Arts & Entertainment

The mission of Motus Theater is to “create original theater to facilitate dialogue on critical issues of our time,” and it’s definitely delivered during the pandemic. The company grew out of Rocks Karma Arrows, a multimedia work exploring Boulder history through the lens of class and race; over the past fifteen years, the focus has expanded to take in the entire country. Most recently, the JustUs and UndocuAmerica projects brought in speakers from all walks of life to share the words and experiences of immigrants and people who were formerly incarcerated, which were then shared online.

motustheater.org

In the age of TikTok and selfie museums, Selfie@Stanley aims for a better selfie experience. This one comes with more than 25 selfie stations, complete with backdrops and props to titillate imaginations, encourage family reunions and birthday parties, and simply get friends together for an afternoon of stupid, silly fun for $20 a head. And because it’s located at Stanley Marketplace, the fun doesn’t end when selfie-snappers emerge: There’s food and drink, shopping and people-watching waiting.

selfieatstanley.com

The Vance Street Art Hub, anchored by coffeehouse/cafe Mint & Serif, isn’t so much an arty block as it is a little taste of old Lakewood’s mom-and-pop hospitality, though the cafe does host art exhibitions. It’s joined in the area by tattoo shop Solstice Ink, an outlet for anime fans called Otaku Attic, Purple Greens Vape & Glass and, inside Mint & Serif, All Its Own, a purveyor of succulents, air plants and gifts. Stop by on First Friday, when the gallery receptions down the street become packed.

Every First Friday of the month, the Art District on Santa Fe Art turns from a ghost town to a full-blown festival, with arts lovers walking the street to catch gallery openings and live painting, or just to see and be seen. You can drop some dough here, if you’re looking to start or expand your art collection, but just being able to experience the fruits of Colorado creatives’ labor — and be among others who appreciate the work — is enough to make for a fantastic Friday.

Junkyard Social isn’t just a playground for kids; it also serves as an organized date-night drop-off spot, a STEAM laboratory, a summer camp, a family disco and a hands-on art project workshop. But Junkyard Social is also a playground for adults, who are welcome to join their children on the jungle gym or just hang out with a coffee from the cafe. It offers yoga, live music and a grown-up storytelling group, and you can rent it for a party. Why go anywhere else?

junkyardsocialclub.org

University of Colorado Boulder dance educator Helanius Wilkins likes to say that he’ll most likely keep tweaking his current project, Stitching the Geopolitical Quilt to Re-body Belonging, until he dies. It all began when the pandemic lockdown collided with the murder of George Floyd, when Wilkins would walk alone for up to sixteen miles a day, gathering his thoughts about being a Black man, a dancer and an artist seeking both his place and a realization of social justice in an unstable world. That led him to visualize a project akin to sewing a quilt, which has developed into a process that begins by hosting conversations with communities of marginalized people across the nation. Each group’s unique stories culminate in a movement performance choreographed by Wilkins. It’s a beautiful cycle, and it’s only just begun.

helaniusj.com/the-conversation-series

Fashion West rode onto Denver’s fashion scene in August 2021. The forward-thinking fashion show was founded by Charlie Price and inspired by the raw spirit of the American West and the fashion sense of the creatives who give it style — not to mention Price’s experiences at Milan Fashion Week and on the reality TV show Shear Genius. Working with talented models, stylists, makeup artists, photographers and more, they showcased the city’s fashion designers both on the runway and in partner publication Fashion West magazine. Cowboy boots were optional.

fashionwest.org

It used to be the worst part of seeing a flick at the theater: sitting through the elevator music in the semi-darkness, trying not to finish your popcorn before the previews. Alamo Drafthouse has changed all that by producing pre-show entertainment that’s actually entertaining and directly related to the movie that you’ve paid to come watch. It’s so good that even though Alamo theaters have reserved seats, many patrons still show up early on purpose just to catch all the trailers. Reely.

The newest multiplex in Denver proper, the AMC 9+CO 10 debuted in 2021, during a time when it was unclear if movie-going was on the way to extinction. The venue has thrived since, which is good news for those who understand that watching a film in a communal setting is something that can’t be duplicated at home. The sightlines in the auditoriums are first-rate, the seats comfortable, the projection and sound systems state-of-the-art, and the location convenient for much of the city, with plenty of eating and drinking options nearby if you want to stretch out the evening.

amctheatres.com/movie-theatres/denver/amc-9-co-10

The look of most art-house theaters tends toward blandness and conformity. But the Mayan, which opened in 1930, during the golden age of motion-picture palaces, is a reminder that going to the movies used to be an event. The Art Deco stylings, originally created by architect Montana Fallis and displayed to particularly spectacular effect on the building’s towering facade and inside the main auditorium, make every screening feel a little more special. And the libations provided at the Mayan bar are capable of making even the most challenging cinematic fare go down a little more smoothly.

Talented actor, playwright, director, filmmaker and activist donnie l. betts delves into Black history regularly for his Destination Freedom radio-play series on the Broadway Podcast Network. But betts is also an award-winning documentarian who’s struck gold with positive stories about Black life and Black heroes, including Colorado-centric films about the historic enclave of Dearfield and Denver physician Dr. Justina Ford. His latest is 2022: The Year of Lincoln Hills, the story of a Black-owned mountain resort community that opened in 1922, some of which still survives today. It’s just one more link in betts’s campaign to preserve the past and share it with today’s audiences.

historycolorado.org/lincoln-hills-100th-anniversary

Diving into the entrepreneurial market can be scary for a newbie, but Diana Sabreen has a coaching technique that’s so fun, clients don’t even notice how much they’re learning. Sabreen’s Boulder-based creative incubator, the Big Dream, not only offers one-on-one consultations to get you up to speed, but it also hosts group playshops and retreats that immerse people in activities that demand creative thinking and encourage team-building and interaction with fellow seekers. Coming up this summer in Boulder: the Imagination Collaboration creativity accelerator, with speakers, workshops, performances and more.

thebigdream.life

Every now and then, something pops up that feels purely Denver, and in the theater scene, that’s Buntport, a company of six talented artists who create their productions — often hilarious, sometimes deeply moving — through a brainstorming process that miraculously always produces a coherent script. It’s experimental work, but not the arrogant, “you’re-too-stupid-to-get-this” kind or the trendy, expensive immersive stuff turning up everywhere these days. Based on whatever intriguing morsel of news, myth or fantasy has caught a company member’s attention at some point, Buntport’s work is homegrown, original, and entirely itself. Catch it if you can, and/or take any visitor who asks what’s special about Denver. After a pandemic-induced delay, Buntport’s fiftieth original show debuts this month.

Denver was the epicenter of the Chicano civil rights movement, so it’s only fitting that as part of its fiftieth-anniversary celebration, Su Teatro reprised its original production War of the Flowers, the story of the Kitayama Carnation Strike in Weld County, which culminated with five women being tear-gassed when they chained themselves to the gates of the factory. For the past five decades, since it got its start in a University of Colorado Denver class, Su Teatro has been fighting the restrictions of traditional stories to push political truths and tell the real stories of the community. Now at home in the former Denver Civic Theatre, Su Teatro just keeps adding programs for that community, everything from the Chicano Music Festival to the XicanIndie FilmFest. But ultimately, the play’s still the thing.

This year, Denver has seen three exhibits devoted to La Malinche, a Nahua woman enslaved by Hernán Cortés and used as his interpreter during his conquest, who bore his son and is known as the mother of the European/Indigenous mixed race. The Denver Art Museum’s Traitor, Survivor, Icon: The Legacy of La Malinche came first, with works ranging from the sixteenth century to modern day; plans for that exhibit inspired Maruca Salazar, former director of the Museo de las Americas, to curate Malinalli on the Rocks, which uses the woman’s Indigenous name and showcases works by contemporary local Chicano and Latinx artists. The result is stunning, with pieces in myriad mediums that look at Malinche through a more sympathetic lens, after being seen as a traitor to her people for centuries. Rounding out the trio: Malintzin: Unraveled and Rewoven at the CU Denver Experience Gallery.

Neyla Pekarek, a cellist, singer and former member of the Lumineers, has long been fascinated by Kate Slaughterback, who gained fame in the 1920s for killing 140 rattlesnakes that were attempting to slither toward her, her son and her horse on their homestead in northern Colorado; she made a flapper dress of the snakes’ skins that is now a Greeley museum artifact. This year, the Denver Center for the Performing Arts presented a much larger memorial to this colorful pioneer: a full production of the musical Rattlesnake Kate, based on Pekarek’s concept, scored by Pekarek, and written by playwright Karen Hartman.

Just in time for the fiftieth anniversary of the opening of the Denver Art Museum in October 1971, the renovation of the Gio Ponti-designed, tile-clad tower — now called the Martin Building — was revealed last fall. The makeover is a masterpiece both inside and out, with the new Sie Welcome Center not only creating a new entrance, but providing a visual and physical link between the original museum building and the Hamilton. The galleries were also refreshed, with the Western American Art collection finally given its due on the seventh floor — right by the rooftop decks that are once again accessible to the public. We can’t wait to see what the DAM does to top this anniversary celebration fifty years from now.

The Denver Performing Arts Complex isn’t so much a venue as it is an epicenter for the kind of arts activities that defines cities as cultural institutions. After staying closed through much of the pandemic, it’s the place where you can once again spot a secondary-school field trip, or a music student analyzing an orchestral piece. It’s where you can take a date to see Broadway plays such as Hamilton, or where a grandparent might take a grandchild to hear the Colorado Symphony score Harry Potter. The Colorado Ballet, Opera Colorado, the Colorado Symphony and the Denver Center for the Performing Arts, which pushed for the creation of the facility fifty years ago, all call the sprawling twelve-acre complex home. Welcome back.

While music festivals have become more accessible over the years, the overall level of inclusion for people with disabilities remains low. Shawn Satterfield, a lifelong music fan, set out to change that with the Shine Music Festival, which debuted on August 8, 2021, at Levitt Pavilion. To make the free festival work, she recruited volunteers and organizations involved with the disability community, bringing in inclusive technology to help people with all disabilities feel comfortable while also keeping costs down. “Seventy percent of people with disabilities are unemployed,” she notes, “and music is expensive.” So is putting on a festival, but this one was such a hit that it will be back in August, this time in Civic Center Park.

shinemusicfestival.com

Even outside of baseball season, McGregor Square is hopping. Now, with the Colorado Rockies back at Coors Field, the Rally Bar in the Rally Hotel is the perfect place to watch fans coming and going and deliver a play-by-play account of the action over a few beers. Just a few things we’ve seen out the big windows: a couple breaking up and immediately getting back together, a happily inebriated soul wearing a swimsuit but no shoes, and too many people wearing the colors of the opposing team.

If city life has you feeling overwhelmed but with no time for a real getaway, head to the Rocky Mountain Arsenal National Wildlife Refuge. Once the site of a chemical weapons manufacturing center, the former federal facility is now an expansive nature reserve in the heart of metro Denver that’s open from sunrise to sunset. There are twenty miles of easy hiking trails, as well as trails for biking; along the way you’ll see bison, deer, prairie dogs and incredible birds of prey. For those who’d rather enjoy the great outdoors without getting out of the car, the refuge also has an eleven-mile wildlife drive.