Cultural Olympiad

From January 22 to March 21, the best artists from Canada and around the world will play in our own backyard. Genre-bending theatre; stunning virtuoso dance; fierce, fresh music; breathtaking visual and digital art extravaganzas — Cultural Olympiad 2010, presented by Bell, will bring it all to Metro Vancouver and the Sea to Sky corridor.
Events
Painter-turned-sculptor branches out - Cultural Olympiad Features : Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics
In a career first, acclaimed Montreal painter Etienne Zack will debut his first large-scale, three-dimensional sculpture during the Vancouver 2010 Cultural Olympiad.
The sculpture, Untitled Circuit (Name,Medium,Size,Year), is modelled after Zack’s 2008 painting by the same name. While the sculpture is a “purified” version of the original piece, he says the central idea is still very present.
“The [painting’s] perspective is distorted, there’s all kinds of colours and things that disrupt the space,” says Zack. “There are many different time periods within the same painting.”
Accordingly, the sculpture uses colourful items, ranging from pieces of furniture to typewriters, to text and imagery from art magazines, to convey its message. Zack says Untitled Circuit (Name,Medium,Size,Year) represents the ways that cultural systems, like the art industry or the sporting industry, are produced and given meaning in society.
“The sculpture is based on the production of anything. In this case it is art-making and art distribution and art promotion,” he says. “I’m talking about making a work, and then writing about it and the whole industry of curating and talking about the work and pushing the work.”
Before beginning a painting, Zack usually makes small sculptures in his studio that would act as inspiration for his paintings. He often uses found objects and his own artists’ tools to build the models. “So basically what I’m doing now is inverting them.”
Although this is the first major sculpture Zack has produced, he says many of his paintings could be made into sculptures or installations.
“A lot of the paintings I’ve done are done, kind of, as sketches for sculptures. They’re very sculptural,” he says. “A lot of people say they’re quite surreal, but actually, they all could be sculptures.”
“Untitled Circuit (Name,Medium,Size,Year)” will be showcased at Five-Sixty, 560 Seymour Street, Vancouver from January 28 to February 28, from 11 am to 6 pm; free.
Shared paradise - Cultural Olympiad Features : Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics
Set in a garden and lined with lush language, Paradise Garden is “unabashedly joyful, hopeful and romantic,” says playwright and lead Lucia Frangione.
Based on a story she heard three years ago about a series of hate crimes towards Muslims, the play is about the love story of two neighbors from different cultural backgrounds.
“The play is a response to the gross misunderstandings people have,” says Frangione. “I wanted to explore not just the differences, but also the similarities between these people.”
The story highlights the lives of two families: a Muslim family from Turkey and a secular West Coast Canadian family.
“I wanted to show a Muslim family that is very contemporary and working globally. The mother is re-exploring her religious background, the father is secular and the daughter is finding her way between those two paths.”
The career-driven, globetrotting daughter is played by Frangione —she did have to audition for the role — who falls in love with a stereotypically Canadian boy next door. Their romance plays out on centre stage.
“It’s a simple love story that resonates on a lot of levels. There’s a story about being Canadian, about the arts (Frangione’s character is an art curator) and about the possibility of having intercultural understanding.”
While the story is undeniably romantic, there are also elements of sorrow, pain, wit and dark humour in the play, which was commissioned by Vancouver’s Arts Club Theatre, and is Frangione’s 26th work.
Although her plays touch on a wide range of issues, the Alberta-born playwright says she usually writes about spiritual and social issues from a feminist perspective, which is usually evident in her character development.
“I always like to invert typecasts. It’s usually the man who is out there, career-focused, and in this case it’s [lead actress] Layla who’s off travelling and is career-focused,” says Frangione. She says she is confident about the play’s likeability. “This play is one of the rare ones where I feel like anyone will come and enjoy it. It works on enough levels that I feel pretty confident about it.”
“My goal was to earn a happy ending. And I think we’ve earned any happiness and joy it brings.”
“Paradise Garden” runs March 11 to April 11 at The Stanley Theatre, 2750 Granville Street, Vancouver; (604) 687-1644; Tickets are $25 to $59.
Dancing love, sex and death - Cultural Olympiad Features : Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics
Last March, Barbara Bourget’s mother passed away. In the midst of her pain and the chaos, the acclaimed Vancouver-based choreographer, dancer and co-founder of Kokoro Dance started thinking about love and death. A few months later, two of her grandchildren were born.
“I wanted to explore this in the context of this incredible loss that I suffered personally. Love is so many things. It can be bitter, sweet, it can be profound, banal, it can be all sorts of things,” she says. “What is it that makes you feel that feeling in your centre? What is it that moves you to tears, or to laughter?”
The resulting work is Kokoro Dance: L.S.D. (Love, Sex and Death), a 24-minute three-section dance piece that explores these themes using butoh dance as the medium. Butoh, which is literally “dance step” in Japanese, is a post-World War II style that was first performed in 1959. (For an example of butoh, watch this video)
While western audiences may not be familiar with butoh, Bourget says it is starting to “infect” dancers around the world with its philosophy of mind-body-soul connection.
“For me, butoh investigates the authentic dance that is you. Whether that incorporates ballet, tap, circus arts, whatever, butoh is big enough to encompass everything that makes you an individual,” she says.
“I’m almost 60, and I’ve danced for 56 years. All of who I am, what I am, what I’ve done, what my experiences have been, are greatly informed by this idea of authenticity.”
Despite the turbulent emotions she experienced while working on the love section, Bourget says the first part is surprisingly calm and serene. The second section, sex, is slightly more chaotic, while the last, death, tries to evoke the chaos she felt with her mother at the hospital.
“The second section is really full of movement and it’s full of beautiful women flying and climaxing and all sorts of wonderful stuff,” she says. ““Because of my own losses, I think of death as chaos. Feelings came, feelings went. It was just chaos. [In the third part], I’ve tried to evoke that.”
As part of the L.S.D. series, which is being presented by the Vancouver International Dance Festival (VIDF) along with the Vancouver 2010 Cultural Olympiad, dance companies Rosario Flamenco and Out Innerspace Dance Theatre will also be tackling these three universal themes in their own respective art forms: flamenco and contemporary dance. All three events can be seen, for free, at Vancouver’s historic Roundhouse.
As the VIDF enters its tenth anniversary year, Bourget says she and Kokoro Dance co-founder Jay Hirabayashi are looking forward to what the festival, which starts March 12, has to offer.
“We really look to produce things we like, and we’ve both been in the business a long time. We want to present what moves us, modern dance, butoh, post-modern,” she says. “It’s very exciting.”
Kokoro Dance: L.S.D. (Love, Sex and Death) runs March 12 and 13 at the Roundhouse Community Arts and Recreation Centre, 181 Roundhouse Mews, Vancouver. Tickets are free (no reservations required).
More information on Kokoro Dance: L.S.D. (Love, Sex and Death)
Down the rabbit hole with Nixon in China - Cultural Olympiad Features : Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics
From the moment a full-scale model of Air Force One lands on stage, it’s clear that Nixon in China is an opera that aims to be larger than life.
In this new production of John Adams’s 1987 historical masterpiece, which is being performed for the first time in Canada on March 13, director Michael Cavanaugh says they’ll be trying to do more than just capture the essence of one of the most notorious diplomatic visits of the 20th century.
“This is a bigger subject than just Nixon, and just China, and just US-Chinese relations,” he says in an interview from Vancouver, where the show’s start-studded cast, which includes Robert Orth and Alan Woodrow, is currently in rehearsals. “It really addresses the notion of history, of momentous events, and how they affect their participants as well as and how they affect the wider world.”
Through the massive scale of this opera, which is reflected in its set design, Cavanaugh says he has been able to examine pressures that individuals in powerful positions, including Richard Nixon, Henry Kissinger and Chairman Mao Tse-tung were under, particularly as they made gestures and choices that changed modern geopolitics.
”What I want to show with this production is the way our memories of these big events become overtaken by these pressures,” he says. “The way we view these big events, through this prism of memory, refracts into all sorts of different directions. Through this fractured lens, we get a chance to see what really makes these people tick, what makes all of us tick, in these big moments.”
Cavanaugh says opera enthusiasts couldn’t be more excited about this new production of the play, and that some will be travelling great distances to be at its Canadian premiere.
“The show has this core group of opera fanatics, lots of them. There are people who are travelling a long way to see this opera because it’s so rarely produced,” he says. “It’s only 23 years old, and it is already being regarded as a masterpiece.”
He says Nixon in China is so highly regarded because of its complex mix of traditional operatic forms and beautiful ballet sequences as well as its Alice in Wonderland sense of fantasy.
“Almost every set explodes or deconstructs or spins off into a different thing and becomes something else,” says Cavanaugh. “For people who have never been to an opera before, this production has real visual impact. You’ll get a lot of eye candy and ear candy.”
“By the end of the piece, all bets are off. We’ve pried off everyone’s skulls and we’re looking inside at their innermost thoughts and feelings,” he says. “It’s a big spectacle and a big historical drama set piece, but it also uses the human voice to carry us inside ourselves.”
Nixon in China runs March 13, 16, 18 and 20 at the Queen Elizabeth Theatre, Hamilton Street at West Georgia, Vancouver. Tickets from $29.
Vancouver’s busy bees return to the Hive - Cultural Olympiad Features : Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics
What happens when a group of theatre people decides to throw the mother of all parties?
Meet Hive.
What started as a series of informal get-togethers for Vancouver-based playwrights, actors, directors and other theatre types is now in its third official year, except this time it will be taking over the warehouse space of the Centre for Digital Media from 7 p.m. “’til late” starting March 11.
Featuring 14 mini-plays, or what playwright and director Amiel Gladstone calls “installations,” Hive 3 will be exactly that: a hive of activity. One of the main goals is to keep the evening fun, which is something that Gladstone says theatre sometimes forgets to do.
“We’re really trying to make it worthwhile for people to come out of their houses, because it really is so much easier to stay at home and watch television,” he says. “We’d better be at the top of our game and doing as much as we can to make that experience as unique and exciting as possible.”
While organizers are still trying to figure out how hundreds of people will be able to move through the Hive space —some plays are just for one audience member, while some take place in a moving vehicle — Gladstone says the Hive experience is about having a good time and building good relationships, not about trying to see every piece.
“I think being part of the event and hanging out, feeling the energy at the event and seeing people really excited to be there, and to be together, and going to the different shows,” he says. “The Hive energy is exciting, and people are really, really happy to be there.”
The collective energy of the night also adds to the risks that certain playwrights and directors are willing to take with their pieces, says Gladstone. Because there are so many shows, there’s a sense of healthy competition, but also of mutual support.
“It really is a playing-around-in-the-sandbox feeling,” he says. “We know that everyone has our back. You feel free to try things that you wouldn’t try normally. If you fail horribly, the event itself has enough going for it that it’ll be fine.”
The ability of the event to capture this do-it-yourself “hey-we’re-putting-on-a-show” feeling is one of its most precious aspects, but Gladstone says at least one thing is changing this year. Encouraged and inspired by the Paralympic Winter Games, this year’s Hive will be entirely wheelchair accessible and is hosting an audio description and American Sign Language night.
Hive 3 runs March 11 to 20 at The Centre for Digital Media, 577 Great Northern Way, Vancouver. Tickets are $20/students and seniors, $25/adults.
The Drowning Girls’ watery graves - Cultural Olympiad Features : Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics
Wooed, married and murdered by a scoundrel, three women rise from their graves to share their tales of dating, deceit and downfall.
The Drowning Girls, originally written in 1999 as a shorter fringe festival piece, is based on the true story of George Joseph Smith. Between 1908 and 1914, the serial criminal married seven women, stole from all of them and killed three.
“It’s the same story for all three brides. This Edwardian opportunist wooed them and wed them and then drowned them in the bathtub,” says playwright and actress Beth Graham from her Edmonton home.
“They’re all wooed by him for different reasons and he transformed himself to match what each woman was looking for,” she says.
“We wanted to tell the story from the female perspective. [This play] is telling their side of the story. The events involve him, but it’s their chance to surface from the deaths and tell what happened and why.”
Co-written with two of Graham’s long-time collaborators, director Charlie Tomlinson and Daniela Vlaskalic, the play examines stigmas associated with being a spinster.
“It made me think about how far we’ve come today. Do women still have that kind of pressure?” wonders Vlaskalic, who also plays one of the women in the piece.
“There isn’t necessarily that stigma any more, but there is so much focus now on being with someone, there’s still that pressure in society of needing to find someone and not being alone.”
Using bathtubs as the only prop, the story unfolds as each woman rises from a claw-footed tub filled with water.
“Water is really the fourth character in the play; we never know what the water’s going to do,” adds Vlaskalic. While water creates captivating visuals, she says the sound of splashing mixed with a minimal soundtrack adds to the piece’s mysterious mood.
“The water transforms everything. It sounds phenomenal and looks magical.”
”The Drowning Girls” runs from Thursday March 4 to Saturday March 13 at Gateway Theatre Studio B, 6500 Gilbert Road, Richmond; (604) 270-1812. Tickets are $22 and $27.
Don’t stop ‘til you get enough - Cultural Olympiad Features : Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics
The beat goes on for the Vancouver 2010 Cultural Olympiad throughout the Paralympic Winter Games, which will fill 10 exciting days with athletic and artistic firsts starting March 12.
The Cultural Olympiad kicks off its Paralympic programming with the world premieres of two highly anticipated plays. Spine, which debuts March 12 at the new SFU Woodward’s complex on West Hastings Street, is a mind-blowing piece of multimedia theatre from the creative team behind the comedy hit Skydive. The play follows Realwheels Theatre founder and actor James Sanders as he flies away from his body and wheelchair — perhaps from his whole identity — into a virtual reality world.
Reinvention of another kind is at the heart of Rick: The Rick Hansen Story, which opens on March 13. Written by British Columbia playwright Dennis Foon, it starts with young friends on a fishing trip and a car accident that leaves none of them untouched. In real life, Hansen went on to become a Paralympic medallist and activist, bringing accessibility and spinal-cord research to the world’s attention with his Man In Motion tour. And his role with the Winter Games goes beyond serving as an inspiration for this Manitoba Theatre for Young People project; he is the honorary mayor of Vancouver’s Olympic Village.
For dance aficionados and newcomers alike, March promises to be a special month. There is Canada’s reigning queen of contemporary dance, Marie Chouinard, unveiling a brand new work on March 12 and 13, and a jam-packed edition of the Vancouver International Dance Festival (VIDF), which will see 12 Canadian and international companies taking to stages across the city from March 12 to 21.
The VIDF closes with two nights of performances presented by Vancouver’s Kickstart (Disability Arts & Culture). Configurations (March 20 and 21) features performers Bill Shannon, who uses his crutches as an extension of his body to display a remarkable array of movements, and contemporary dancer/choreographer Peggy Baker, one of the best movers of her generation. She will present a special solo piece — set on a tilted platform — at Kickstart’s March 21 gala.
Many of the Cultural Olympiad’s visual arts exhibitions continue through March, and several events return after post-Olympic breaks: The Miss Guides’ history-filled GOLD RUSH! walkabouts and World Tea Party, with interactive events scattered across the Downtown Eastside — in the Centre A gallery, local parks and community gathering places — will both run throughout the Paralympic Games.
Across town, in Robson Square, the lauded exhibition, Out from Under: Disability, History and Things to Remember, will make its Vancouver debut on March 7. The award-winning exhibition innovatively displays 13 everyday objects that tell moving stories about living in Canada with a disability.
There is no shortage of music on offer, from Canada’s National Arts Centre Orchestra to Israeli party band Balkan Beat Box and Hilario Duran’s Latin Jazz Big Band. On March 15, acclaimed violinist Adrian Anantawan will join the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra (VSO). In addition to playing with the world’s best orchestras and conductors, this young virtuoso, who was born without a right hand, is a spokesperson for the Child Amputee Program of the War Amps. Anantawan will perform Gustav Holst’s challenging and thrilling The Planets Suite, among other works, with the VSO at Surrey’s Bell Performing Arts Centre.
All this and we haven’t even mentioned one of the world’s most artistically gifted circuses — Montreal’s Cirque Eloize — or theatre happenings Body & Soul and Hive 3, or even an amazing two-night tribute to one of the best bands of the 1930s, the Mississippi Sheiks. Check the Cultural Olympiad’s online listings for these and other must-experience events during the Paralympic Winter Games.
Soul game - Cultural Olympiad Features : Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics
Growing up in a heavily musical household, it’s no surprise how deep rhythm runs through Raphael Saadiq’s blood.
“My mom sings in church choir; my dad played guitar and we always had instruments around the house,” says Saadiq, born Charlie Ray Wiggins, from his studio in Los Angeles. “The neighbourhood was full of music. There was always music on the corner and someone walking around with a guitar. Having a band and entertaining was the biggest thing you could be doing.”
The Grammy Award-winning musician, producer, fashion maverick (and now video game designer) started making sexy, soulful, rhythm and blues hits in the late 1980s as lead vocal and bassist for the multi-platinum record selling trio, Tony! Toni! Toné!
After topping charts with the trio’s old-school hits, including Feels Good and Whatever You Want, Saadiq has made four solo albums and produced music for mega-legends like Stevie Wonder, The Roots, Erykah Badu, Snoop Dogg, Q-Tip, Lionel Richie and John Legend.
“I pretty much like to work with people who are sure about who they already are; I never like to tell anyone what to do,” he says. “When I produce, I like to think I’m part of the band and not just wearing the producer hat.”
On March 20, Saadiq will add to his impressive list of collaborations when he takes the stage at Vancouver’s Orpheum with Grammy Award-winning R&B goddess India Arie for the 2010 Cultural Olympiad.
“Vancouver is one of my favourite places to go. I don’t get to go there that much, but it’s beautiful,” he says, adding that he hopes to “hop on the powder and go skiing.”
While Saadiq says focusing on music kept him out of trouble as a “shorty,” he also entertained himself by whacking balls around his neighbourhood with a golf club.
A light bulb went off when Saadiq heard friends were making a video game featuring rappers. Since his Motown-influenced sound excluded him from being a part of the game, he decided to bring his version of golf indoors. Ghetto Golf, the game, will be released later this year.
Although his interest in video games may seem at odds with the production of a classic-sounding soul record, he says it’s important to take virtual time-outs while he’s in the studio.
“It’s another way from keeping me from leaving and going somewhere else,” he says. “Instead of calling people, I’ll just stop and play a little [video] game. It’s a way to get some space from what you’re doing, so you don’t overheat your brain.”
“Raphael Saadiq and India Arie” play Saturday, March 20 at 8:00 pm at the Orpheum, Smithe at Seymour Street, Vancouver. Tickets are $42.50 to 49.50.
Tickets and more information on “Raphael Saadiq and India Arie”
Spine gets back to basics - Cultural Olympiad Features : Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics
Sometimes a guy in a mid-life crisis is just that: a guy in a mid-life crisis. That’s true even if he’s in a wheelchair, according to quadriplegic actor James Sanders.
Sanders, who suffered a spinal cord injury in 1990, is part of the creative team behind Spine, a new play that explores our relationships to our bodies and to technology. It debuts March 10 as part of the Vancouver 2010 Cultural Olympiad. While it does deal with issues of disability, Sanders says they intentionally kept the themes universal.
“For Spine, we wanted a main character who was complex, who was trying to figure out his relationship with his wife, with himself. He’s making all these mistakes, and it’s not his disability that’s the problem. It’s his personality,” says Sanders, who is the founding artistic director of Realwheels, a Vancouver-based professional theatre whose mandate is to deepen an audience's understanding of the disability experience.
“On one level or another, we all make horrible mistakes. It’s what we do to try to make them right — that’s the human journey,” he adds. “That’s something everybody can relate to.”
The play, which will be performed in the new Fei and Milton Wong Experimental Theatre at Simon Fraser University, makes heavy use of new multimedia technologies, including three-dimensional projections and actor-influenced soundscapes, says Sanders. The actors will also wear Wii video-game controllers on their arms to operate their able-bodied virtual reality avatars.
In real life, many people with disabilities use video games to temporarily escape from their bodies, he says, which was an interesting and universal basis for the piece. The play is also trying to portray disability through a more realistic lens.
According to Sanders, the mainstream media frequently perpetuates what he calls “triumph over adversity” stories. “A character may be unable to walk, or unable to speak, but they’re really good at mathematics, or track and field, or something that’s superhuman so the community accepts them,” he says.
“They’re able to do things that normal people wouldn’t be able to do. That’s a horrible way to represent it,” he says. “People with disabilities just don’t have these superhuman qualities. We’re just regular people.”
The end result is a play that everyone, disabled and fully able, is able to think about, laugh with and appreciate, he says.
“It’s a full-on comedy,” he says. “That’s one of the brilliant things about [playwright] Kevin Kerr’s writing. He writes really deep, complex characters who have a lot of flaws, but he exposes that through comedy. We do have a dramatic story, but it’s humour that lets us into the hearts of the characters.”
Spine runs March 10 to 20 at the Fei and Milton Wong Experimental Theatre at Simon Fraser University Woodward’s, 149 West Hastings Street, Vancouver. Tickets are $25/students, $35/adults.
What drives the Man In Motion - Cultural Olympiad Features : Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics
Sitting in the back of a pickup truck while hitchhiking back from a teenage camping trip, a 15-year-old Rick Hansen had just cheerfully traded places with his best friend. Minutes later, the truck swerved off the road, throwing Hansen from the flatbed and breaking his spine.
Twelve years after the accident, Hansen embarked on his Man In Motion world tour, a journey that changed how the entire world perceives people with disabilities.
Leading up to the 25th anniversary of that unforgettable trek, playwright Dennis Foon is bringing Rick: The Rick Hansen Story to a Vancouver stage.
“It’s about the friendship between these two guys. One guy has to overcome this incredible physical challenge he’s faced with and the other one has this incredible psychological burden that he’s carrying,” says Foon, most known for his play about immigration and cultural struggles that toured across Canada and internationally, New Canadian Kid.
“This story is something people don’t know, and need to know. It’s going to be really emotionally satisfying and will connect with everybody.”
To this day, Hansen and his teenage friend Don Alder remain close friends and colleagues.
Although Hansen is already a household name, particularly after he was one of only five Canadians chosen to light the indoor cauldron at the 2010 Olympic Winter Games Opening Ceremony, Foon says he wanted to share the story leading up to the Man In Motion tour with the country.
“To tell the story of a hero being heroic is one thing, but the story we really should know is the creation myth, the story of how that person became who they are.”
Using conventional stage actors, high-tech video projectors and “a whole range of really cool moving screens and elegant ways of making the set design work,” Rick shares simple, moving anecdotes from Hansen’s life, shedding light on a man Foon refers to as “a living legend.”
“When you’re looking at a superhero like Rick, it’s amazing,” he says. “He’s larger than life and has accomplished incredible things.”
“Rick: The Rick Hansen Story” runs March 11 to 19, including special performances for school groups, at the Granville Island Stage, 1585 Johnston Street, Vancouver; (604) 629-8849. Tickets are $15.
Tickets and more information on “Rick: The Rick Hansen Story”
Going, going, Gomez - Cultural Olympiad Features : Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics
Less than a year after releasing its last album, English indie-rock band Gomez is heading back to the studio — except this time the group has a musical roadmap.
“Our last album started off in, for lack of a better description, 70s rock fashion,” says drummer Olly Peacock,on his way home to Brooklyn from a ski trip in Massachusetts. “It was five of us hanging out on a porch with acoustic guitars, sounding like Crosby, Stills and Nash.”
Although the band doesn’t usually have any hard-and-fast rules about how each album should sound, Peacock says this next one has started with a blueprint. Their main goal this time around is to “write 10, 11 songs that are just killer from start to finish.”
But before heading into the studio, Gomez is hitting the road for a mini-tour of the United States, with one Canadian stop at the Vancouver 2010 Cultural Olympiad.
“A lot of the material we’ll be playing we haven’t done [in Vancouver] and some of our old stuff we’ve reconfigured. So, if you’re a fan, it should be new and if you’re not, it should be a great show.”
With a sound that’s part Pearl Jam and part Beck, with a pinch of Tom Waits and a dash of the Grateful Dead, Gomez has been making consistent records since its 1998 debut album Bring It On, which won the UK’s prestigious Mercury Prize for the best album of the year.
Winning that award a mere two years after forming the band was surreal, says Peacock.
“We had the sense it was all one big joke or a happy accident. We were getting some money for pretending to be a band and then started selling records. If we had sold 15 or even 500, I would have thought this is amazing. And then it started snowballing.”
Since then, the band has released six records, sold music to television shows and commercials and played gigs across the globe.
“Our style just became five guys all over the place. I think that’s why our music has become so sentimental.”
“Gomez with Luke Doucet & The White Falcon” plays March 12 at 8:00 pm at the Orpheum, Smithe at Seymour Street, Vancouver. Tickets are $32.50 to $37.50.
Tickets and more information on “Gomez with Luke Doucet & The White Falcon”
Contemporary climbing - Cultural Olympiad Features : Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics
Hanging from a harness with images of mountain climbers projected behind and sounds of world music coming from overhead, dancers from The White Spider turn, flip and spin in graceful and death-defying movements.
Inspired by Heinrich Harrer’s book about mountain climbing, The White Spider, Jennifer Mascall’s dance by the same name uses movement from the extreme sport to influence her latest work.
“My interest in harness work as a contemporary artist is about the physical qualities. It can make the body change, so people will see the body doing things they don’t normally do,” says Mascall from her home in Vancouver. “I’m always looking for that new revelation that the body can show us.”
While dancing and climbing may seem to have little in common, Mascall says both hinge on pushing boundaries.
“They both work with impossibilities: Mountain climbers conquer a height and dancers are always trying to get their legs longer, their muscles stronger, their bodies more expressive.”
The show is divided into two distinct acts. The first depicts a storm Mascall says represents the spontaneous challenges that pop up in everyday life, while the second act focuses more directly on mountain climbing using projected images taken directly from Harrer’s book. Harnessed dancers tell the story of a climbing expedition using a large sculpture by award-winning artist Alan Storey and music by Jeff Corness.
“It’s interdisciplinary, so we’re all working with different rules. It’s totally fun and we’re all constantly shocked.”
Mascall began the piece two years ago and, with the rest of the dancers, has been training in belay, tango and contemporary dance. “Tango was perfect because it’s like there’s an invisible rope between people,” she says.
Mascall, who is known for her groundbreaking contemporary choreography, says invisible wisdom is another element that binds climbing and dancing together. Mountain explorations that have historically been impossible are now achieved with relative ease, thanks to information that is passed down from climber to climber.
“They codified it for the next person, so it’s there in the oral history. Dance also works on oral history,” she says, adding that she typically works with the same dancers for extended periods. “By being in other dances, they take that understanding and move it into new dances.”
“Mascall Dance: The White Spider” runs Friday March 12 and Saturday March 13 at 8:00 pm at the Roundhouse Community Arts and Recreation Centre, 181 Roundhouse Mews, Vancouver; (604) 662-4966. Tickets are $25 to $35.
Nathan’s room to grow - Cultural Olympiad Features : Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics
“If I was king, I’d rule that everyone must have a band,” jokes Keri Latimer, lead vocalist for Juno Award-winning indie-folk band Nathan.
Hailing from a town known for its strong arts community, the Winnipeg-based four-piece band embodies a prairie mindset.
“Out on the Prairies, it’s flat and if you go out of the city you can see for miles and miles in all directions. It’s just a real sense of space and the sky is just massive — there just aren’t any boundaries,” Latimer says from her Winnipeg home. “In our music, we don’t want to fill up every part of the song with things; there’s just a sense of space and isolation.”
After leaving Winnipeg several years ago for Vancouver, Latimer says there was something about the city that drew her back.
“I met an incredible group of creative people who are into supporting you and joining you. It’s not very competitive,” says Latimer who, despite her dark lyrics, speaks positively about the band, the city, family life and heading on tour. “We still like playing together and haven’t gotten sick of ourselves yet.”
The band, which Latimer founded with Shelly Marshall 10 years ago while listening to PJ Harvey and drinking wine in Marshall’s basement, now includes Latimer’s husband, bassist Devin Latimer; drummer Damon Mitchell; singer, accordion player, banjoist, guitarist Marshall; and singer, guitarist, and theremin player Latimer.
Conceding that the theremin, an electronic instrument that looks like a radio with two antennas and makes a tinny pitch, isn’t a typical instrument for a folk band, Latimer says they don’t really pay attention to conventional musical boundaries.
“We just draw from all kinds of genres. Our sound has elements from roots, pop, cabaret, klezmer. Shelly and I are both quilters, so I think we basically quilt our songs together with scraps of everything.”
Those scraps garnered the band a Juno Award in 2008 for roots and traditional album of the year, as well as several Western Canadian Music Awards, Canadian Folk Music Awards and a Prairie Music Award in 2004 for its debut album Stranger.
Nathan brings its introspective lyrics and twangy, indie-pop sounds to Vancouver for the 2010 Cultural Olympiad on March 12, the first day of the Paralympic Games.
“It’s great to be playing as part of the Olympics, especially the Paralympics, which to me seems amazing,” Latimer says. “I’m amazed by Olympians, but I’m amazed by people that have already other challenges to face. It’s really good to be a part of it.”
“Nathan and the Deep Dark Woods” play March 12 at 9:00 pm at Performance Works, 1218 Cartwright Street, Vancouver; Tickets are $12.
Tickets and more information on “Nathan and the Deep Dark Woods”
Marie Chouinard debuts brand new piece The Golden Mean (Live) - Cultural Olympiad Features : Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics
The project is currently shrouded in mystery, but Vancouver will be the first to see it.
Canada’s contemporary dance maverick Marie Chouinard is set to debut the world premiere of her latest work, The Golden Mean (Live), at the Vancouver Playhouse on March 12, commissioned by the Vancouver 2010 Cultural Olympiad.
Barb Clausen, co-producer at DanceHouse, says only Chouinard’s dancers and specially invited guests in Montreal have seen the work so far. “That’s what makes it so exciting,” she says.
But she does know the performance will be unconventional.
“We’ve had to rearrange the theatre for this,” says Clausen. “Her company will be performing not only on the stage, but also on a ramp that goes right through the audience.”
That ramp will occupy the space of about 70 seats in the 650-seat theatre, which means some audience members will have the unusual opportunity of sitting onstage for the performance.
There will also be screens displaying digital images that respond to the music and movement of the dancers, which is a multimedia first for the choreographer. As they often do in Chouinard’s work, the dancers will “vocalize” during the performance; the sounds they make will form part of the show’s soundtrack.
Clausen says the flesh, bones and muscles of Chouinard’s dancers inspired The Golden Mean (Live).
“Marie is a choreographer who is completely concerned with the details of the human body. So all of her work springs from how the body works — how it breathes, how it moves,” she says.
Although the details of the piece are still very much a secret, Clausen says audiences should bring a sense of wonder and should be prepared for a visceral and moving experience.
“[All of Chouinard’s works are] unusual, sometimes otherworldly, sometimes very primitive, sometimes a combination of both,” Clausen continues. “They construct a marvellous universe of their own.”
“The Golden Mean (Live)” is on March 12 and 13 at the Vancouver Playhouse, 600 Hamilton Street, Vancouver at 8:00 pm. Tickets are $35 to $65.
The Western Front’s other front - Cultural Olympiad Features : Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics
It’s engineered to withstand strong winds, but artist Reece Terris says he’s always relieved when the Western Front’s new (and second) false front survives a blustery Vancouver night. After all, when seen from the side, the giant architectural piece is leaning a bit.
According to Terris, it’s the two-dimensional nature of his new installation The Western Front Front – Another False Front — which went up in December 2009 and will remain in place until March 27 — that’s the most interesting part.
The piece, which he calls an “architectural intervention,” is a massive moss-green headpiece that sits above the building’s original 1900s-era plywood façade. It was built at one-and-a-half times scale, and was balanced out at a slight (and very secure) angle.
“During the gold rush, mining towns and industry towns sprung up from the Midwest to the West. What you had was a bunch of tents and shacks and boardwalks, fronted by these four-storey façades,” he says.
“It was a psychological cue that you were downtown, when you were really just walking down a muddy street with these tents behind facades . . . They were trying to signify that you weren’t in the wilderness anymore.”
This concept of façade-ism, which is one that is getting a lot of attention these days in the contemporary art world, is one that Terris says he wanted to explore in this work. Below its distinctive green mouldings, a saloon-style boardwalk of recycled wooden planks surrounds the building.
The second false front is poking fun at, and drawing attention to, Vancouver’s notorious real estate market, he adds. In this city, housing values appear to be going nowhere but up.
“Vancouver’s real estate boom keeps going up and up and up,” he says. “You can go away for a year and there will be 10 new high-rises. The skyline has changed, and your memory has changed. There’s this weird play between what you remember and what exists.”
Terris’s mammoth façade, which weighs about 2,000 kilograms and is about 16 metres long, was commissioned by the Western Front last year, and was installed over one afternoon with a crane and some effort from eight burly helpers.
“It’s a little risky because it’s a heritage building, and putting it up there you never know what’s going to happen,” says the artist with a chuckle. “I’ve never really built anything to be lifted like that. But it all worked out.”
“Reece Terris: The Western Front – Another False Front” is up until March 27 at The Western Front Gallery, hours Tuesday to Saturday from 12:00 pm to 5:00 pm at 303 East 8th Avenue, Vancouver. Admission is free.
More information on “Reece Terris: The Western Front – Another False Front”
Mixed emotions - Cultural Olympiad Features : Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics
On June 11, 2008, the Canadian Prime Minister stood in front of the House of Commons and issued a public apology to former students of Aboriginal residential schools. Later that evening, Kevin Loring’s play about survivors of residential schools, Where the Blood Mixes, premiered in Vancouver at the Magnetic North Theatre Festival.
“It was amazing. There wasn’t a dry eye anywhere to be seen. People were gasping and sobbing — at the end they gave us a huge standing ovation. It was huge; people were rocked. It was a really powerful night,” Loring said from his home in Vancouver.
Where the Blood Mixes follows the relationship between a residential school survivor and his long-lost daughter, who arrives in town in search of her biological parents and learns about her mother’s suicide. Despite its heavy themes, Loring balances the piece with his sardonic humour.
“It’s about the after-effects of people who have been raised in a residential school environment, and the damage that’s been done, and how they managed to survive and continue to go on in the face of loss and pain,” said Loring, who comes from a mixed background and grew up in Lytton, a small town of roughly 300 people near the Fraser River.
“It deals with mourning, celebrating the survivors and the community reconciling with their past and with themselves.”
While the play is fictional, it is loosely based on Loring’s experiences and the people in his life: half of his mother’s 14 siblings attended residential school.
“The characters are amalgamations of people I know, but they are constructs. So it’s not autobiographical, but an impression, a study.”
Loring started working on the play as a theatre student at Vancouver’s Langara College. Originally a 15-minute monologue, it was about a man constantly waking up in a bar (“kind of like a Groundhog Day purgatory scenario,” said Loring) who tries to escape its vicious cycle. Ten years later, the feature-length piece has played at the Luminato - Toronto Festival of Arts and the Magnetic North Theatre Festival in Vancouver, earning Loring a 2009 Governor General’s Literary Award.
In addition to touring Where the Blood Mixes — the play starts its Cultural Olympiad run on February 24 — Loring just landed a lead role in an Aboriginal Peoples Television Network series, Health Nutz, about a man who inherits a health food store, but has to prove he’s sober before he can take over the top-secret health recipes.
In between acting, writing and contributing to community projects, Loring has somehow found the time to take on another task. He’s performing at the Closing Ceremony of the Aboriginal Pavilion on February 28, and is keeping the details of the hush-hush performance to himself, for now.
Where the Blood Mixes runs February 24 to March 6 at the Firehall Arts Centre, 280 East Cordova Street, Vancouver; (604) 689-0926. Tickets are $16 to $28, with a pay-what-you-can matinee on March 3.
Jazz for the television generation - Cultural Olympiad Features : Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics
When the Gordon Grdina Trio plays, the audience never really knows what it’s going to get.
There’s a chance there will be a long passage of gentle Arabic-flavoured guitar riffs, sourced directly from Grdina’s extensive background as a classical oud player. There’s also a good chance they’ll hear some drumming from Kenton Loewen that’s reminiscent of a teenager’s heavy punk-rock phase, or elaborate bass improvisations by Tommy Babin that would be at home in any prestigious international jazz club.
But the trio isn’t out to make a certain kind of music. In fact, that’s exactly why the eclectic group of musicians, whose backgrounds are as diverse as the music they play, gets along so well.
“It may have to do with us being part of the TV generation, but we don’t like everything being the same all the time. We like massive changes and big dynamics,” says Grdina from his Vancouver home.
“We want to take you on a journey where you’re listening to something that actually speaks to you. You can tell that the person behind it has something to say; they’re not just talking about how they need to make cash. They’re telling you how they view the world, what it means to live, what it means to make art.”
This strategy has worked well for the group so far as they’ve caught the ears of experimental jazz fans across Europe, touring there four times in the past two years. They were even asked to be the artists-in-residence at an anarchist writer’s festival in Slovenia. Twice.
“The biggest thing that we have that works with the three of us is that nothing is off limits,” says Grdina. “We’re hard to categorize stylistically because we’ll go from straight-up Arabic classical songs to full-on punk screaming. There’s this massive range that ends up happening because that’s what we’re into.”
In some ways, it’s the three musicians’ outlook on life that influences their genre-bending, pressing-forward style of music, according to drummer Kenton Loewen. “It comes from an intention to create a beautiful setting of art that has never been done before,” he explains. “From an improvising perspective, my intention is to play with a sense of fire and a sense of intensity.”
“This is about learning the rules and breaking them. It’s taking original forms and breaking them,” he adds. “It starts from a position of allowing yourself to make a mistake, to make yourself that vulnerable. It gives you the opportunity to really go for it and to not apologize for the outcome.”
For the group’s upcoming late-night February 24 gig on Granville Island (following virtuoso bassist AndréLachance) as part of the Cultural Olympiad and Winterruption Winter Jazz Festival, Grdina has a suggestion:
“Just let the music come to you,” he says. “Connect with whatever is going on, whether you like it or not, and be in a space that will allow the music to change your life. If you let yourself be a part of what‘s going on, your life can change in one concert.”
Gordon Grdina Trio plays February 24, 11:45 pm at Performance Works, 1218 Cartwright Street, Vancouver; (604) 872-5200. Admission is $10 for two shows, starting at 10:00 pm.
A Scent of Spring is in the air - Cultural Olympiad Features : Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics
For anyone who ever wished the star-crossed love story of Romeo and Juliet had a happy ending, the National Dance Company of Korea has a treat for you.
In its new work, The Scent of Spring, which gets its Canadian debut February 26, the company weaves a similar tale of a beautiful but lowly born woman and the handsome son of an aristocratic family, who fall madly in love. While they struggle with class divisions that threaten to keep them apart, these two lovebirds get their happy ending.
“Nowadays, there is no longer such discrimination in social status in Korea, but Mongryong, being from a noble family, and Chunhyang, being from an ordinary family, had to overcome a big conflict between their different social statuses in the times of the old dynasty,” says the company’s artistic director and choreographer Jung-hye Bae.
“The setting is Chunhyang’s hometown, Namwon, which is a four-hour drive south of Seoul. In Namwon, there is a bridge called Ojak-gyo that is surrounded by Japanese apricot blossoms.”
It is among this breezy, flower and colour-drenched set that the two fall in love, says Jung-hye. And while the show’s choreography draws heavily on traditional movements to tell its romantic, dramatic story, it also incorporates a modern sensibility.
“The movements in traditional Korean dance tend to focus on inner emotions rather than external expression,” she says. “We have combined every step of the traditional movements with dramatic elements that can be easily digested by modern people. We have also made efforts to express emotions of love and conflicts by movements instead of words.”
The music will also be slightly different from western ballet primarily because traditional Korean music is played on a five-note scale instead of a seven-note scale.
“We use Korean traditional instruments, but we also tried to make the music sound familiar to modern audiences by supplementing traditional instruments with western string instruments such as cellos and violins,” explains Jung-hye.
“The performance is plotted with a love story that can be easily comprehended by anyone in the world, and also includes some comic and interesting scenes that have led to loud applause during the performance,” she says, adding that the company debuted the show last November in Hong Kong and the Philippines, where it received rave reviews and standing ovations.
She says the company is excited to be bringing its colourful show to Canada. “We are hoping that many foreign audiences take this opportunity to learn about our traditional dance and stories and [become] more interested,” she says. “We hope this performance will offer an opportunity for everyone to become a close friend of Korea’s.”
“The Scent of Spring” will be performed on February 21 at the Queen Elizabeth Theatre, Hamilton Street at West Georgia Street; tickets are $25 to $60.
Moscow melodies - Cultural Olympiad Features : Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics
With the Iron Curtain drawn tightly over Russia and Soviet-North America relations on rocky ground, the Moscow State Chamber Choir gave an unforgettable performance to a Vancouver audience.
“We still keep in our memories the tours in Canada and our concerts in Vancouver in 1978,” says the choir’s maestro, Vladimir Minin, from his home in Russia. “But that was last century!”
More than 30 years later, the acappella choir is staging its return to Vancouver as part of the Vancouver 2010 Cultural Olympiad, and will perform classics such as Mozart, Handel and Verdi, as well as classics by American-Russian composer Sergei Rachmaninoff.
“These are songs familiar to any audience in any county and everyone can enjoy them.”
“I think it’s the beauty of the melodies, the bright, open emotions peculiar to the Russian mentality and melodious beautiful language. The songs give people the idea of the richness of Russian soul,” says the maestro, who has led the choir since its inception nearly 40 years ago.
As Russia prepares to host the next Olympic Winter Games in Sochi, Minin says the performance is a glimmer of what’s to come during 2014’s cultural celebrations.
“This will be a preview, because in Sochi the cultural program will be extensive and really varied.”
The last time the choir played on Canada’s Pacific coast, the Soviet Union was still united and Moscow was preparing to host the 1980 Olympic Games.
Along with the Grammy Award-winning Moscow Soloists and prima ballerina Uliana Lopatkina, Minin says he’s honoured to represent Russian culture to the world through the Vancouver 2010 Cultural Olympiad.
“I feel a sense of responsibility and pride. I want to be sure that after this concert the public has felt pleasure from meeting with this art, with this choir.”
“Moscow State Chamber Choir” plays February 24 at 7:30 pm at St. Andrew’s-Wesley United Church, 1022 Nelson Street, Vancouver; 1-800-TICKETS; Tickets are $20.
Tickets and more information on the “Moscow State Chamber Choir”
Vectorial Elevation’s indelible mark on Vancouver - Cultural Olympiad Features : Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics
Every dusk, as Vancouver’s nightlife brims with flag-draped revellers and the sun finally sets over the beaches of English Bay, Vectorial Elevation’s 20 robotic searchlights quietly come to life.
After just over a week of operation, the heavy beams of blue-white light have been programmed more than 11,000 times by people from 134 countries, from as far away as Japan and Germany and as close as right across the street.
“I think it’s such a lovely addition to our neighbourhood,” says Ginny Richards, a long-time Vancouver resident who lives in an apartment with a front-row view of the lights. “Everybody just thinks it’s beautiful. I’ll tell you what I love about it. First of all, it’s free, but it also makes the city look wonderful.”
While she concedes that she’s no “spring chicken,” the interior designer had a fun time programming the lights herself from Vectorial Elevation’s web page. If she can do it, Richards says with a laugh, anyone with an internet connection can.
This inclusive and democratic nature of Vectorial Elevation is one of its most important qualities, according to artist Rafael Lozano-Hemmer. As far as he’s concerned, the more the merrier.
“What’s important is that this project has a sense of complicity and intimacy, that people are engaged with it and they feel like they are agents in the creation of this work,” he says.
“There’s also no privileged vantage point. Most of the time, when you have a show like this, there’s an area that is reserved for VIPs who can get the best view. But whether you’re in downtown or in Kitsilano, on the bridge or on a boat, it has something to offer.”
By now, says Lozano-Hemmer, most people in Vancouver, both residents and visitors, know that other people are programming the lights. He says an important part of the audience’s relationship to the piece is that programmers are allowed to dedicate their light “sculpture” to anyone or anything.
“People are expressing themselves freely on this platform, and I really like that,” he says. “This website is a public space, like a public plaza, so no one should be telling you what to say or [what] not to say.”
So far, dedicated statements have included marriage proposals, Olympic Games-related slogans and cheers, memorials to lost family members, jokes, praises for the exhibit, environmental sloganeering and even political and religious statements.
There has even been a plea for snow for a city that would love at least a few inches of the stuff.
“A short message to the almighty with a reminder of where we are, and where to dump the snow,” one short message reads.
Lozano-Hemmer says this incarnation of Vectorial Elevation, which has also appeared in Mexico City, Lyon and Dublin, is quite possibly the most beautiful because of the lights’ reflection on the water.
“English Bay is a remarkable space. I love that it’s quiet and that there’s no strip malls, or commercial advertising,” he says. “It’s a very communal space with the walking space, the bike paths, the parks, the beach.”
Vancouver’s Ginny Richards will be sad to see the lights go.
“It’s so lovely. It lifts your spirits, and it’s quiet,” she says, noting that it’s nothing like the massive fireworks displays the city’s west end hosts every year. “I wish they’d keep it.”
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