The Top 10 - 405 Magazine

The Top 10

It’s a big, busy metro out there – if you can’t make it to everything, here’s where to start.

It’s A Big, Busy Metro Out There – If You Can’t Make It To Everything, Here’s Where To Start →

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Studies in Scarlet

The expression normally connotes fury, but in this case “Seeing Red” should prompt a whole range of emotions. The Paseo gallery draws on the combined talents of a dozen of its pre-eminent stars – Carl Shortt, Natalie Friedman, Sue Hale, Gayle Curry and more – to provide a spectrum of creative excellence sparked by the use of a single shade.

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Sweet Memories

For over 30 years, Norman’s Chocolate Festival has been circled on the calendar by art lovers and the sweet-toothed alike. Choose as many vendors as there are blank boxes on your ticket and watch them fill your take-home box with amazingly tempting chocolate treats, while free art activities provide extra interest and a reminder that the whole shebang benefits the Firehouse Art Center.

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Power Play

When Copland’s viscerally rousing “Fanfare for the Common Man” is the first piece in a concert rather than the grand finale, it’s a sign of great things to come. The OKC Philharmonic unleashes the dynamo of force named Colin Currie for a positively frenetic performance of Higdon’s Percussion Concerto in the next installment of its Classics series, entitled “Motion and Emotion.”

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THEY!

Insects take the Sam Noble spotlight this month, and there’s no need for a magnifying glass; the subjects are already enlarged in “Bugs Outside the Box,” featuring large-scale sculptures with educational material to accompany its four-foot-long beetles, and “Beautiful Beasts,” a collection of Thomas Shahan’s extreme close-ups of Oklahoma arthropods. Even entomophobes may find themselves fascinated by the level of detail.

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Special, Dark

Sweet? Certainly. But this over-21-only soiree on Automobile Alley isn’t all sunshine and sugar; there’s a tantalizing extra flavor of adventure and luxury amid the live music, daring auction and wine, champagne and gourmet coffees that fuel Chocolate Decadence. Bring a date – or prowl for one there – and enjoy the perennially sold-out show.

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The Royal Treatment

Reduxion Theatre Company excels in restaging the classics, especially Shakespeare, in new settings that augment and explore thematic resonance. For a Valentine treat they’re moving the stubbornness, sudden ardor and silliness of “Love’s Labour’s Lost” to 1953 Spain, when the trendy foibles of debonair royals were the stuff of international news and envious fantasy.

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L’Amour Toujours

Love makes the dancers go ’round in the OKC Ballet’s flashy restaging of “Paris Rouge,” a colorful, romantic comedy of Parisian errors that anchors a triple bill alongside the state premiere of Bournonville’s “Napoli Divertissements” and the cheerful “Pushing Pennies” by OKC Ballet artistic director Robert Mills. Two nights only – experience la vie en rouge.

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Get Back

It’s been far longer than 20 years since the day Sgt. Pepper taught the Beatles to play – but in the hands of this fabulous four, 1967 seems like only yesterday. Outstandingly accurate in look, sound and feel, tribute band The Return is coming to Norman to celebrate the 45th anniversary of “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” in exciting, even Beatlemanic, style.

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The Beat Movement

A little exercise is good for the cardiac system, which should encourage you to get out on the dance floor at the OKC Heart Ball; although just by being there you’re helping to improve the health of the community, since the upbeat black-tie gala – themed Wonders of the Heart – raises money for heart and stroke research in Oklahoma.

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Full Disclosure

If you only know Bryan Adams as the musician behind “Summer of ’69,” he has something to show you. The traveling exhibition “Exposed” overflows with intimate portraits of international stars and celebrities, from Lana Del Rey to Queen Elizabeth II – the cream of the collection Adams has photographed over the last dozen years.

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