AROUND TOWN
Downtown Aurora Visual Arts new facility grand opening 4 – 6 p.m. Jan. 14, at DAVA, 1405 Florence St. Free. Email director@davarts.org for more information.
After several months of constant commotion on Florence Street, the time has finally come: Downtown Aurora Visual Arts is unveiling its newly tricked out facility. DAVA, the city’s longstanding bastion of art education, has been systematically dismantled and partially demolished in recent months amid a massive facility overhaul. With a price tag totaling nearly $1.9 million, the building originally constructed as a small strip mall in the 1950s now boasts 8,636 square feet of space and a slew of slick new features, including several classrooms, offices, bathrooms and a new media room. New additions total more than 3,600 square feet of space and inched three studio spaces for computer and media arts, as well as a new lobby area and a clay studio. Don’t miss this chance to get a fresh glimpse of one of northwest Aurora’s shiniest gems.
ROBOTS art show opening reception 5 – 7 p.m. Jan. 13, at Frederic C. Hamilton Family Gallery in Children’s Hospital Colorado, 13123 E. 16th Ave. Call 720-777-3413 for more information.
Sure, everybody loves the robots they keep in their pockets 24 hours a day or stare at ceaselessly for eight hours a day, five days a week. These pesky devices allow humans to pay painfully high rents, find the nearest place to find pad thai and contact with anyone across the world at any given time. Oh yeah, they can also access any piece of information recorded in human history, whenever, wherever. Not a bad tradeoff for probably giving us crippling, rectangular tumors on our domes. Here’s a newsflash there are other robots in the world, people. And not all of them are as painfully addictive as the ubiquitous iEverything. It just so happens that there’s an entire gallery full of these off-brand humanoids at a studio space in Children’s hospital Colorado this month. Featuring original robot-themed artworks by local creatives Daniel Sorensen, Corrina Espinosa, Dan “Colfax” Stephenson, and others, the show offers high-quality art in a unique, perhaps unexpected setting.
ONSTAGE
Arabian Nights 7:30 p.m. Jan 8 & 9 (both performances already sold out), The Aurora Fox Arts Center Studio Theater. 9900 E. Colfax Ave. Tickets start at $22. The next performance with tickets still available is Friday Jan. 15 at 7:30 p.m.
Looks like you have to know somebody special to get into this one. With the first two performances already sold out, the Aurora Fox Arts Center’s first show of 2016 promises to be a lively retelling of a classic, timeless tale. You know the gist of it: Cunning Scheherezade survives 1,000 nights with murderous King Shahryar by telling him tales so riveting he can’t help but keep her alive in order to hear the next installment of her compelling, winding yarns. Starring Fox favorite Lilli Hokama as Scheherezade and newcomer Abner Genece as Shahryar, “Arabian Nights” at The Fox should be an enchanting take on a bona fide staple.
MUSIC
Dave Preston 6 p.m. Jan. 12, Dry Dock Brewing Company’s South Dock, 15120 E. Hampden Ave. Free. Call 303-400-5606 for more information.
Leaving the house this time of year can be … demanding. Between the biting nip, unshoveled sidewalks, and bumper to bumper traffic, well, everywhere (and, yes, that last one is completely your fault, 100,00 annual transplants, whoever you are) it often makes much more sense to just sit on the ol’ futon and binge Netflix until you bust out of your Spanx. Word on the street is “Making a Murderer” is an enticing carrot-on-a-stick for that exact sentiment. But, good readers, vitamin D, fresh oxygen and human interaction are still important. So get a dose of each of those aforementioned essentials next Tuesday as well as some local suds and tunes at Dry Dock Brewing Company’s South Dock. Resident acoustic crooner Dave Preston will be belting tunes at the brewery’s weekly acoustic showcase and, based on daveprestonmusic.net, he ain’t bad. Offering everything from incendiary blues riffs to acoustic originals, Preston is a versatile musician perfect for livening up a dreary Tuesday. He also has a few videos on his site featuring ambient, electric tracks that sound like they were plucked out of one of the many training and/or race montages in 1998’s “Without Limits.” We see you, Billy Crudup, we see you.