TUES, 1/20 Expect to see lots of chaps worn over ski pants at today’s Cowboy Downhill. Steamboat’s thirtieth annual ski rodeo features more than one hundred professional rodeo cowboys from the National Western Stock Show and Rodeo that’s going on down in Denver. The free spectator event starts at 1:30…
FRI, 1/16 Why do we celebrate Martin Luther King Jr. Day each year? Some would say it’s for the kids, for whom, especially, Dr. King’s vision still means something. That idea takes on a unique poignancy each year at the YMCA/Denver Nuggets Martin Luther King Jr. Breakfast, where young Denver-area…
TUES, 1/20 Mark Kurlansky has written books about the strangest things: cod, salt, Basque culture. But the one thing he’s constantly invested in all of them is a strong worldview — the social history of where such things came from and where they went. Though he’s focused on very singular…
FRI, 1/16 They say blood is thicker than water, and when it comes to The Duke Ellington Orchestra, the family lines are still flowing strong after more than 75 years. The pedigree is impressive. Edward “Duke” Kennedy Ellington led his illustrious orchestra to prominence in the 1920s through a series…
Though he’d kept a low profile during the past ten years and only rarely exhibited his work during that period, longtime Denver artist Bill Joseph remained involved in the city’s art world until his death, on December 15. In fact, I ran into him in the company of his wife,…
The Colorado Photographic Arts Center (1513 Boulder Street, 303-455-8999) is putting on Visions 2: Contemporary Colorado Photography, an impressive group show that takes a snapshot of the present state of contemporary fine-art photography in Colorado. As indicated by the title, this is the second such effort to have been organized…
McGuinn and Murry is a spoof of those ’40s detective movies in which the men wore fedoras and the women had gams. It’s a lighthearted, skimming take on the genre that’s neither cliche-ridden nor weighted by scholarship. The helium that keeps this smart, entertaining trifle aloft is Buntport Theater Company’s…
Michael Caine is a revelation!” declares the Jeffrey Lyons quote currently appearing on ads for The Statement. Lyons is right, but not in the way you might expect. Indeed, Caine’s performance here is revelatory — who knew he could be this boring? Insufferable, yes — Oscar aside, his mangled “American”…
In 1998, a passionate majority of Venezuelans elected a new president. His name was Hugo Chavez, and he was the first leader in generations to come from outside the ruling class. He vowed to redistribute Venezuela’s oil wealth and to involve the people intimately in the political process. Openly comparing…
Be careful what you defrost this week. It might be Aunt Harriet’s scary Christmas fruitcake, buried in the depths of the freezer compartment since 1997. Or that leg of lamb you neglected to roast in ’93. Worse yet, it could be the gruesome alien predator that, once accidentally thawed, terrified…
The last thing you’d expect from a stellar concert pianist, especially one on the level of Christopher O’Riley, is a rock concert. Riley, the winner of various prestigious awards, from a Van Cliburn to an Avery Fisher Career Grant, performs this weekend with the Colorado Symphony Orchestra. Scheduled to take…
Thursday, January 8 Nothing will put your life back into simple perspective more quickly than a long weekend at the Arvada Center for the Arts and Humanities’ annual Colorado Cowboy Poetry Gathering, where Range Rovers still have four legs and a tail and run on grass and hay. It’s just…
At first it seems like a small thing: Out of nearly 200 artists nationwide whose work was chosen for inclusion in Contemporary Chicana and Chicano Art: Artists, Works, Culture and Education, an encyclopedic, comprehensive and absolutely gorgeous phone-book-sized pair of volumes put out by the Bilingual Press at Arizona State…
SAT, 1/10 The National Western Stock Show and Rodeo throws open the barn doors today for a two-week extravaganza showcasing bucking broncos, mutton bustin’, barrel riding, bull riding, calf wrestling, Wild West shows and fancy roping. The usual fun exhibits (the Colorado Elk Breeders Association! Mechanical bulls!) will be there,…
SAT, 1/10 Get ready for big-time excitement at tonight’s monster truck obstacle-course race at the Monster Jam, sponsored by the United States Hot Rod Association. “It’s really great, because it can be both entertaining and competitive,” says Monster Jam spokeswoman Kenna Conway. “These machines are huge, but they’re operating at…
WED, 1/14 The media has romanticized the kiddie bedtime ritual. In the sitcom world, rosy-cheeked toddlers — clad in spotless PJs that actually fit — willingly slide between crisp sheets, lie still while their parents read them a brief story and then quickly drift off to dreamland. There are no…
MON, 1/12 Who really knows, other than a sculptor, what goes on in a sculpture studio? It’s actually a loud, messy business — with machinery buzzing and dust flying — but it’s also an endeavor that undergoes many stages of evolution between drawing board and finished work. Most of us…
THURS, 1/8 The Denver Center Theatre Company is heating things up this winter with a new production of Tennessee Williams’s sizzling drama A Streetcar Named Desire. In a twist on the award-winning classic, the DCTC show will feature an all-African-American cast. “To do Streetcar with an all-black cast was a…
This year’s British assault on the Yank funnybone is a spirited, hard-trying farce called Calendar Girls, plucked straight from 1999 headlines and dolled up with all the heartwarming charm we’ve come to expect from recent films made by our former rulers. Essentially a chick flick for middle-aged women — nothing…
King Vidor’s great silent classic The Crowd (1928) holds up astonishingly well 75 years after it first played in theaters, and knowledgeable film lovers leap at any opportunity to see it — especially if that opportunity comes complete with live piano accompaniment, as in days of yore. The Crowd will…
Capitol Hill Books will celebrate more than just the arrival of a new year on January 1. The independent used-book store will be marking its 24th year in business by serving up ten delicious homemade soups and breads at its annual New Year’s Day Open House. “The day is not…
Thursday, January 1 Got the post-holiday blues? Don’t despair: The folks at the Denver Botanic Gardens have come up with a solution. Their annual Blossoms of Light display, a twinkling, flora-draped wonderland, has been extended through January 25. In contrast to the animated bells and whistles you see each year…
