Cat trainer Samantha Martin, who travels the nation with her Amazing Acro-Cats trained-cat act, is the first to admit that there’s truth to the cliché about herding cats: “The cats, they’ll mess with you a little bit,” she told Westword before a 2011 performance. “They’ll switch up a trick or…
Few art festivals get to have an inaugural year twice, but in the case of the Denver Arts Festival, Mother Nature made it happen: Originally scheduled to debut last September at Sloan’s Lake Park, the big fest folded before it even started, due to last fall’s flood-inducing rains across the…
If watching the Tour de France last month had you longing to see a bike race in the flesh, you won’t want to miss the Denver leg of the USA Pro Challenge. “This is one of the top five cycling events in the world, and the largest private event in…
There are several reasons to see Phamaly’s Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat at the Denver Center. To begin with, the musicals staged by this company of physically handicapped actors and skillfully directed by Steve Wilson are always a delight, and musical director Donna Debreceni adds her whiz-bang irresistible spirit…
Because Jessica Hindsley, also known as burlesque dancer Ophelia P. Coque (and best known in these parts for her peacock act requiring a costume made with 400 feathers), loves the razzmatazz of vaudeville, the public gets an annual taste of it during the Diamond Follies, a once-a-year, one-night-only summer stage…
We learned a lot about Denver journalist Helen Thorpe in last year’s Denver Center Theatre Company stage adaptation of her nonfiction book Just Like Us, the story of four Mexican-American girls and their struggle to better their lives. Throughout the drama, the character of Helen was on stage observing the…
Once a year, the Colorado Community Theatre Coalition rounds up community-theater groups and professionals from around the state for the Colorado Theatre Festival, a long weekend of workshops, networking and performances that are open to the public and reasonably priced. And this year, the fest’s twenty-sixth, the ante has been…
“How do you move forward when you’ve lost everything?” That’s what many people asked after last September’s floods in Boulder, recalls Emily K. Harrison of Square Product Theatre. The ensemble’s new production, SLAB, explores the same question but in a different context: the Gulf Coast after Hurricane Katrina. The play,…
Art is changing faster than we can keep up with it, multiplying into novel and unique forms with help from new technologies and materials and broader ideas about what it actually constitutes. That’s the thinking behind the Arvada Center’s new exhibition series, Unbound, which explores the invented and immersive spaces…
Last month I reviewed Unbound: Sculpture in the Field, an over-the-top outdoor exhibit for which the prairie land south of the Arvada Center has been turned into an informal sculpture garden. Using newly cast concrete pads, exhibition manager Collin Parson and assistant curator Kristin Bueb oversaw the placement of sculptures…
Emma Stone and Colin Firth in Magic in the Moonlight.On this week’s Voice Film Club podcast, Alan Scherstuhl and Stephanie Zacharek of the Village Voice and Amy Nicholson of L.A. Weekly discuss Woody Allen’s latest, Magic in the Moonlight, and revisit Get on Up and Guardians of the Galaxy, and…
Going to a play in the summer isn’t that different from hitting a blockbuster film or burying your nose in a fat, classic novel: Big themes — Hurricane Katrina, the silent-film milieu of the early twentieth century and the rise of AIDS — power our current theater picks. Keep reading…
It’s always a treat to attend a play in the antique and elegant lobby of the Barth Hotel, one of fourteen residences maintained for elderly and disabled people by the nonprofit Senior Housing Options. In the past, the money from these annual fundraisers has been used to provide emergency kits…
Joseph Coniff (in parentheses) is only the second presentation to open at the Rule Gallery since the untimely death of Robin Rule late last year. It was important to Rule that the gallery continue, so three longtime associates — Valerie Santerli, Rachel Beitz and Hilary Morris — are carrying on…
I was born in Denver in 1980. These days, I wear my Colorado nativeness like some entitled badge of honor — and I’ve noticed others do, too. I was at a public gathering last week and when a native took the mic to speak, they made sure to mention that…
With its terrible writing, dump truck-sized plot holes, horrible Twilight fan-fic dialogue and a plethora of downright ridiculous misconceptions about BDSM and kinksters, Fifty Shades of Grey, the first book in E.L. James’s trilogy, made me want to faceplant into my Kindle. It’s four hours of my life that I…
Feline-o-philes of all ages purr with joy whenever the Amazing Acro-Cats slink into town because, you know — cats playing guitars and riding skateboards and stuff. Animal trainer Samantha Martin has parked her cat bus in front of the Bug Theatre for a run of performances inside, continuing Thursdays through…
#63: Selah Saterstrom Much-published author Selah Saterstrom grew up in the Deep South, which she writes about in such works of indie fiction as The Meat and Spirit Plan and The Pink Institution (both published by Coffee House Press). When she’s not writing, she’s busy teaching at and running the…
Quentin Tarantino’s movies have incurred the wrath of many. In Newsweek, Daniel Mendelsohn accused Inglorious Basterds of turning Jews into Nazis, arguing that the film was cashing in on the fragile nature of historical memory. Spike Lee has criticized Tarantino for nearly two decades. He went so far as to…
UPDATE: FashioNation has a new home. The nearly 30-year-old business will debut its new location on South Broadway on October 10. Owners Pam and Paul Italiano spent several weeks moving the furnishing and decor of the old store into the new space, which formerly housed Packrat Antiques, even removing a…
No institution has played a more important role in Colorado’s art history than the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center. Among its collections is one dedicated to modern and contemporary pieces created by Colorado artists. It’s a nice collection — not on the level of the Kirkland Museum’s, mind you –…
You can find art all over town — not just on gallery walls. In this series, we’ll be looking at some of the local artists who serve up their work in coffeehouses and other non-gallery businesses around town. Get ready for some very special effects: Denver resident Alan Anderson, RAW…
