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Last Updated: Oct 16th, 2008 - 13:33:17 |
Situated inside the narrow extent of a basement just off Colfax Avenue is the Underground Teahouse. It accommodates a stage about two-feet-high from the ground; four microphones stand quietly upon its platform and lights dimly hum above it.
The smells of various foods, which signal the start of a potluck, begin drifting toward the stage from a table in the back corner. Only a few guests have arrived on this weekend evening, but there are many more to come.
The playbill is chock-full of local acts and the atmosphere is perfectly cozy. A smiling, slender, plaid-laden woman comes down from upstairs. Leaping onto the platform, she dispenses a wealth of information to the crowd and the evening begins.
The woman is Laura Goldhamer. The place, Brooks Center for Spirituality. Located at 14th Avenue and Williams Street, it presents a vast variety of fine arts and the true spiritual gift of divine science.
According to a description at their website, divine science is "an organized teaching pertaining to God and the manifestation of God in Creation. The founding truth of Divine Science is that limitless Being, God, is Good, is equally present everywhere, and is the All of everything. God is pure Spirit, absolute, changeless, eternal, manifesting in and as all Creation." These teachings and beliefs are not part of a religion.
"Spirituality has to do with reaching higher levels of conscious," said the director of Brooks Center, Jane Kopp. Goldhamer pertains that, to reach these levels, you have to be "accessing the divine through creativity."
Since 2007, Brooks has been getting more and more creative with the help of Goldhamer. A native of Colorado, Goldhamer calls Denver home. She is also a banjo player, folk-singer and a tad on the alternative side.
After coming back to Colorado from college in Connecticut, Goldhamer wanted to get a job at the Brooks Center. She explains that her job is "to varying degrees defined and to varying degrees, just evolving." It wasn't until 2008 that Goldhamer was assigned the title of resident program director for the Underground Teahouse. Before that her job was "experimental...last spring I spearheaded making the basement into the venue."
That venue hosts an evening centered upon a potluck and a concert as well as an all-day bazaar that features foods, crafts, poetry readings, music and open-air vending. The talent that usually plays at the Underground Teahouse is native. They are friends of our fine city, ready and willing to show you what they have to offer. They are prepared to found a community filled with personal relationships of the artistic kind.
Goldhamer coordinates events strategically, in hopes of creating an intergenerational community of spiritually enlightened friends. As she put it, "There are so many scenes that it should be about pulling them together, not really even interscene, but intergenerational."
The teahouse serves as a creative outlet for David McClinton. His play, "A night in the City," is running from May 2 to May 22 at the center. Other events go on during different days of the week.
There are yoga classes at 7 p.m. on Wednesdays; the Free Denver School hosts free baking classes on 5 p.m. on Wednesdays and on Saturday mornings there are meditations. Every Sunday morning services are held, usually with lunch and discussions afterwards.
Now, both Goldhamer and Kopp are looking into the future. Kopp believes in a balanced representation of the community as well as child care. Kopp wants parents to be able to "take a little break and pursue their spiritual life."
Goldhamer is looking forward to "nourishing" a community of artists under the moniker of Long Spoon Records. The idea is to have a place where artists are free to communicate and become involved. After letting their dogs all go, artists can look forward to a place to play, be managed and in the future, to record. "We are thinking about putting out a compilation," Goldhamer said. "We are compiling it, a single disk of about 20 to 25 Colorado artists." She hopes to have Long Spoon in order and this compilation out before June.
Brooks is deeply rooted in Denver and somehow, it feels as though a spirit, some sort of ever-lasting passion, does run through its hallways, filling up the minds and bodies of everyone who sets foot in them. Whether that spirit transforms into something mystical and divine, religious or skeptical, or artistic and communal, the Brooks Center faithfully hopes that its spirit will always be with those it touches.
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