With so many wonderful entertainment offerings planned in the coming year, it’s nearly impossible to narrow down the top offerings. But here are the events I’m putting on my calendar.


The eve of a new decade presents a perfect time to reflect on the past 10 years, to look at the changes in our lives and in our state and nation. For Iowa, The Gazette chose 10 storylines of the decade that have changed or will change the state’s trajectory. This is No.

Another decade has come and gone. As we enter the 2020s, the Press-Citizen reached out to area experts, creators and enthusiasts involved in arts and culture to ask them what their favorite pieces and performances of the past 10 years have been. Here are their responses:

Famous Louisiana-based group BeauSoleil is coming to Hancher Auditorium to perform their show, “A Cajun Christmas,” on Dec. 7. The band continues the tradition of Cajun music and the spirit of Louisiana, including the many cultures that influenced it.

Grammy-winner Michael Doucet is returning to the Corridor with his band, BeauSoleil, for a Hancher concert Saturday night (12/7) in Iowa City. “A Cajun Christmas” will feature swamp-pop takes on classic holiday tunes, as well as a heaping helping of Doucet’s solo and ensemble songs.

Los Angeles-based dance company Contra-Tiempo and band Las Cafeteras will bring their show “joyUS, justUS” to Hancher Auditorium for one night only today.

When she was a little girl growing up in Mexico, Miriam Alarcon Avila loved watching Mexican professional wrestling, known as lucha libre, on TV and playing with her luchador action figures in their distinctive masks. “I saw them as superheroes,” she said.

Poised in the shadows both on and offstage, lunging under the stage lights, and speaking stories wherein movement is the teller, the UI Department of Dance’s annual Dance Gala, entitled *In Motion,* transported Hancher Auditorium into a night of magic.

Robots took over Hancher Auditorium Thursday evening to perform a series of skits and routines as part of the University of Iowa’s Robot Theater Project.

Dance Gala is returning to Hancher, bringing with it themes of growth and change. The event, which at one point would draw upwards of 2,000 attendees to the venue, has only been held inside the venerable theater once since it had to be rebuilt after the destructive 2008 floods.