Last Thursday the atmosphere in Schlessman Hall, on the first floor of the Denver Art Museum, was positively electric. DAM trustees and staffers, community leaders, politicians, interested members of the community, reporters and photographers all gathered to hear Mayor Wellington Webb announce the name of the architect for the new…
That unfunny dramatic theorist Aristotle probably would have loathed the idea that the high point of the Central City Opera’s production of Dialogues of the Carmelites occurs in Act One, long before a proper “rising action” develops. Even so, audiences will undoubtedly appreciate the fact that mezzo-soprano Joyce Castle marvelously…
On the eve of an infamous assassination, several concerned Romans gather in their leader’s home to plan the next day’s doings. Like any cadre of revolutionaries, Brutus and his gang of nobles spend a great deal of time reassuring each other that the only way to preserve the body politic…
Murphy and Pryor. Skywalker and Kenobi. Amos and Zeppelin. Regardless of the creative universe, the maverick apprentice tends to stride off into territory beyond the edges of the master’s map. So it is with Alan Rudolph, whose career blossomed after he served as assistant director to Robert Altman on Nashville…
It would be the easiest thing in the world to write off But I’m a Cheerleader — the story of a teenager discovering her sexual identity through a program designed to repress it — as a Saturday Night Live sketch somewhat awkwardly inflated to feature length. But when you start…
The idea of dangling from a ten-foot pole that’s hooked to the ceiling and alternately swiveling from side to side and moving in a circular motion might be considered more of a nightmare than an avant-garde artistic endeavor, but for aerial dancer Jo Kreiter, it’s the perfect way to expand…
Yes, there is a cutting edge in Jewish liturgical music, and her name is Basya Schechter. A free spirit who grew up in the Orthodox community of Brooklyn’s legendary Boro Park, where elders with conservative religious views constantly monitored how freely one moved or dressed, Schechter was first drawn not…
Graduating from college can be liberating and exciting — unless you don’t have a job lined up, and the threat of homelessness, starvation and destitution consumes your once-carefree mind. But a local art gallery is helping to ease the mind of artists who are facing this dilemma. Karen and Dean…
For the record, when lowriders start doing the cha-cha on souped-up hydraulics or airbags, they hop — they don’t jump. That’s the word from Lowrider Magazine spokesman Marco Patiño, a well-educated young L.A. talker who says his father, a custom-car buff himself, impressed upon the son early the importance of…
Subtly placed at eye level on the front door of Ron Judish Fine Arts is a letter-sized sheet of paper with an advisory for viewers of Horse: the male as sexual entity. It states that the exhibit, which is now showing, includes the depiction of the male nude and that…
Pirate: a Contemporary Art Oasis is now hosting a group of interesting — though flawed — sculpture shows. In the main space up front is Soul Catchers, which features a large collection of abstract sculptures by Craig Robb. Some are on the wall, some are on the ceiling, some are…
Smartly directed, honestly acted and imaginatively written, HorseChart Theatre Company’s production of O.T. takes on prickly issues with the kind of spunky tenacity that one expects from a group of theatrical renegades. Clay Nichols’s drama, which is being presented at the Denver Civic Theatre as part of HorseChart’s participation in…
Had Leonard Bernstein been regarded as a musical-theater genius a year or two before he wrote On the Town, the 1944 work might not have been cut to ribbons when it was made into a movie starring Gene Kelly and Frank Sinatra. Apparently unimpressed with all of the material in…
In the course of two hours, Neil Gaiman speaks 10,000 words (or damned near, when transcribed), and it seems a shame to waste a single one, since there is not an uh or y’know among them. Even the most eloquent writer gets lost in thought every now and then…uh…y’know? But…
The bewildering penchant of recent American movies for glorifying the lovable naif, the perpetual adolescent and the village idiot takes a strange new turn in Miguel Arteta’s dark comedy Chuck & Buck. Arteta’s hero, Buck O’Brien (Mike White), is a 27-year-old manchild who eats lollipops all day long, takes refuge…
Rather than asking if this senseless and expensive new film from wunderkind entertainer Robert Zemeckis is devoid of merit (it is), or “worth seeing” (it isn’t), we should instead take the movie’s title — What Lies Beneath — as a direct question. Indeed, what does lie beneath? Possible answers include:…
In an age of Prozac-popping adults and Ritalin-filled children, it’s no surprise that an artist would get around to mental health as the subject of her work. But who knew it could be done with the graceful sensuality of flamenco dancers and the rhythms of enchanting music? Los Angeles-based choreographer…
Howard Crabtree barely saw When Pigs Fly take off — he died of AIDS five days after it premiered — but some would say he lives on each night that his costumes take the stage. Magnificent drag-wear — and then some — constructed from foam rubber, sequins, glitter and other…
It’s a basic contradiction of the art world: Artists compete with each other to get into the best galleries, while the galleries compete with each other to get the best artists. A standard offshoot of this situation is the endless chain of introductory exhibits, meant either to acquaint the local…
There are two compelling shows at the Emmanuel Gallery on the Auraria campus through tomorrow: Jerry Allen Gilmore on the main floor, and Christopher Nitsche in the loft. The Gilmore show is made up of drawings and paintings that combine abstract painting techniques such as splashes, drips and runs with…
Aesthetics collide, myths explode and philosophies swirl about with dizzying delight in Candide. Just when the title character seems on the verge of articulating truths about the human condition, an unlikely catastrophe or comic accident spirits him to one of many far-off locales, where he contemplates life’s mysteries all over…
A corporate sponsor’s flattering comments and a University of Colorado official’s town-and-gown speechifying delayed the start of the Colorado Shakespeare Festival’s opening show by nearly 25 minutes. Shortly after the Boulder bureaucrats finished droning, however, audience members who had paid upwards of $40 apiece to see a professional-caliber production of…
