Choco-Love

While it’s fairly certain that death by chocolate isn’t a real thing, you might come close to a cocoa-induced coma at this weekend’s Colorado Chocolate Festival. Now in its fifth year, the festival celebrates all things chocolate, including the chocolatier championships, chocolate cake competitions and Andrew Novick’s X-Treme Confection Creation…

Matchmaking Drama

“One of my pet peeves is when playwrights and producers and directors don’t give the audience credit for their intelligence. They don’t think the audience has the capacity to embrace unfamiliar characters; they dumb everything down,” says Luccian Lajoie, writer and star of the new locally produced play, Date* Interviews…

A Date with an Artist

Today’s RiNo Open Studio Tour is a happy dalliance between the River North Arts District and Create Denver; the two happened to rendezvous simply because their dates tend to intersect, and it turns out that a major art-district tour is a nice topper to a full weekend of crowing about…

Mommy Time

For moms who are sick of tradition, the Corner Office is planning a funkier way to celebrate Mother’s Day this year: the Sexy Mama Disco Brunch. “There are so many moms that I know that are young and hip and fun, and even moms that are my mom’s age who…

Signs of the Times

Debate over Denver’s potential urban camping ordinance has shined a spotlight on the homeless, but it has done little to put a face on them. Over the past few months, photographer Scott Russell photographed twenty faces, eleven of which will be on display in Cardboard & Concrete, an exhibit of…

Urban Experience

Create Denver Week is growing by leaps and bounds: What started out several years ago as a folksy expo for creatives has turned into a full-fledged urban-art experience, casting a grown-up light on homegrown arts and culture. Not that the Create Denver Expo that started it all has gone away…

Zappa Lives On

Ain’t nothing like the real thing — or close to it. Though Frank Zappa passed away almost twenty years ago, his legacy lives on in The GrandMothers of Invention, a group of expert musicians who all worked alongside the avant-garde composer at some point during his short but prolific career…

A Wide Canvas

Ken Hamel, the single-handed keeper of Denverarts.org, a website documenting the goings-on of local artists and galleries, might seem like a driven man. You have to wonder how he manages to be in so many places at what seems like the same time, snapping photos and capturing the gist of…

Costumes, Squared

To say that the work of artist Nick Cave (no, not that Nick Cave) is singular doesn’t quite do it justice, but his soundsuits, for which he is best known, are a sight to see. A dancer, sculptor, weaver and architect of three-dimensional wearable art, Cave fabricates human shells from…

A Toast to Beer

The success of America’s craft brewers over the past five years — and the phenomenal growth of the industry — prompts this question: Do we even need American Craft Beer Week anymore? The Boulder-based Brewers Association created the celebration seven years ago as a way to recognize independent breweries and…

Wicked Cool

Wicked opens tonight at the Buell Theatre, making Denver the first market to host the award-winning musical for a fourth time. It’s a distinction that makes Randy Weeks, president of the Denver Center for the Performing Arts, proud. “The team diligently works to maintain the quality of Wicked…. Hopefully, I’ll…

Cardboard & Concrete exhibit puts faces on Denver’s homeless

Scott Russell expected to find stories, and he did. On bike rides between Denver’s alleys and street corners, he found twenty of them, eleven of which will be on display this weekend at Wazee Union at Cardboard & Concrete, the project that resulted. But there were a few surprising turns…

Reader: Colorado is definitely the Subaru state!

Is Colorado the Suburu state? That’s what Bree Davies suggests in “An Ode to Subaru, the unofficial car of Colorado”. While Wooderson, her beloved Outback, is the focus of the piece, there are plenty of other Subarus out there. An entire fleet of them. And their drivers are all fans…

Now Showing

Clyfford Still. For the opening of the Clyfford Still Museum, founding director Dean Sobel has installed a career survey of the great artist. Clyfford Still: Inaugural Exhibition starts with the artist’s realist self-portrait and features his remarkable post-impressionist works from the 1920s. Next are Still’s works from the ’30s, with…

Now Playing

Date. Some years ago, writer-actor Luciann Lajoie found herself alone and at loose ends, so she decided to try Internet dating. In Date, seated in what looks like a pretty bare apartment, empty chip bags on the table beside her laptop along with a fortifying bottle of wine, she takes…

The episodic Sound of My Voice feels unfinished

Twenty-something Silver Lake couple Peter (Christopher Denham) and Lorna (Nicole Vicius) talk their way into an unnamed cult that meets to follow the teachings of the enigmatic Maggie (Brit Marling). A glowing blonde dressed in white shrouds with a respirator as an accessory, Maggie claims to have been born in…