Members of the Historic Downtown Littleton Merchants association are always looking for ways to draw a crowd of shoppers, especially during the retail off-season. So last year, the HDLM came up with the Ladies Only Sample Tour. “I thought to myself, ‘What do ladies like to do?’ They like to…

Is Boulder ready for a truly Europolitan experience? Italian fashionista Elena Ciccone asked herself that very question when she first opened her high-end Italian designer boutique in the West End area of the Pearl Street shopping district. As it turns out, the answer was yes: Six years later, the place…

WWII-era refugees-turned-textile-designers Zika and Lida Ascher took London by storm in the ’40s, creating screen-printed fabrics, Day-Glo mohairs and other mod innovations that remained popular in the world of couture through the early ’70s. But perhaps their most famous contribution came in the form of limited-edition scarves — they called…

In its continuing effort to bring arts experiences to underserved Denver youngsters on a grassroots level, the United Artists’ Coalition for Kids — a conglomeration of artist volunteers — always has a lot of pins to juggle. The latest, a new gallery space that opened at 948 West Eighth Avenue,…

Every year, the fundraising phenoms at the Junior Symphony Guild raise another landmark or undiscovered gem of houseflesh up from its bare bones into a knockout showplace, all in the space of a few months. And then it’s your turn to walk its halls, oohing and aahing over all the…

Now that the Six Flags no longer unfurl over the place, it’s back to basics for Elitch Gardens, which reclaims its unadorned moniker of old when the thrill park opens today at 10 a.m. for its 117th season. Any citizen whose local memory stretches back beyond the past ten years…

Artist/curator Devon Dikeou occupies a rare place in the art world — a vantage point from which she views the culture from both sides. After first creating the art journal zingmagazine, in which several pages of each issue are set aside for artists to use as they please, she went…

At the new Museum of Contemporary Art/Denver, everything comes in fives: five gallery spaces inspired by the five elements of Chinese philosophy, redefined by the museum’s own principles of art, architecture, light, nature and human experience. And, as you might expect, when the MCA opens the doors of its sweet,…

One thing’s for certain: You can pretty much count on the creative beehive that is Buntport Theater to turn everything you know and believe completely upside down on stage in the course of a single performance. This year’s season opener, Vote for Uncle Marty, does it again when the lead…

As an art curator working under the aegis of a Jewish cultural institution, Simon Zalkind sees a lot of Holocaust-related art. But much of what comes his way just doesn’t ring true: “The majority of what I see is not convincing either as art or history or as a commemoration…

There’s nothing like getting a good start on the partying: Members of the Denver Gay Men’s Chorus will warm up for their upcoming 25th-anniversary concert in June with a celebratory evening of jazz tonight at Lannie’s Clocktower Cabaret. Featuring chanteuse Georgeann Low and her Nuages trio as the first-rate opening…

How does one learn to yodel? Yodeling local yokel Bret Bertholf, aka Halden Wofford of the Hi-Beams, says, “First, pretend you’re swallowing a monkey.” The rest, he adds, comes naturally, if you let out a howl and have a friend pinch your rear mid-note. That’s just one of the many…

Imagine, if you will, 15,000 freestanding, golf-ball-sized golden heads, swaying gently on stakes at varying heights in a 430-square-foot room. The heads, multiples of a few hundred sculptured images, look out, face-on, at the viewer. At first you might shake your head in wonder: How can they all fit so…

Over the years, the University of Denver has played host to a number of artist-instructors, from DU School of Art founder Vance Kirkland to present sculpture professor Lawrence Argent. But surprisingly, there’s been no real catalogue of their collective artistic contributions as DU faculty members— at least not until a…

The local branch of Dress for Success — a national nonprofit that provides appropriate business attire for low-income women with job interviews — is celebrating its tenth anniversary of do-gooding in Denver, and its staff will be tooting the organization’s horn at an appropriate place: Soulrise Gallery, a woman-centric spot…

It’ll be wall-to-wall folk in more ways than one when the Swallow Hill Music Association’s signature fundraiser, the Denver Folk & Roots Music Festival, rolls into the elegant and acoustically fine Ellie Caulkins Opera House for a night of first-class musicianship. National recording artists Bruce Cockburn and Nanci Griffith headline…

It’s just a theory, but it’s quite possible that the social upheaval among youth in the swingin’ ’60s can be directly traced to one source: MAD magazine, that slick devil’s advocate of comic books, which fed a whole generation of Cold War kids a constant diet of satire delivered on…

The annual works of Boulder choreographer Danelle Helander always come off as fresh and delightful. So the theme of this year’s Helander Dance Theater production — intuition and its relationship with the imagination — sounds like a good match. Helander will undoubtedly go with her gut when the evening-length study,…

From images of Mayan goddesses and Mexican madonnas to hand-wrought works of fiber and clay, Primavera: A Spring Celebration of the Divine Feminine — an all-woman show opening today at the Chicano Humanities and Arts Council — delivers its theme on a veritable Botticellian half-shell. “A lot of us do…

Colorado Pregnancy and Newborn Loss Services provides assistance in dealing with feelings that often languish behind closed doors, in the private worlds of women who’ve miscarried or lost a child at, or soon after, birth. So Colorado writer and genealogy buff Robert L. Root — whose book, Recovering Ruth: A…

It’s a little bit Vegas, a little bit Jet Li blockbuster, but Dr. Dennis Law’s Heartbeat — the latest in his growing franchise of highly visual “action musicals” that hit the stage fully ablaze with dazzling choreography, tethered to earth only by a flowing timeline of Chinese history — is…

Legend has it that the animals of the Chinese zodiac were challenged by Buddha to race across the river to decide which creature would lead off the traditional twelve-year cycle. Because the wily rat had the foresight to leap upon the back of that strong and stolid swimmer, the ox,…