comedy night puts two comics on the podium to argue, point/counterpoint, on inconsequential issues, such as Simpsons vs. Family Guy and Poop vs. Pee. Denver’s best comedians come out regularly to argue — and the results, exacerbated by mock outrage on either side, will have you rolling on the floor. Now, that’s funny!

See also:
– Denver’s five best comedy venues
– Denver’s ten best comedy nights

In a city as boosterish on burlesque as Denver, creativity earns extra bonus points. Every third Monday, the performance troupe behind Merry Widow’s Artisan Operetta surprises its audience at Voodoo Comedy Playhouse with a comedic (and clothing-light) tribute to any number of topics from this century and the last — from sultry takes on Roy Lichtenstein and Mae West to a technicolor foray into ’90s teen craze Lisa Frank. When it comes to burlesque maven Merry Widow and her troupe’s shifting cultural aesthetic, nothing is sacred — and everything is sexy.

Most Coloradans know of the hard-drinking, straight-talking Texas reporter Molly Ivins, who died much too soon — just when we needed her most, some would argue — at the age of 62. Ivins helped break the gender barrier in journalism, and she did it as a dame, a broad, a liberal in a deep-red state, a fiery populist. She loved skewering members of the Texas Legislature, and they — as she freely admitted — gave her an awful lot to work with. When Zeik Saidman, a Denver friend of Ivins’s, heard of this one-woman play, he decided it had to show here, and LIDA Project’s Brian Freeland offered his space and his services as director. In a match made in heaven, he persuaded Rhonda Brown to take on the role. And the tough, warm-spirited actress did indeed kick ass.

Serendipity landed Luminous Thread in Denver. Lucky us: The steampunk performance ensemble brings something to the cultural mix that didn’t exist before, augmented by trained operatic voices, a bit of Wellesian sci-fi surrealism and, well, luminous threads — beautiful costumes and sets that echo steampunk’s Victorian roots. Led by Ben Sargent, who holds up the business end, and multi-talented artistic director Mary Lin, whose resumé includes everything from writing librettos to fire dancing, Luminous Thread is now gearing up for its original opera, Queen Victoria’s Floating Garden of Secrets and Natural Wonders, which opens later this spring with performances in Boulder and Denver. The troupe is promising a rousing sea-bound operetta with adventuring mermaids and sky pirates, malfunctioning steampunk gizmos and even an ecological warning/moral at the end. Rest assured, this is not opera as you’ve ever seen it before — and that’s a good thing.

What goes on in the shadows of the Jones Theatre, hidden away on the back side of the Denver Performing Arts Complex, shouldn’t be kept a secret: The Jones is home to the ongoing theatrical/performance/improv/crazy madness series Off-Center@The Jones, which produces about four shows each season, some of them ongoing and others a one-shot deal or with a limited run. Yet attending a show here is still a little like being part of a big, wonderful, funny secret, and part of the fun is that Off-Center shows sometimes start or end with a party, with beer and dance music included. Curated by Emily Tarquin and Charlie Miller, the current season of Off-Center has already broken our hearts with Drag Machine and inspired us with the interdisciplinary dance work Audio Kicks; throughout, the returning Cult Following, a live improv show that plays off memorable scenes from the film world, has kept us laughing, with the action continuing on second Thursdays every month through May. Still to come? Sweat: Improv on Bikes, for two days in May. Good thing you still have time to get in shape.

As general manager of the Colorado Theatre Guild, Gloria Shanstrom maintains the group’s website, stays in touch with companies around the state and administers the annual Henry Awards, among many other tasks. Wearing a second hat, she does publicity for several Colorado companies, providing perhaps the most competent and reliable service around. But her work is about much more than paperwork and administration. Shanstrom networks tirelessly; gives smart, disinterested advice; reaches out to new companies and if necessary helps them polish their image; attends dozens of shows; celebrates happy events with theater people, and grieves with those who’ve sustained losses. She soothes myriad frayed nerves and calms inflamed egos. Theater in this town would be far poorer without her.

The 2012 Denver County Fair, the event’s sophomore edition, might have experienced a few growing pains, but the modern urban take on a rural tradition is already gearing up for year three, and it promises to be the best yet. Cornerstone activities — including the proliferating blue-ribbon competitions in categories ranging from traditional to hipsterized to just plain silly, Andrew Novick’s X-Treme Pancake Breakfast, animal displays and performances, and non-stop events on multiple stages — will be back, fair organizers promise. There will also be a series of daily headlining acts absent from last year’s fair, as well as a new History Pavilion that’s bound to be a hit. No other event expresses so well the pop culture and spirit of modern Denver — its drag queens and zombie-walkers, steampunks and artists, crafters and chicken-keepers, foodies and fashionistas. Give this annual fest a blue ribbon!

Drop a stone in Denver, and it will land in (or at least close to) an arts district, but the only one with the potential for continual expansion is the River North Art District. That’s because RiNo feels like more than just one neighborhood. The Plus and RedLine galleries are in a completely different area than Ironton and Weilworks, while Ice Cube and Hinterland are far removed from the Wazee Union block. But it’s precisely because of this neighborhood’s vast geographic stretch — not to mention its artistic variety — that it will be impossible for the art venues here to be pushed out, as many in LoDo were.