Wedged between Mozart and Brahms on the classical-music playbill this weekend is a 400-pound, six-foot-long contraption whose voice is as rich and ancient as the southern cultures that spawned it. Libby Larsen’s Marimba Concerto, to be performed by the Colorado Symphony Orchestra, brings together the two most basic human musical…
A few Sundays ago, Julie Imada went to the Heritage Christian Church in Aurora to pass out a bundle of fliers announcing an upcoming visit to Denver by retired South African archbishop Desmond Tutu. The lobby of the large, mixed-race church was lined with glass counters displaying church-related books and…
Thursday November 12 Even though Colorado has no state boxing commission, area promoters continue to book matches for fans of the pugilistic arts. Tonight at 7, the National Western Complex Stadium Arena hosts a full card of world-caliber professional boxing at the Coors Light Night at the Fights. The lineup…
Sure, Denver’s traditional cowtown image hardly seems appropriate in these modern, boomtown days. But a trip to the Buckhorn Exchange Restaurant offers a unique sense of the city’s past and insight into the origin of its bovine brand. This month marks the 105th year since Henry H. “Shorty Scout” Zeitz…
With the grand opening of the much-anticipated Denver Pavilions adjacent to the Adam’s Mark Hotel addition that was completed last year, it’s now official: The three blocks that line the south side of the 16th Street Mall between Court Place and Welton Street now make up what is surely the…
Against the sounds of clicking typewriter keys, a disembodied voice tells us that Voices From the Soul is dedicated to “the brother on the corner who never had a chance.” As the stage lights slowly illuminate several cardboard silhouettes that represent a few of the play’s characters, playwright Hugo Jon…
Given that the potty-mouthed characters in playwright Chay Yew’s Porcelain have little trouble posing a myriad of pointed questions –“Have you ever participated in toilet sex?” is fairly typical of the blunt-force dialogue–you’d think Yew’s one-act play would be overflowing with tough-talking scenes of in-your-face drama. But as the playwright’s…
In 1994’s The Monster (Il Mostro), his most recent film to gain wide American release, the Italian writer/director/star Roberto Benigni put himself at the center of a mistaken-identity farce about a serial killer. In Life Is Beautiful (La Vita e Bella), Benigni plays a wacky, high-spirited man who convinces his…
First, a disclaimer: Having missed last year’s I Know What You Did Last Summer, I deliberately put off seeing it until after viewing its sequel, I Still Know What You Did Last Summer. That way I could view Part Two without prejudice as well as be able to judge whether…
Well, now we know why the term “bored to death” was invented. Meet Joe Black, a new film produced and directed by Martin Brest (Scent of a Woman, Midnight Run), takes an interesting idea–Death assumes human form and comes to earth to learn about human existence–and reduces it to a…
Thursday November 5 If you find the dating game to be more like combat, Colorado Free University’s Art of Meeting Someone New course may be just the thing for your heat-seeking arsenal. The class covers the full range of dating topics, from foolproof ice-breakers and meet-and-greet etiquette to how-to’s for…
When it comes to the dance arts, Denver has its share of high-caliber entertainment, from the formal charms of the Colorado Ballet to the modern dance leanings of the Cleo Parker Robinson School. But for Katrina Lairsmith, a former Parker Robinson student, there’s a gap in the local dance culture–maybe…
“I’m the muse of dance, and I’m constantly dancing and fluttering about,” says Pamela Osborne. She’s also an actor in Awakening Galatia, a new play by the Colorado Dramatists that debuts this weekend at the Acoma City Center Theatre in conjunction with hundreds of other events commemorating the tenth anniversary…
In the last decade or so, the Mexican religious holiday El Dia de los Muertos (Day of the Dead) has not only been observed in Denver’s large Hispanic community, but it has also become a marked occasion for celebration in the city’s art world. This is mostly because for years,…
Few American playwrights have demonstrated the ability to effectively transform their vivid childhood memories into something other than a highly personal cautionary tale. Mere mention of the words “socially relevant family play” is usually enough to conjure bizarre images of a metaphorical free-for-all between the Bronx-accented denizens of yesteryear’s kitchen…
British playwright George Bernard Shaw once remarked that fabled escape artist Harry Houdini was, along with the personages of Jesus Christ and Sherlock Holmes, one of the three most famous people in the world. Although today’s culture of instant celebrity has considerably altered Houdini’s standing among the greatest entertainers of…
The hero of Evan Dunsky’s The Alarmist is a dopey innocent named Tommy Hudler (Scream’s David Arquette) whose only sin seems to be falling in with the wrong crowd. A rookie salesman with all the aggression of a baby chick, Tommy sells residential burglar alarms door-to-door in Los Angeles for…
Fascism is in the air…well, at least it’s on movie screens. In a two-week stretch, we’ve seen old Nazis (Life Is Beautiful), neo-Nazis (American History X), old Nazis training neo-Nazis (Apt Pupil), book-burning (Pleasantville), and now, with The Siege, full-blown military rule on American soil. Still in the wings: Enemy…
Fifteen minutes into Velvet Goldmine, director Todd Haynes’s love letter to England’s glam-rock scene of the late Sixties/early Seventies, the film has already promised to be many things: a missing-person mystery, a meticulous period piece, an essay on sexually liberated dandyism, a quasi-musical, a portrait of the Machiavellian as an…
Thursday October 29 Hand in hand with Halloween comes El Dia de los Muertos, the Latin American celebration during which the souls of the dead take time out to party with the living. In that spirit, Aurora’s Crossover Project hosts several El Dia events this weekend, with annual festivities at…
Vampires, specters, werewolves and witches all come out of the ground this time of year, and they all seem to be based in the boneyard, an eternally creepy place. But local author Linda Wommack is out to change that eerie outlook. According to Wommack, whose new book, From the Grave:…
When Westword decided to spook out the best costumes in town, we naturally were lured by the prospects of Guise & Dolls, billed as “Denver’s first and only comedy cabaret show featuring Denver’s most hilarious, outrageous, beautiful and convincing female impersonators.” It all took place within Club Proteus’s Greek-ruin decor,…
