Events across the state range from groundbreaking premieres to returning classics

By the Thirst Team

Get Out of Town is our roundup of the best events across Colorado for the next few weeks. For more happenings, check out our events calendar and last week’s events roundup.

This week, we are focusing on performing arts across Colorado. Here are our top picks in Colorado theater, dance and music. Let us know what you think, and tell us what we missed.

Theater

Miner’s Alley Playhouse in Golden presents Neil Simon’s female version of “The Odd Couple” starting on Friday and running through March 8. This time around, Florence and Olive are the mismatched roommates in the classic story. Miner’s Alley also opens the regional premiere of the Paul Strioli dysfunctional family comedy “My Mother and the Michigan/Ohio War” Feb. 20 to March 29.

The Boulder Ensemble Theatre Company also will stage a regional premiere. “Brooklyn Laundry” by John Patrick Shanley runs Friday through Feb. 15 at the Savoy Denver, and Feb. 20 to March 15 at the Dairy Arts Center in Boulder. The play by the award-winning writer of “Moonstruck” and “Doubt” is about “three sisters, a guy who operates a laundromat and the random tricks life plays on them for better or worse.”

Stories on Stage and Buntport Theater will collaborate on “Chock Full of Nuts,” an absurd short story collection, on Feb. 15 at the Su Teatro in Denver.

The Denver Center for the Performing Arts presents the world premiere of “Godspeed,” a post-slavery Western, Jan 30 to Feb 22 at the Kilstrom Theatre. Their productions of “Dracula: A Comedy of Terrors” and “Cowboys and East Indians” also continue through the month.

Samuel Beckett’s classic “Waiting for Godot” opens Friday and runs through Feb. 22 at the Aurora Fox Arts Center.

Speaking of classics, the Candlelight Dinner Theater will stage the musical “Hello, Dolly!,” which opens Thursday and runs through April 4.

Music

The Denver Brass presents “Rhythms of the Cosmos” on Saturday, Feb. 7, at the Newman Center in south Denver. The centerpiece of the concert is the world premiere of “Guardians of Time” by local composer and Denver Brass trumpeter Sean Schafer Hennessy. The 14-piece ensemble also will play pieces by Holst, Debussy and Wolfe.

The Parker Symphony Orchestra will showcase works by early and contemporary female American composers, including Florence Price and Joan Tower, on Feb. 20 at the PACE Center in Parker.

On Feb. 28, the Lakewood Cultural Center hosts The Langston Hughes Project: Ask Your Mama (12 Moods for Jazz), a multimedia jazz concert featuring the Ron McCurdy Quartet. The show uses spoken word, music, history, visual arts and poetry to present Langston Hughes’ kaleidoscopic jazz poem suite “Ask Your Mama.”

Dance

Colorado Ballet will stage “The Great Gatsby” at the Ellie Caulkins Opera House from Friday through Feb. 8. The long-awaited ballet was scheduled to premiere in 2021 but was delayed by the pandemic.

Wonderbound debuts “Decadent Desires,” its new collaboration with the Colorado Jazz Repertory Orchestra. The show, set in the Roaring 20s, will run from Feb. 26 to March 8.

And looking one day past February, Ballet Ariel will stage its original dance interpretation of Louisa May Alcott’s “Little Women” on March 1 at the Schoolhouse Theater in Parker.

As always, please send us your events and announcements. We’re happy to share them. If they don’t fit in the Get Out of Town column, we will add them to our events calendar.