Just as Capistrano has its swallows, Boulder has folk dancing: It’s a sure sign that summer is here when Folk Dancing on the Plaza returns to the Boulder Municipal Plaza, between Canyon Boulevard and Arapahoe Avenue, adjacent to the fittingly exotic Dushanbe Teahouse on Tuesday nights. This year’s weekly community…

There’s not enough whimsy in this ugly world, and that’s why we need a few artists like Spark Gallery member Lisa Michot. They’re not out to make a big statement or turn the planet up-side-down. Michot-style, they just want to have a little fun and make people smile. She made…

One thing’s for sure: You can pretty much always count on Denver Chicano Renaissance man Gwylym Cano to come up with something completely different. His reputation as a filmmaker is built on the funny 1995 yarn El Corrido de Cherry Creek, but he’s also made a name locally as a…

More than an alliance of convenience, RiNo Neighbors bridges the gap, real or imagined, between the Upper Larimer and River North arts communities, which are separated physically by the railroad tracks but have much in common spirit-wise. One of the alliance’s first collaborations, a two-part Get to Know RiNo Open…

Now that the renovated Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art is back up and open and rockin’ and rollin,’ the institution’s ARTcore education wing will instigate a summer-long “Then & Now” Series of monthly talks that compare and contrast art movements from different periods. “The series is designed to make people…

Despite the title, women aren’t the only ones being targeted by the Colorado Rapids 2009 Festival of Women at Dick’s Sporting Goods Park. While the afternoon of speakers, workshops, pampering and shopping hosted by Boutique for the Soul has plenty to offer the ladies, it’s also designed to be a…

The bridge from Mad Max to Kill Bill crosses years, but not much distance: A starstruck Quentin Tarantino admits to being an unabashed fan of the ´70s explosion of exploitative Australian films and unapologetically copied them. A genre set off when repressed Aussie filmmakers were freed from the shackles of…

“I just want to blend in,” claims banjoist Béla Fleck early in Throw Down Your Heart, a documentary about his musical journey to Africa (where the banjo originated). A moment later, after glancing at the native performers around him, he admits, “I’m not going to blend in.” Yet he often…

Max Montrose, a Regis University junior studying sociology, anthropology and art, was hanging out in his pajamas at the coffeehouse early one morning when he noticed a guy, “this middle-aged dude,” trying to get on the Internet without much luck. Choosing to show random kindness, Montrose gave him a hand,…

The Sangre de Cristo Arts Center has the neatest way of pulling things together for an exhibition: Blessed with a surfeit of exhibit spaces both intimate and grand, the venue simply cries out for the type of interrelated curating for which former director Jina Pierce and current director Karin Larkin…

Author Craig Johnson wasn’t born in Wyoming. Rather, while moving a herd of horses through the state on a cowpoking mission, he fell in love with Ucross, population 25, a town in the middle of nowhere, and knew it was where he wanted to settle. And he did eventually move…

In Dharmic culture, there’s a concept called seva: Like Judaism’s tzedakah or Catholic charity, it’s the spirit of giving back to the community. For Nancy Levenson of NamasteWorks Yoga, the free ongoing Yoga in the Park Summer Series in Highlands Ranch is her annual act of seva. “It’s all about…

Metropolitan State College of Denver’s Center for Visual Art has a mission to emphasize diversity and present modern works by artists not commonly seen in this city — and for assistant director/curator Cecily Cullen, the idea of a cross-cultural exhibit by a group of contemporary artists who are also Native…