Author: John Moore
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Theater comeback: DCPA releases post-pandemic schedule of shows
The Denver Center for the Performing Arts announced its eagerly awaited plans for a return to live indoor programming Tuesday with an emphasis of delivering shows it had previously promised audiences before the pandemic brought one of the nation’s largest nonprofit arts organizations to a virtual standstill in March 2020. “The DCPA is getting back…
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“DANNY SAVES DENVER”
Danny Newman is a bit of a unicorn. He’s a self-made tech entrepreneur. And a cultural preservationist. And a full-on superhero to lovers of all things Denver cool. Or what’s left of it, anyway. “I want to make ‘DANNY SAVES DENVER’ T-shirts,” said Collin Parson, the Arvada Center’s Director of Galleries. “He saves these local…
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New owners give “The Merc” a fresh start
The endangered Mercury Cafe, a culinary and cultural Denver mainstay at 22nd and California streets since 1990, is not going the way of El Chapultepec, Racines, the Denver Diner and dozens of other iconic haunts that did not outlast the pandemic. “The Merc” has a new lease on life under a new ownership group that…
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Slain Arvada policeman Gordon Beesley was calm presence on chaotic Denver music scene
Coworkers and friends gathered in Olde Town Arvada Tuesday to remember Fallen Officer Gordon Beesley. Officer Beesley was a school resource officer at Oberon Middle School. (Video by Katie Klann) Gordon Beesley never should have been in a band, The Railbenders frontman Jim Dalton once said. “He’s just too good for this crazy world.” But…
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COLUMN: Celebrating Juneteenth with a birthday bonus
donnie L. betts cq stopped the party the day he came into the world on the family farm in the small rural community of De Kalb in northeast Texas. The shindig had begun that June 19 day as the family’s annual Juneteenth celebration, marking the date back in 1865 when African Americans in Texas were…
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Colorado natives to perform for American Ballet Theatre in Green Mountain Falls
Boulder natives Claire Davison and Leah Baylin were born into the ballet, but neither has performed in Colorado since becoming members of the prestigious American Ballet Theatre. That changes June 25 when the famed dance company concludes a four-week residency with two days of outdoor performances at Green Box Arts Festival in Green Mountain Falls.…
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No punches pulled in Colorado Klan exhibit
When History Colorado recently published its long-sealed registry of local Ku Klux Klan membership from the 1920s, it blood-tied two longtime Denver cultural institutions to the most vile supremacy group in American history. And they did not duck, cover, spin or pivot. Instead, they chose radical transparency. The 1,300-page roster included George Figgis, the first…
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Some of Denver’s most iconic halls among venues pleading for promised recovery funds
“We are past the breaking point.” That’s the message the National Independent Venue Association sent to Congress on Wednesday in a fiery memo calling for the expedited release of $16 billion in promised emergency relief that was signed into law back on Dec. 27. “We can’t hang on any longer,” the group said in its…
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Salem will be next chairman of DCPA starting in 2022
The Denver Center for the Performing Arts has named Hassan Salem, who rose from teller to head of Commercial Banking for U.S. Bank, as just the fourth Chairman in the non-profit’s 44-year history. Salem will succeed attorney Martin Semple, who has held the position since 2017, effective July 1, 2022. Since 2016, Salem has chaired…
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“The Denver That Is No More”
If you think of Denver as a rose and Phil Goodstein as the thorn in its side, well then, you have a pretty good idea of the prickly relationship between the prolific Denver historian and the city he loves … when he doesn’t hate it. Goodstein, author of 28 books on his hometown, has told…