There are no crystal pitchers of lemon-lime water or misty bottles of lavender spritz in the student-run Emily Griffith Opportunity Salon. The spartan space is housed on the third floor of a nondescript building at 1250 Welton Street, just a tease-comb’s throw from the Denver Diner and the new jail…
Though it’s a block or so to the south, there’s no missing the University of Denver campus while driving along I-25. For that matter, you can’t miss it from South University Boulevard or Evans Avenue, either. It’s all those recently built, eye-popping post-modern buildings. This architectural prominence wasn’t always true…
Along with a lot of other people in Denver, I had my heart broken last winter when Skyline Park was bulldozed. The decision to destroy the park, which runs for three blocks along Arapahoe Street between 15th and 18th streets, was the last of many terrible moves made by the…
When I was in my early teens and an aspiring actress, I read a book by Richard Boleslavsky titled Acting: The First Six Lessons. As I remember, one of these lessons is about a young actress who’s been cast as Ophelia. Although she has found the necessary emotion in herself,…
Jules Massenet’s The Juggler of Notre Dame (Le Jongleur de Notre Dame) was first performed in 1902, and until Central City Opera took it on, it hadn’t been staged in the United States for half a century. It’s a medieval tale, with an essentially timeless theme — the same story…
Emerson Woelffer, et al. The Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center has a rich assortment of attractions this summer. An Exhibition by Dale Chihuly showcases the artist’s ’70s-era glass work, which was inspired by American Indian art. One of his chandeliers has been installed in the lobby, and the solo also…
Antony and Cleopatra. Director Robert Benedetti states in the program notes that he has brought a Hollywood sensibility to this text, but the CU production remains stagnant and difficult to follow, perhaps because so many of the actors garble their lines. Antony has been neglecting his duties in Rome for…
In the 1950s, pneumatic Hollywood glamour girls like Marilyn Monroe and Jane Russell made it their business to ensnare unsuspecting men with a combination of cunning, raw charm and decolletage. So it is in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, a splendid 1953 trifle in which the sassy seductresses hunt their prey on…
Sheathed in a custom-tailored gray suit and sporting expensively barbered silver hair, Tom Cruise looks like an older, harder version of the self-absorbed L.A. sharpie he played sixteen years ago in Rain Man. But in Collateral, a frenetic Michael Mann action thriller that runs up a Baghdad-level body count, the…
There is nothing mysterious or subdued about Stacy Peralta’s enthusiasms. A product of Southern California’s vivid beach scene, Peralta’s been a surfer since boyhood and was a professional skateboarder in the Œ70s before he started making documentaries about the defining moments of those sports. The phenomenally successful Dogtown and Z-Boys…
In its first year, the Hoi Polloi Music Fest is already the largest event of its kind in the United States: an all-ages, family-style marathon of good vibes and grinding guitars that features a dozen acts in four days. And though the heavy-hitting Christian artists — including MXPX, P.O.D., Switchfoot…
Thursday, August 5 A mixture of musical styles inspired by Mexico and unique to the Southwest — from Tex-Mex to mariachi — will be in the spotlight during El Centro Su Teatro’s eighth annual Chicano Music Festival, a five-day event that’s also a well-disguised fundraiser for the long-lived Hispanic community…
Abelardo Barrientos “Lalo” Delgado died of cancer a couple of weeks ago. His death is a huge casualty to the Chicano community, and not just here in Denver where he lived, but in Texas and New Mexico and California, too — wherever Chicanos (that unique Hispanic substratum here in the…
Extreme tour sets no limits mon 8/9 If you thought this summer’s opening of the new Halfpipe coaster at Six Flags Elitch Gardens was extreme, bro, prepare to have your top completely blown. Sports Illustrated for Kids takes it to the max with, like, seven X’s today and tomorrow during…
Whose Line regulars up the ante on the road sat 8/7 As regular cast members on ABC’s Emmy-nominated Whose Line Is It Anyway?, Colin Mochrie and Brad Sherwood are at the top of their respective improvisational comedy games. Mochrie, a longtime comedian who appeared on the original British version of…
D.C. Gallery welcomes urban artist Glenn Barr FRI 8/6 The sun only shines in Detroit about 75 days a year. That’s fine by underground artist Glenn Barr, who lives and paints in the Motor City. “It’s perpetually overcast here, and when you have that sort of inescapable filter over the…
Peeping Toms get clicking for art’s sake FRI 8/6 The technological trend of “moblogging” (sharing mobile-phone images on the Internet) has prompted legislation that, if passed, would deter seedy Kodak moments from being snapped in places like restrooms and fitting rooms. The law could allocate a whole new value to…
It’s the biggest art news of the summer — but don’t get excited, because it’s not necessarily a good thing: The + Zeile Judish Gallery is now minus Judish and has changed its name to + Gallery. Both the story and the new name strike me as ridiculous. I spoke…
Peter Illig’s solo (see review) is rocking the front of Pirate: a contemporary art oasis (3659 Navajo Street, 303-458-6058), making it a hard act to follow. Luckily for us, emerging artist Warren Kelly, whose show children’s games is installed in the Associates’ Space, stands up to Illig’s more ambitious endeavor…
Dots, Blobs and Angels. Denver’s Museum of Contemporary Art is presenting an enormous solo that is dedicated to the late David Rigsby, an artist who played a big part in the local art scene in the ’70s and ’80s. The exhibit was organized by director Cydney Payton, who installed it…
All right, I’ll confess: I really didn’t want to see the PHAMALy (Physically Handicapped Amateur Musical Actors League, Incorporated) production of Guys and Dolls. In principle, I’m all for the idea of a troupe of handicapped actors putting on a show, and I had no doubt such a project would…
I suppose if I’d done my homework, I’d have been less disappointed by Central City Opera’s production of The Student Prince. Other than a vague memory of some infectiously rousing drinking songs, I knew nothing about the operetta. I thought it would have the dizzy, stylish melodiousness of Johann Strauss…
