Sexy Beast

As weird as the juxtaposition of Beauty and the Beast and nightclubs may seem, Ballet Nouveau artistic director Robert Mills found a way to meld two of his own personal obsessions into a bold ballet remake of the timeless love story. In Mills’s version, the Beast lives in the sewers…

Have A Ball

For seven years, the Pan African Arts Society has brought color and diversity to Denver’s palette of visual arts, poetry, cinema and music — all in the name of exploring and upholding some of the cultural art forms and heritage that take divergent paths from mainstream America’s way of life…

Naughty, Naughty

I wrote an erotic poem once. It went like so: Your breasts are like two fawns /That browse among the lilies /Your lips drop sweetness as the honeycomb /Milk and honey are under your tongue /You are a garden locked up /You are a spring enclosed /Your plants are an…

Good Feeling

Volunteering can be so fulfilling. There’s nothing like giving something back to your community; it’s a use of your time that’s much more rewarding than watching Deal or No Deal. But who’s got the extra hours to effectively research local volunteer options? Start by attending today’s Fall in Love With…

Take a Drag

Their need is for speed, so you won’t see many Kremmling residents clogging up I-70 trying to satiate their snow-sports addiction. These mountain men and women are people of the sled, and they won’t let any sissy cars keep them from getting their snowridin’ on. “Snowmobiling is the number-one part…

Sacred Stories

A little piece of local history rests on the current-day Rocky Mountain College of Art and Design campus in Lakewood, once home to the Jewish Consumptives’ Relief Society sanatorium for tuberculosis patients. The Isaac Solomon Synagogue, a modest brick-and-stucco Moorish structure, has fallen into disrepair, its paint peeling and its…

Drop Your Matzoh

“It’s like the old ad says: You don’t have to be Jewish to like rye bread,” says Roberta Bloom, director of the Mellon Financial Denver Jewish Film Festival. “There are lots of films that will be loved by everyone.” In other words, don’t let your goy-ness stop you from enjoying…

Game Girls

“Where can you go see a play and have a good time and actually be in the drawing for a frozen turkey?” asks Kathy Kuehn, performing arts director at the Arvada Center for the Arts and Humanities. If you guessed “nowhere,” you’re wrong: A new production at the center, The…

Gypsy Wind

My husband’s got this gypsy thing. He sits alone with a guitar whenever he can, picking through brisk Django licks he can never quite catch up to. When he isn’t doing that, he’s studying the history of Gypsy jazz, browsing the Web and listening to music that trips fantastic through…

Car Talk

With credentials such as Miami Vice, Con Air and CSI: Miami on his resumé, you can bet that Jesse Borrego has fired his fair share of rounds. But some roles require only a little star power and a subject that no one’s talking about. This weekend, Borrego will show his…

The Bridge

The Golden Gate Bridge, San Francisco’s most famous landmark — and possibly the country’s — makes a lovely place to die. Only a four-foot safety rail separates pedestrians from a 220-foot plunge; climb that, and it’s just a four-second drop to eternity. Factor in its beauty and symbolic value –…

Live and Become

Nine-year-old Schlomo, the focus of Live and Become, the opening film of the 11th Mellon Financial Denver Jewish Film Festival, has every right to let out a big, exasperated “Oy vey!” The fact that he’s part of Operation Moses, the clandestine and debilitating mid-1980s resettlement of thousands of famine-starved Ethiopian…

Pure Piaf

Edith Piaf, the French chanteuse her countrymen lovingly dubbed “The Little Sparrow,” died long before I had a chance to see her on stage. But I know her voice in my bones, as I imagine many of you do, too: that low-pitched, cigarette-and-whiskey-flavored sound with its profound vibrato, a voice…

Now Playing

Aphrodisiac. Playwright Rob Handel’s inspiration is the affair between Congressman Gary Condit and intern Chandra Levy, which erupted into the media when Levy disappeared in 2001. Her body was discovered a year later; although suspicion clouded his career, Condit was never officially accused of murder. Aphrodisiac approaches this story obliquely…

Decades and 30×30

In all the years I’ve been going to galleries in Denver, there have only been five or six venues that I would consider first-rate. These places are completely reliable, and I can count on finding something worthwhile on display whenever I arrive. Robischon Gallery, which just celebrated thirty years in…

5 Year Anniversary Celebration

It’s hard to believe that Walker Fine Art (300 West 11th Avenue, 303-355-8955) has been around for five years already, but the gallery is enjoying its 5 Year Anniversary Celebration. According to owner Bobbi Walker, she didn’t have a clue as to what she was doing when she started. In…

Sketches

Breaking the Mold. In 2003, Connecticut collector Virginia Vogel Mattern donated some 300 pieces of contemporary American Indian art to the Denver Art Museum. For one of the special shows inaugurating the new Frederic C. Hamilton Building, Native Arts curator Nancy Blomberg has selected over a hundred works for the…

Hand It to Him

The Science of Sleep (Warner Bros.) Feature films are to video directors what sitcoms are to stand-up comedians, and for every David Fincher and Seinfeld, there are dozens of artists who should have stayed in the field they know best. Michel Gondry, who made his name directing fantastic videos for…

Mustache Ride

Explaining the appeal of the WarioWare series is like trying to describe a fever dream: It doesn’t make sense unless experienced. Nevertheless, here goes: Mario’s bizarro-universe twin, the greedy Wario, has invented over 200 absurd micro-games in a scheme to get rich and corner the videogame market. Quantity is job…

Our top DVD picks for the week of February 6

Alfred Hitchcock: The Early Years of the Master of Suspense (Lions Gate) All Quiet on the Western Front (Universal) Anything but Love: Volume One (Fox) Arabian Nights (Universal) Best Picture: Academy Award Winners Collection (Paramount) Boynton Beach Club (Sony) Charmed: The Complete Seventh Season (Paramount) Cinderella III: A Twist in…

Fashion Week: Sunday

It was more of the same at New York Fashion Week. More ’80s, more blousy, formless shifts, more middle finger to the female form. Cat doesn’t expect everything to be all va-va-va voom, but unless you’re a pre-pubescent girl or starve yourself into looking like one, most of the fall…

Fashion Week: Saturday

Getty Images The pickings were slim for “good” options today, but Cat likes this Sass & Bide blouse. Or dress. Or tunic. Cat’s not really sure. Getty Images THE GOOD: Alexandre Herchcovitch offers this interesting take on the tweed coat. The shape and detail are fresh and flattering. It’s apparent…