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Culture


Culture

The rich cultural diversity of a 20% ethnic minority population means that black, Hispanic and Native American cultures have a vibrant presence in Denver. Add to this the fact that Denver citizens are the most highly educated in America, contributing more public funding to the arts per capita than any other US city, and it is hardly surprising that the Denver Center for the Performing Arts, 14th and Curtis Street (tel: (303) 893 4100), is the nation's second largest. Nine separate venues include a traditional classical theatre, small intimate spaces and a large in-the-round concert hall. As well as hosting all the major touring companies, it is home to Denver's most prestigious music, dance and theatre companies.

Tickets for all theatre and concert venues are available from The Ticketman, 6800 North Broadway (tel: (303) 430 1111).

Music:
The Colorado Symphony Orchestra's season lasts from September to May at Denver Center for the Performing Arts. Their occasional Sunday afternoon 'casual classics' concerts are particularly good value. Opera Colorado is the only company in the US producing grand opera in the round. English translations of the words projected above the stage, children's opera workshops and a road show of summer concerts are all designed to make opera accessible to a wider audience.

Theatre:
Denver is a major international theatre player, presenting prestigious world premiers as well as sustaining a thriving local theatre scene. An imaginative partnership between the Denver Center for the Performing Arts and the Royal Shakespeare Company has attracted the legendary director Peter Hall with the world premier of John Barton's epic ten-and-a-half-hour Tantalus cycle for the winter 2000 season.

As well as the Denver Center Theatre Company resident at the Denver Center for the Performing Arts, there are countless small theatre companies. The Changing Scene, 1527½ Champa Street (tel: (303) 893 5775), specialises in new works; the Compass Theatre Company, at the Arts Theatre of the West, 721 Santa Fe Drive (tel: (303) 595 3800), presents mainly Shakespeare and other classics; and the tiny Germinal Stage Denver, 2450 West 44th Avenue (tel: (303) 455 7108), stages everything from experimental productions to classics. Light comedies and musicals run at Denver Victorian Playhouse, 4201 Hooker Street (tel: (303) 433 4343), and the Avenue Theatre, 2119 East 17th Avenue (tel: (303) 321 5925).

Dance:
Colorado Ballet presents full classical ballet and shorter pieces at Denver Center for the Performing Arts. Two major modern dance companies do original pieces in Denver and on nationwide tours. Cleo Parker Robinson Dance, 119 Park Avenue (tel: (303) 295 1759), is a multicultural group based in the African Methodist Episcopal Church, while Kim Robards Dance, 821 Acoma Street (tel: (303) 825 4847), brings in international choreographers. Both companies teach dance with classes for all levels from tiny tots to professional dancers.

Film:
Multiplex cinemas, such as Metropolitan MetroLux 12, 1380 North Denver Avenue, show all the latest releases as well as some classics. Art films, foreign-language features and popular crossover titles can be found at the Chez Artiste and the Mayan, a restored Art Deco Mayan revival-style theatre. For documentary and larger-than-life adventure, the giant screen at the IMAX film theatre at the Denver Museum of Science and Nature is spectacular. From the great Titanic, broken and derelict on the ocean floor to astronauts floating hundreds of miles above the earth the scenes are unforgettable.

Ridley Scott's Thelma & Louise (1991) and Steven Spielberg's Indiana Jones & The Last Crusade (1989) are just two of the movies filmed in Colorado. For fans of George Lucas' Star Wars trilogy, Luke Skywalker's X-Wing Fighter is on long-term display at Wings Over the Rockies Air & Space Museum, 711 East Academy Boulevard (tel: (303) 360 5360).

Cultural events:
Denver's rich cultural mix is exuberantly celebrated in ethnic festivals throughout the year. The Denver March PowWow is an annual celebration of Native American culture, featuring music, dance and storytelling. There is a major Black Arts Festival in July, a German Oktoberfest and the second largest St Patrick's Day Parade in the nation (March). Cinco de Mayo (May) is one of America's largest celebrations of Latino culture with food, music, dance and arts.

Cherry Creek Arts Festival
(July 4th weekend) has the tree-lined avenues of Cherry Creek North jam-packed with street entertainers and gourmet food booths. Every item in the art and craft exhibition, from photography to sculpture and jewellery is of the very highest quality. At the International Buskerfest (June), jugglers, mime artists and comedians transform 16th Street Mall into a mile-long outdoor theatre, while in October the Colorado Performing Arts Festival has music, dance and theatre spilling onto the streets from the Denver Center for the Performing Arts.

However, true to its Wild West origins, Denver's largest festival is the National Western Stock Show & Rodeo (January), attracting over 400,000 cowboys. This started life in 1906 in a tent on the present day showgrounds, but still exists for the purpose of interesting and educating youth in agriculture and improving the keeping and breeding of livestock.

Literary Notes

Horace Greeley, founding editor of the New York Tribune, described Denver in the mid-nineteenth century, as a 'log city of 150 dwellings, not three fourths completed nor two thirds inhabited nor one third fit to be'. By 1917, local author, Dabney Otis Collins, could declare, 'When I walk down a Denver street, I always feel as if I were listening to a brass band.' A different image again is portrayed in Jack Kerouac's classic novel, On the Road, where the action takes place in the loose-living Mile High City of the 50s.

Denver is home to Stephen White the best selling author and creator of fictional psychologist Alan Gregory who first appeared in Privileged Information in 1991.




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