What to do when there’s ‘nothing’ to do…

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A group of venetian, mardi gras mask or disguise on a dark background

If your organization is planning an event of any kind, please email Caitlin at [email protected]

EVENTS

Black Lives Matter co-founder, Patrisse Cullors, reads Motus Theater’s UndocuMonologues: Stories from our Undocumented Neighbors. 6 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 11, via Zoom. This event is free, but registration is required:
motustheater.org/events

In this special performance from Motus Theater’s Shoebox Stories: UndocuAmerica podcast, Patrisse Cullors, co-founder of Black Lives Matter, stands in the shoes of Motus UndocuMonologist Armando Peniche by reading aloud his autobiographical story of racial profiling and the danger of inflammatory rhetoric targeting Mexican immigrants. After the reading, Cullors and Peniche reflect on the stories of those who survive police brutality. Slam poet Dominique Christina will share a poem written in honor of Peniche’s story. Then Nana Gyamfi, executive director of Black Alliance for Just Immigration, and Sydelle O’Brien, an undocumented Black activist, will lead a conversation. Music by Afro-Latino musical theater artist Carlos Heredia will be interwoven throughout the performance.

Voices of Change, Part Two: A History of Race & Social Justice in Longmont. 7:30 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 11. Free. Livestreamed to Longmont Museum’s Facebook, LongmontPublicMedia.org, and Local Comcast Channel 8/880

Local civic leaders and activists reconvene to share their perspectives on Longmont’s history of race relations and the ongoing efforts to create a more just, equitable and inclusive community. This panel discussion will feature Lorne Jenkins, CEO of Mini Money Management; Louie Lopez, community coordinator at City of Longmont; Glenda Robinson from Longmont Multicultural Action Committee; Brett Lee Shelton from Native American Rights Fund, and more. Copresented with the Longmont Multicultural Action Committee. 

Stories on Stage presents ‘A Kiss is Still a Kiss.’ 7 p.m. Friday, Feb. 12. Ticket holders will receive a link to the performance. Tickets are $15 and available at storiesonstage.org or by calling 303-494-0523.

Just in time for Valentine’s Day, this February show offers up a selection of funny and romantic stories. It’s the perfect entertainment for a date night as Kate Gleason, Ilasiea Gray and Ryan Warner help us fall in love with love. The 20th Anniversary Season will be virtual/livestreamed from the Nomad Playhouse in Boulder. Stories on Stage is teaming with Nomad Playhouse and Earth Coast Productions to create shows that will be professional multi-camera productions with the actors performing from the stage.

Boulder Bicycle Film Festival. 6 p.m. Friday, February 12-Feb. 21. Price: $10-$30, bicyclefilmfestival.com

Let the Bicycle Film Festival’s curated collection of shorts take you on a journey around the world as you learn about a charismatic Ghanian immigrant in Amsterdam who teaches refugee adult women to ride bikes; experience a birds-eye view of a BLM bicycle protest ride from New York to D.C.; feel the anguish of a father’s loss; the struggle of a young woman and her bike in Iran; and reprieve from genocide through cycle sport. The festival begins at 6 p.m. on Feb. 12 and can be viewed anytime, or multiple times, until the end of the day on Feb. 21. A portion of the sales benefit Community Cycles, a nonprofit bike shop and advocacy organization.

Boulder Phil presents Mozart and Mendelssohn. 7:30 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 13, via Zoom. Tickets are $40 per household, boulderphil.org

Pianist Simone Dinnerstein will conduct a string quintet orchestration of Mozart’s famous Piano Concerto No. 21, with the second movement memorably used in the film Elvira Madigan. The evening opens with two sentimental works by American trailblazer Scott Joplin, and concludes with the iconic Mendelssohn Octet. 

Opera Amore:’ A Valentine’s Opera. 7:30 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 13, Dairy Arts Center, 2590 Walnut St., Boulder. Price: $35, thedairy.org.

Boulder Opera presents a concert of Italian Opera favorite arias, duets, trios and quartets by Verdi, Puccini, Bellini, Mozart and more. The program explores different aspects of love, such as love yet to be, dreaming of love, new love, lost love, betrayal and reconciliation — all in a romantic cafe-style setting. Make it a date and enjoy a socially distanced drink while you’re entertained in the lobby of the Dairy Arts Center, with fresh air from the terrace. Featuring soprano Phoenix Gayles, mezzo-soprano Dianela Acosta, tenor Nathan Snyder and baritone Armando Contreras with Maggie Hinchliffe at the piano. 

KGNU-CFCZ Virtual Mardi Gras & Live Broadcast Party. 7 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 13, via Zoom. RSVP here.

KGNU Community Radio and Colorado Friends of Cajun-Zydeco Music and Dance (CFCZ) are proud to present Virtual Mardi Gras and Live Broadcast Party on Saturday, Feb. 13, featuring over three hours of music with live DJs, plus a live costume contest and dance music lesson. Donations are welcomed and encouraged for this premier winter fundraiser, as all proceeds help support KGNU’s mission to bring you high-quality local news and culture. To join the party on Zoom, please RSVP by Feb. 12. Attendees will be sent a link to the Zoom event by 4 p.m. on Saturday, Feb. 13.

ART

Longmont Library presents Online Art Exposition. Library All Ages Art Expo webpage: bit.ly/Lib-Art-Expo

During the month of January, the Longmont Public Library collected more than 100 images of local makers’ favorite creations — drawings, paintings, photographs, knitting projects, wood works, sculptures — and combined them into a family-friendly, all-ages digital art show reflecting how creative and talented the Longmont community is. All kinds of creative visual endeavors were welcome in the exhibit, with the only condition being that they had to be family-friendly. Library staff assembled the images into an online rotating gallery of images on the Library’s website.

Dr. Karen Strassler: Seeing/Unseeing the ‘Chinese’: visuality, race, and contemporary art in Indonesia. Noon. Thursday, Feb. 11, via Zoom. Zoom Meeting: cuboulder.zoom.us/j/94975192265

Dr. Karen Strassler, professor of anthropology at Queens College and CUNY Graduate Center, will speak about her research on visuality, race and contemporary art in Indonesia. Her research examines the visual politics by which “Chineseness” has become both hypervisible and invisible in work by contemporary Indonesian artists. Strassler will offer critical insights into histories of racialized violence in the archipelago.

WORDS

Megan E. Freeman and Olivia Chada in conversation. 5 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 11, via Zoom. This event is free, but registration is required at Eventbrite. More information at boulderbookstore.net

Megan E. Freeman and Olivia Chadha will speak about their young-adult fiction novels in this virtual event. In Freeman’s Alone, 12-year-old Maddie wakes up one morning completely alone in a town that has been mysteriously evacuated and abandoned. With no one to rely on, no power and no working phone lines or internet access, Maddie slowly learns to survive on her own. In Chada’s Rise of the Red Hand, the South Asian Province is split in two. “Uplanders” lead luxurious lives inside a climate-controlled biodome, but outside, the poor scrape by with discarded black-market robotics, threatened by rising sea levels, unbreathable air and deadly superbugs. Ashiva works for the Red Hand, an underground network of revolutionaries fighting the government. When Ashiva crosses paths with the brilliant hacker Riz-Ali, a privileged Uplander who finds himself embroiled in the Red Hand’s dangerous activities, they uncover a horrifying conspiracy that the government will do anything to bury. Those who register will be emailed a Zoom link 24 hours before the event.

Laird Hunt — ‘Zorrie,’ in conversation with Tarashea Nesbit. 5 p.m. Tuesday, Feb. 16, via Zoom. Tickets are $5 through Eventbrite. boulderbookstore.net

Laird Hunt will speak about his new book, Zorrie, in conversation with author Tarashea Nesbit (Beheld, The Wives of Alamos) for this special event. Zorrie Underwood’s modest and hardscrabble home county was the only constant in her young life. After losing both her parents, Zorrie moved in with her aunt, whose own death orphaned Zorrie all over again in Depression-era Indiana. Drifting west, Zorrie survived on odd jobs, sleeping where she could, before finding a position at a radium processing plant. Spanning an entire lifetime, Laird Hunt’s novel offers an intimate portrait of the dreams that propel one tenacious woman onward and the losses that she cannot outrun.

An Evening with Award-Winning Author Camille Dungy. 6:30 p.m. Wednesday, Feb. 17. Free, but registration is required: bit.ly/3q4S01s

Award-winning poet and essayist Camille Dungy will entertain and engage audiences with readings from her poetry and essay collections in this virtual event. A Q&A session will follow her reading. Dungy has authored four poetry books, most recently Trophic Cascade, winner of the Colorado Book Award, and the memoir-in-essays Guidebook to Relative Strangers: Journeys into Race, Motherhood and History, a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. She is a professor at Colorado State University.