Arts Entertainment

What do Zen and cabaret have in common? Nothing, unless you're Nina Rolle. The artist describes Zen Cabaret as "a traveling medicine show that pitches a tent in whatever town it's in, and then these rogues show up and put on a production.

" Most recently, Rolle pitched her Zen tent in Boulder for...

Michael is a hyper-literate writer capable of dismissing the work of Rainer Maria Rilke as "infantile nonsense." But he has nonetheless sold out to become a best-selling novelist. His wife has been diagnosed with a brain tumor.

She wants him to read her diaries after her death -- and she wants to...

In this taut political play, written by an Israeli playwright, the first Intifada is covered from the perspective of a Palestinian family. Ami Dayan, who also directed, played the older of three brothers, Da'ud. This man was hardly likable.

He was a compromised character, tough and clear-eyed,...

With the theater's skilled performers having all kinds of fun with the nugatory plot and animating Gershwin's fabulous songs with their fine voices, Crazy for You was an evening of pure froth and fun. Scott Beyette was a lithe, leaping, tapping wonder as Bobby, a young man trying to revive an..

.

We first met Ashley while she was watching one of those smarmy television shrinks with her teenage son, Justin. The shrink's advice to a sexually incompatible couple inspired her to reveal far more than Justin wanted to know about her relationship with his father.

By conventional standards,...

Williams's Talk to Me Like the Rain is more a tone poem than a play, a small, wistful piece between a woman and a man who has just returned to her after a several-day absence. Urged by him to speak, she launches into a long monologue beginning, "I want to go away. I want to go away.

" The woman...

Aldonza is the peasant wench that Don Quixote insists is his beloved Dulcinea. Jean Arbeiter, a fine singer and actress, made her so dirty and fierce, so angered by Quixote's fulsome praise ("Once, just once, would you look at me as I really am?") that when she finally capitulated, singing gently.

..

Once a month, the best party in town happens after hours.

From 11 p.m. to 5 a.

m. Afrobeat, deep house and global soul music raise the roof of whatever warehouse is hosting the party. But it's not all about the music: Producers and hosts Peju Alawusa (aka Yorubawoman) and Ashara Ekundayo also.

..

As if musicians needed another reason not to make it into work.

The Tantrums Jam, hosted each Wednesday night at Kokopelli's by Tempa Singer and her Tantrums bandmates, has become the mid-week gathering place for local players to get loaded and get down. While guitarists currently make up a..

.

At the end of August, Winter Park Resort gives you a perfect fall getaway with the Famous Flamethrower's High Altitude Chili Cookoff Weekend. It's a small, elite contest, and the winner earns the Rocky Mountain region's spot in the World Chili Cookoff.

Meat and spice are all that's allowed -- no...

Each Saturday morning from late November until Christmas, Golden stages a holiday parade that seems to have time-traveled from an earlier era. School groups, bands, equestrian troupes and more are frequent participants, marching a few blocks through the center of a town that somehow gets more..

.

The Emmanuel Gallery on the Auraria campus is such a hassle to get to, it often gets overlooked. But that all changed when Emmanuel presented an exhibit so important that Denver Art Museum director Lewis Sharp spoke at the opening -- even though it was right in the middle of his own opening of.

..

The old cliche about too many chefs spoiling the soup became an old cliche for the usual reason: In the vast majority of cases, it's true.

But the men and women of Rabbit Is a Sphere are the exception that proves the rule. Robert Rutherford, Natalie Winslow and Christopher Nelsen all sing lead,..

.

No one has done more to promote Colorado's historic artists than Hugh Grant, director of the Kirkland Museum of Fine Decorative Art. But Grant only rarely mounts shows at the museum, which is one of the reasons that Vavra Triptych was so special.

Grant brought out work by husband and wife...

Aspen-based collector Kimiko Powers and her late husband, John, were connoisseurs of the old school. They were broad in their interests; as a result, they amassed some of the finest art works of art available. Ron Otsuka, the esteemed curator of Asian art at the Denver Art Museum, made friends.

..

We're not awarding this for any one particular performance, though if we had to choose among this year's crop, it'd be Everything Old Is New Again , in which Annie Dwyer revived one of her old tricks: going out into the audience, snatching patrons' drinks -- beer, wine, Scotch, it was all the.

..

It's just too easy to enter a theater, sit back and wait to be terrified, amazed, moved or entertained.

Theater is a live medium that works best when audience members are involved and there's a genuine current between them and the actors. When you attend Shadow Theatre Company productions, you..

.

Every once in a while, a great new band surfaces that seems fully formed -- like Athena, sprung from the head of Zeus. Greeley's Vitamins, which until recently stayed beneath the radar by playing mostly warehouse-type shows, is one such act.

Taking an eclectic approach to songwriting, Vitamins'...

To the Denver-centric, if you don't hail from the metro area, you might as well be from Mars. Maybe that's why the arrival of Louisville-based Tifah seems so, well, sudden and wonderfully foreign. It also probably has something to do with the fact that the group's members -- vocalist/organist.

..

Pee Pee.

It's hard to say out loud without giggling even a little bit. It's like a recession back to grade-school vernacular, and it's absolutely the silliest combination of two monosyllabic words since "wee wee." But who needs a clever, well-thought-out band name anyway?

This Denver-based...

J.R.'s is a great place to test your friends for closet homophobia.

It's so unassuming and under the radar that if your friends aren't up on the gay scene, they might not recognize the name. When you walk up, the bar -- looking like something straight off Bourbon Street, with a row of warm white..

.

There's something about stepping inside Mario's Double Daughter's on a Sunday night that takes you to a completely different dimension. Dimly lit with subtle red and blue lights, the place is outfitted with chairs that look like they're made out of lipstick.

As down-tempo grooves pour out of the...

One of the best things about being a male is the joy of having a penis. Not only is it fun to hold, but the simple act of peeing out of it feels quite nice! Few men are able to enjoy the simple act of elimination due to the typical height of lavatories and urinals.

Most are built so low that...

Turner is no axman-come-lately. When the late Tommy Bolin decided to leave Zephyr circa the early '70s, Turner took his place -- and he subsequently played guitar for the Legendary 4-Nikators and bluesman supreme Otis Taylor, whose 1996-2003 platters gained much of their power from Turner's..

.

There's something so satisfying about the perfect outfit.