SUN, 10/5 Some would say the books of Peter Sís aren’t children’s books at all. And yet you’ll find them — complicated mazes of lavishly illustrated visual information and sophisticated themes — on the shelves of children’s libraries or among the juvenile picture books at your local bookstore. It’s no…
FRI, 10/3 Museum of Contemporary Art/Denver curator Cydney Payton has a love affair with art’s cutting edge: Always seeking ways to straddle it, she’s continuing that streak with BLOOD: Lines & Connections, an ambitious exhibit of global proportions opening tonight with a reception from 6 to 9 p.m. at the…
THURS, 10/2 In the early scenes of Gus Edwards’s Louie and Ophelia, the title characters are crazy about each other. By the final scene, though, they’ve nearly driven each other nuts — and have come to terms with some of the psychic demons that hinder their ability to love. Louie…
When the Cordell Taylor Gallery opened its doors in Denver in the fall of 2001, its specialty was contemporary art from Utah, and all of the represented artists were holdovers from the days when the business was located in Salt Lake City. These out-of-state artists were unknown around here and…
Bobbi Walker forces visitors to her gallery, Walker Fine Art (300 West 11th Avenue, 303-355-8955), to suspend their aesthetic sensibilities. At issue is the hideous high-rise — the Prado — in which the gallery is located. Loving buildings as I do, it took me a long time to build up…
Barbara Ehrenreich published Nickel & Dimed: On (Not) Getting by in America in 2001 partly as a response to President Clinton’s 1996 reorganization of welfare, which kicked recipients off the rolls if they had not gone to work after two years. Before doing research for the book, Ehrenreich already knew…
The strongest things in the Shadow Theatre Company’s ambitious production of Macbeth are Jeffrey Nickelson’s performance in the title role and the way director Buddy Butler deals with the supernatural elements. Macbeth’s witches always present a problem. They’re sometimes portrayed as wrinkled hags and sometimes as beautiful young women; sometimes…
The publicity materials sent in advance of the at-long-last release of The Kids Are Alright on DVD suggest that the maker of the 1979 documentary about The Who has been on the lam–in the rock-and-roll witness relocation program, perhaps, far from the long windmilling arm of justice. A “recluse” is…
The dumbed-down movie version of Frances Mayes’s best-selling travel memoir Under the Tuscan Sun is a virtual case study of Hollywood’s irrepressible urge to lower the bar in the hopes of upping the take. Mayes’s 1996 book is a nicely written, carefully observed meditation on buying a decrepit Italian villa…
Recently, ornithologists in Antarctica made a startling discovery: Female emperor penguins, being forced against their wills to endure stern patriarchal societal norms, tend to practice iffy mating habits. Close scrutiny revealed that most adult females go bonkers struggling to choose between an exciting-but-destructive “bad-boy” penguin and a dependable-but-boring “good-boy” penguin,…
The naked guys call their performance “the ancient Australian art of genital origami”; a Denver law firm declares that the show is protected by the First Amendment; and at first, the city didn’t know what to make of such a public display. But on Tuesday, September 30, a Puppetry of…
Thursday, September 25 Top toques from Wolfgang Puck’s Cafe, Maggiano’s Little Italy, the Broadmoor and McCormick’s Fish House & Bar will put their best food forward today by working wonders with basic grub — a mystery mixture of food-bank staples — when they go apron to apron from 10:30 a.m…
The Cleo Parker Robinson Dance Ensemble is putting a new spin on an old story with its September 25 premiere of Orfeu Negro: The Legend of Black Orpheus Re-Told. The production, about lovers who are reunited after death, will launch the company’s 33rd season with exhilarating leaps and bounds. “It…
THURS, 9/25 The organizers of Denver’s 22nd annual Great American Beer Festival know what you want: “Three days. 320 breweries. 1,400 Beers. 144,000 square feet of total beer heaven.” That’s what the banners say. That’s what’s repeated over and over again on the Web sites. And other than, maybe, a…
THURS, 9/25 Where did the love go for the Rockies? Attendance is down, and there won’t be any red, white and blue bunting adorning 2001 Blake Street this year. That’s no real surprise: Only once in their eleven-year history have the Rox sailed beyond their allotted 162-game regular season (and…
WED, 10/1 A circus remains an eternally strange blend of old traditions and things that have never been seen before: For instance, kids who are afraid of clowns and attend the 133rd Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus will barely even recognize that skyscraper-coifed daredevil Bello even is a…
SAT, 9/27 The Colorado Ballet borrowed the costumes and set for its season opener Don Quixote, not from Spain, but from Louisville, Kentucky. “I originally wanted Boston Ballet’s,” says artistic director and CEO Martin Fredmann, “but it turns out they were doing it at the same time.” A harried search…
WED, 10/1 What are all those people doing in that long line snaking out of the Denver Performing Arts Complex? Odds are that they’re waiting for free tickets to tonight’s 6:30 p.m. performance of Almost Heaven: The Songs and Stories of John Denver. The Denver Center Theatre Company will reopen…
A principal leitmotif of Colorado’s history is the influence of Mexican culture. Though not equal in legend and lore to the cowboys and Indians, it has been more enduring. Mexican explorers coined the state’s name, and the southern half was actually once a part of Mexico. Thus Mexican-Americans have been…
For its fall opener, the Colorado Photographic Arts Center (1513 Boulder Street, 303-455-8999) is presenting the theme show Recreated Realities. Though a wide variety of mediums are on display, from primitive pinhole to up-to-the-minute digital, all of the photos were created by assembling multiple images. The photographers included are an…
Urinetown is set after a drought so severe that people no longer have private toilets; everyone must use run-down, unsanitary public amenities controlled by a monster corporation called Urine Good Company. Poor people pay more than they can afford for this privilege, and anyone trying to pee anywhere unauthorized suffers…
The Drawer Boy is a droll, humorous, slowly spun story that’s often gently charming. It’s based on a Canadian theater project carried out in 1972, when a group of actors from Toronto went to live in a farming community and created a play about their experiences there. You can catch…
