The classic Nutcracker ballet has been turned inside out and stretched backwards and forwards and every which way in an attempt to loosen up the Sugar Plum Fairy and her entourage. In Boulder, aerial dance queen Nancy Smith and her high-flying Frequent Flyers began by replacing the plum princess with…
It’s no easy task to open a planetary cultural dialogue in landlocked Denver, a place where members of an already strong arts community are fiercely, and perhaps rightly, protective of their own. But Patrick Mueller of the dance and movement ensemble Control Group Productions thinks a more continental mindset might…
As both the official photographer for the monthly Drag Nation and a longtime supporter of local art, Koko Brentano had a vision: to see the two worlds collide. Friday night’s Pop Drag at EXDO Event Center is the result, a convergence of the work of artists Louis Recchia and Zoa…
“We wanted to do a super affordable snowboard camp for kids that is all about creativity, having fun, and getting to ride with some great pros, something parents could really get behind,” says Golden-based pro snowboarder Pat Milbery, who is getting his 7th annual So-Gnar Snowboard Camp Tour underway this…
Confused about what and how and even why you should gift your loved ones this holiday season? Clear up that confusion by buying local, giving gifts from the heart or gifting experiences instead of gadgets. Or do all three at once, with the Colorado Theatre Guild’s annual Theatre Night Out…
Do you think toy trains are sexy?In advance of the Rocky Mountain Toy Train Show at the Denver Merchandise Mart last week, Cory Casciato listed five toy-train enthusiasts who are cooler than you. The lineup ranged from Winston Churchill to Neil Young. But there was one major omission. See also:…
I don’t know about you, but I have a love/hate relationship with the holidays. Sure, Christmas brings out the kid in all of us — well, except for those who celebrate Hanukkah or Kwanzaa — but it also brings out the dread, the depression, the debt and the dysfunctional family…
Dixie’s Tupperware Party. Dixie is a booze- and sex-addicted, trash-talking, child-neglecting ex-con from Alabama who holds Tupperware parties in her trailer, and she’s invited you to this one. Dixie’s Tupperware Party at the Galleria really is a Tupperware party — you get a name tag and raffle number when you…
Unclassifiable, expansive, and breathtaking, Holy Motors, the first feature-length film from Leos Carax since 1999, stars Denis Lavant, the simian, sinewy actor who played the lead in Carax’s first three movies, as a character named Oscar who inhabits nearly a dozen different personas over the course of a day. Steered…
An adaptation of George V. Higgins’s 1974 novel Cogan’s Trade, Andrew Dominik’s Killing Them Softly anatomizes a self-policing underground economy of junkies, killers and administrators to indict a present-day mainstream world — the world into which the film is being released by Harvey Weinstein, heralded by misleadingly generic TV adverts…
Early in Hitchcock, Alfred Hitchcock (played by Sir Anthony Hopkins with a sack of fat connecting chin to neck) walks the red carpet at the premiere of his 1959 chase film, North by Northwest. “You’re sixty years old!” shouts a reporter to the corpulent master of suspense, then nearing his…
J. B. Priestley was one of England’s most respected writers, turning out novels, essays, reviews and plays until the Angry Young Men of the 1950s — playwright John Osborne chief among them — arrived in a firestorm of fury, working-class rebellion and critical acclamation as the future of theater, and…
The staff at Boulder’s Neptune Mountaineering is encouraging winter revelers to break out their best retro ski duds for the shop’s second annual Winter Fashion Show Fundraiser and Retro Costume Party, which will benefit the Colorado Avalanche Information Center. “We’ll be working our way up through the ages of the…
For a decade and counting, the sport of tennis has been represented by Roger Federer’s emotionless face. But when the PowerShare Series Battle of Champions comes to the Pepsi Center, fans who yearn for the bygone days of John McEnroe’s furious tirades and Andre Agassi’s dazzling mullet will get their…
Sometimes overlooked by those chronicling the Beat Generation, Neal Cassady was the inspirational nucleus of what would become the counterculture movement, inspiring memorable literary characters like On the Road’s Dean Moriarty and One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest’s Randle P. McMurphy, as well as crazed pop-culture intellectuals like Hunter S…
If you see Santa running through Highland in a Speedo today, don’t worry: You haven’t been dosed — nor, presumably, has the guy in the Speedo. He’s just one of the many revelers participating in the Denver Santa Speedo Dash. Squeeze into your skimpiest swimwear, strap on a Santa beard…
Now in its fifth official year, Fancy Tiger’s Holiday Handmade craft show has grown ever grander, having made itself comfortably at home at the ornate, balconied Sherman Street Event Center for the past three. A picture-perfect showcase for the metro area’s accomplished crafters, the carefully juried show is a delight…
From the Muppets to Mr. Magoo, Charles Dickens’s redemptive holiday tale, A Christmas Carol, has been adapted in many incarnations. But the WreckingBall Theater Lab and Band of Toughs musical spectacular Moulin Scrooge is perhaps the first to take Ebenezer Scrooge to a Parisian cabaret. Written by The Colbert Report’s…
Tired of all the carols, the shopping, the waiting in impossibly long lines for a picture with Santa? A refuge awaits at Comedy Works with Chuck Roy’s NAUGHTY (dirty) Holiday Show. “As comedians, we all work squeaky-clean shows during the holidays,” says Roy. “People at a company holiday party rarely…
What started out several decades ago as the Art for AIDS fundraiser has morphed into tonight’s Red Ball, a revamped take on creating awareness of the global AIDS crisis. Now in its fourth year, the Colorado AIDS Project’s fashion-forward benefit brings together twenty designers and more than a dozen salons…
Skulls have long been objects of fascination, serving as powerful symbols of the macabre and dangerous — not to mention being the second most important thing inside your head. Tonight, the Denver Museum of Nature & Science hosts Simon Winchester Presents Skulls, with the best-selling science writer on hand to…
