It is so: Sometimes grown women in the 21st century like to dress up like grown women from the turn of the last century, all decked out in frilly, bell-shaped gowns and modest, lace-fringed blouses, with layered petticoats, satin hair bows, parasols, kneesocks and, oh, maybe a pink wig topped…
Love music, but don’t believe in Santa? What about that rigmarole about the manger and the three kings? Is that nothing more than a good yarn to you? Sound Circle feels your pain. Once a year, the 21-voice Boulder women’s a cappella ensemble riffs on the seasonal themes brought forth…
There are very few places in Denver where you’ll see bactrian camels, hippopotami, howler monkeys, komodo dragons, polar bears and sea lions after dark — unless you’re walking about the Denver Zoo during Zoo Lights, of course. Zoo Lights is a holiday tradition full of live animal demonstrations and holiday…
Over the past few years, the Crested Butte Nordic Center has offered full-moon ski and snowshoe tours, wherein participants suit up for the weather and glide away by the light of the moon to explore a winter wonderland. “In the past, we had a tepee set up in Magic Meadows,…
Being Jewish, I do suffer from a touch of that inevitable holiday-season alienation. But I can always count on the Boulder Arts and Crafts Cooperative’s annual Judaica Show, currently in progress, to make me feel at home in the midst of a sea of Christmas trees and creches. Absolutely the…
Most of us have seen at least one performance of The Nutcracker during the holiday season — but we probably didn’t travel to Russia, where ballet is practically a national sport, to absorb the dance and understand it as a work of art. And this year we won’t have to,…
It took a few years, but I finally convinced my Midwestern mother to join the rest of the family on a ski vacation this winter. The only problem is, she doesn’t ski. I was lamenting this fact over drinks recently, brainstorming how to keep her occupied for a week in…
“I want something to happen in people’s brains as far as their questioning of reality and what they’re looking at and what they’re assuming,” says John Bonath, whose newest exhibit — Real/UnReal: Botanical Studies, currently on display at the Denver Botanic Gardens — combines photography and digital manipulation of flowers,…
Tonight, the Alliance Française de Denver — founded in 1897, it’s one of the area’s oldest non-profit organizations — screens one of France’s most beloved screwball seasonal comedies, Le Pére Noël Est une Ordure. The title, which can be loosely translated as “Santa Claus Is a Scumbag,” created such a…
As a kid, I hated that Frankie Valli-type music my parents loved so much. After growing up with Hendrix and the Beatles, how could they choose anything else? However, with age came the awareness that my parents won’t be here forever — an insight that inspired some unexpected nostalgia for…
The holiday season is rife with traditions: trimming the tree, kissing under the mistletoe, sitting through The Nutcracker for the umpteenth time, and for the ultra-hip of Denver, reserving a seat once again for The SantaLand Diaries, the Bug Theatre’s annual staging of the David Sedaris yarn about his stint…
Because the Project Gallery on the second floor of MCA Denver regularly showcases Colorado artists, it has emerged as one of the most interesting spaces at the museum. This is an important part of the MCA’s mandate, since one reason the institution was founded was to provide an opportunity for…
Bobbi Walker, the owner and gallery director of Walker Fine Art (300 West 11th Avenue, #A, 303-355-8955), typically has one show in the front of her space featuring two or three participants, then fills the back with the work of artists from her stable. But with The Man Show, both…
Adam Helms. This solo in the MCA’s Paper Works Gallery is the New York artist’s first museum show anywhere. In his works on paper and in a monumental sculpture that conjures up a shooting blind, Helms explores political themes, especially armed struggle. He takes images of different radical and extremist…
An O. Henry Christmas. Amid the cascade of Christmas Carol remounts, Hallmark Card family shows and limp holiday parodies, this musical arrangement of two O. Henry short stories — “The Last Leaf” and “The Gift of the Magi,” created by Peter Ekstrom — is a refreshing option. “The Gift of…
William Gibson, who died recently at the age of 94, is best known for his play The Miracle Worker, and for making a star of the luminous Anne Bancroft, who played the lead on Broadway and later in the movie. The play tells the story of Annie Sullivan, a young…
I saw the Broadway version of The Producers when the touring company came to Denver four years ago. It was one of those shows you knew you had to praise: The New York critics were so excited about it that dissenting would make you sound like a bad-tempered provincial. And…
First, a key spoiler: Cadillac Records is not the story of Chess Records, the blues label started in Chicago in 1950 by brothers Leonard and Phil Chess that featured among its stable of artists Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf, Bo Diddley, Chuck Berry and Etta James, plus many others who birthed…
It really shouldn’t have been so hard to make a decent Punisher movie. The Marvel Comics character, who shot to prominence in the late ’80s after Watchmen and The Dark Knight Returns proved there was an appetite for psychotic and homicidal superheroes, is basically Death Wish’s Paul Kersey on steroids…
Although Denver was just a short drive from my childhood home in Arvada, my regular cultural exposure came from the Arvada Center for the Arts and Humanities, which grew as I grew from a simple suburban theater to an all-purpose facility complete with studio space and an outdoor amphitheater. My…
What did everybody think of Across the Universe? Personally, I loved it — enough that I bought it on DVD and watch it fairly regularly — but I have a problem: It’s damn near impossible for me to sit through the whole movie without bursting into song along with Jude,…
Whether you like it or not, all hell seems to break loose the minute Thanksgiving is over, and unless you live in Bedford Falls, circa 1946, it’s almost impossible to avoid. The holidays come with expectations: The kids all have visions of Nintendo games dancing in their heads, and here…
