Arts & Culture

Connecting the dots for why you should celebrate Kwanzaa at the Denver Zoo is as easy as an urban African safari — which is exactly what event organizers have in mind for the celebration that starts tonight. “Making cultural connections,” explains event coordinator Megan Woodcock. “We have so many African…

Colorado has more than two dozen ski areas, but SolVista Basin at Granby Ranch may be the one most dedicated to families. Although night skiing and tubing aren’t officially offered there until January 7, the resort is making an exception this week, just to keep its families happy. From now…

Some parents consider this the worst week of the year: Kids are underfoot and bored with their holiday loot, but it’s often too cold to kick them out of the house without spending time bundling them up — and meanwhile, grownups are busy trying to pull themselves together for New…

Lights might be the best part of the holiday season: neighborhoods and business districts all lit up, more lights twinkling on trees and candles aglow in menorahs, kinaras and luminarias. And the enjoyment of those magical lights is a piece of childhood that never leaves us; as they turn off…

I first saw the movie of West Side Story at a drive-in as a little girl, but that first time, tinny window speakers and all, was a love-at-first-sight moment. I hadn’t seen many musicals at my then-tender age, but I knew immediately that it was radically different: Ruthlessly modern and…

Aurora sometimes gets a ho-hum rap from the urbanistas to the west, but the sprawling gateway to the plains certainly has its hidden treasures. Downtown Aurora Visual Arts, which provides a creative haven for at-risk youth of all ages, is one of them, offering year-round art-making programs led by a…

Not many artists can say that they had their first gallery show when they were in the fourth grade. But they’re not the artists now featured in I Have a Dream…Dreamers’ Art Exhibit at NEXT Gallery. The idea behind the show was simple: During Denver Arts Week, and in conjunction…

When Maruca Salazar took over a couple of years ago as director of Museo de las Americas, she envisioned a curatorial pattern that would feature Latino art in an alternating series of contemporary, traditional and folk art exhibitions. She’s filled the folk art slot beautifully with Wixaritari: Huichol Art of…

Entries in the third annual LoDo Aglow contest — for which 22 businesses in lower downtown decorated their windows — ranged from the sublime to the ridiculous. The really ridiculous. Who knew that one of Santa’s elves was a pole dancer? But that was just one of the revelations in…

It’s like a mash-up of mash-up: The film Girl Walk // All Day takes the manic moods of remix master Girl Talk’s 2010 record, All Day, and pairs it with a story of Girl and her city, told through dance. In advance of tomorrow’s screening at the Denver Film Center,…

You made it to 2012 — congratulations! — and maybe you’re still partying hearty from the night before…or perhaps you just need to get out of the house on this Sunday after. We’ve got a rundown of New Year’s Day events; keep reading to see our picks:…

We’ve listed the best cheap events — and the best free events — in the area on New Year’s Eve, but if you’ve got money to burn or want to impress someone really special (it is your last chance to do that in 2011, after all), we’ve got you covered…

Read it and reap! We’ve long lamented the lack of a strong literary history of Denver — and now Jenny Shank, author of The Ringer, has provided one, just published on the em>Poets and Writers web site. “Colorado has often been a boom and bust state,” she writes, “attracting outsized…

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. Okay, It actually wasn’t either of those things — but 2011 was pretty okay in its own right, and at certain times it was downright awesome. Because we’re in the business of thoroughly cataloging things, we’ve cataloged the…