Thursday September 3 For at least one cross-section of the populace, Big Bird is the absolute bomb, and if any of those pint-sized denizens live in your house, tickets to this weekend’s performances of Sesame Street Live: 1-2-3…Imagine! are a must for the whole family. See Ernie travel the seven…

Before work even begins on a Tibetan sand mandala, there are chants and music to purify the five-foot-square site where the painting’s intricate patterns will soon emerge. The preparation is an impressive sight in itself: Clad in golden robes, elaborate brocades and awesome fringed hats that rise above their heads…

Put fifty feet of clean white wall in front of Carlos Fresquez and it won’t stay that way for long. The Denver-born artist’s been at work on the wall for only two hours, but already in the background, snow-capped peaks rise and unfold across the flat surface–to remind him, Fresquez…

Hold it right there, pardner. If you ask Rudy Grant, an Aurora Pro Country Music Hall of Fame makes perfect sense. A longtime local country musician, Grant remembers Aurora’s honky-tonk heyday (when clubs such as the legendary Zanzibar on East Colfax Avenue stacked ’em ten deep at the bar) like…

Thursday August 27 Book ’em, Denver: You can take your pick from a whole mountain of inexpensive tomes when the Denver Public Library Friends Annual Used Book Sale opens for business this morning south of the Central Library at 13th Ave. and Acoma St. Inside the sale tents, you’ll find…

It’s hard to pinpoint just what makes a mystery mysterious. But if you hard-boil it down, it’s all about the atmosphere. For Raymond Chandler, it was a Los Angeles full of mooks and wise guys and gorgeous dames; for James Lee Burke, it’s something lurking under the surface of a…

Thursday August 20 The Denver Jewish Film Festival explores the full gamut of Jewish issues on the screen, beginning tonight at the Mizel Family Cultural Arts Center at the Robert E. Loup Jewish Community Center, 350 S. Dahlia St. The festival, now in its third year, offers more than twenty…

LoDo’s been both revered and criticized as the resurrection of a once-depressed urban area and a playground for the rich and sports-minded. But just a few blocks north, the Ballpark Neighborhood is beginning to garner similar accolades without the negative remarks. The newly rejuvenated Burlington Hotel–a fine three-story red-brick building…

Rod Kennedy’s laid-back drawl comes on like a friendly bear hug. It has a lot in common with the way Kennedy, founder of the legendary Kerrville Folk Festival in Texas, goes about leading his life–like it’s his main squeeze, for better or worse. In his 68 years, he’s been a…

Thursday August 13 Don’t be fooled by the blah connotations: Dog Days of Summer, on exhibit at the West Gallery, 303 W. 11th Ave., is anything but, especially if you’re a fido fancier. A benefit for the A.L.I.E. Foundation, the show features all manner of dog-inspired works by local artists,…

Over 25 years old and, proudly, the third-oldest continuous Chicano theater troupe in the country, Denver’s El Centro Su Teatro defines what a grassroots cultural arts endeavor is all about. Born of radical movements in the ’60s and ’70s and deeply dedicated to providing the Latino community with an artistic…

Thursday August 6 Oral history, folklore, tall tales and flights of fancy will all take their place around the campfire at the Rocky Mountain Storytelling Festival, an annual event in Palmer Lake that immerses participants in the art of yarn-spinning for an entire weekend. Featuring an accomplished cross-section of regional…

Dr. Beverly Chico has been flipping her lid over hats for more than forty years. When the local headwear historian calls hats “houses for heads,” you only just begin to grasp the depth of her fascination. “To me, headwear is the most important item of wearing apparel,” Chico says. “The…

The “floating world” of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Japan reflected a time of urbanization and swift transitions. In turn, the great woodblock printers of the period–skilled observers of everyday life and landscape–caught the spirit of the era in vivid prints now prized by collectors around the world. One of the best…

Many fiction writers don’t choose their profession–it chooses them instead. And some, like jazz critic and novelist Rafi Zabor, are lifelong wanderers who suddenly find themselves traipsing down the right road. But regardless of how a writer becomes one, it must be true that it takes one to know one:…

Pet pundits report that we’re treating our pets more and more like children these days. But rather than worry about it, we might as well accept it and act accordingly by properly socializing pets, just as we hope to do with our children. Author Cindy Hirschfeld, whose new travel guide,…

Thursday July 30 Leave it to the Colorado Dance Festival to go out with a flourish. Wrapping up the fest’s month-long tenure in Boulder is a trio of performances by New York’s David Dorfman Dance, an urbane outfit working under contemporary choreographer Dorfman, who keeps audiences on their toes with…

Denver puppeteer Annie Zook looks like a laid-back, middle-aged librarian from Kansas. But on closer examination, you’ll see mischief in her eyes, and when she speaks, there’s a hint of a squeak that just might turn into a fairy-tale character’s voice at the slightest provocation. Zook, who plays host this…

Who does a good fan dance these days? The now-you-see-it, now-you-don’t days of Sally Rand popped like a bubble decades ago in favor of more hardcore pursuits. But Denver swing kid Michelle Baldwin is so certain the time is right for burlesque to make a comeback that she’s banking on…

Thursday July 23 When a bluesman of Charles Brown’s stature cancels a show due to illness, major disappointment results, along with best wishes for a speedy recovery. But for local roots-music lovers, all is not lost: Cajun fiddler Michael Doucet and Beausoleil will sub for Brown in a return engagement…

Thursday July 16 It’s summer, so loosen up. Try things on. Kick back. You can do all those things and still take in some culture. At the Changing Scene, 1527 1/2 Champa St., Summerplay, the longstanding downtown theater’s annual showcase of one-acts written by local playwrights, gets under way tonight…

Lisa Lusero’s boyish, austere body is a draftsman’s sketch of curves and angles, plain-faced with round glasses and an eighth of an inch of fuzz covering its scalp. But in the course of her one-woman theater piece Impossible Body, performed without props or costumes (and sometimes even without stage lighting),…