Urban Vancouver

Concert Music for Strings and Brass

By Kara Gibbs on January 6, 2008 - 10:55pm

Concert Music for Strings and Brass
Featuring the works of Ian McDougall
February 2, 2008 at 8:00 pm
First Unitarian Church of Victoria
FREE

On February 2, 2008 at 8:00 pm don’t miss an evening of beautifully infectious music by Canadian composer Ian McDougall at the First Unitarian Church of Victoria (5575 West Saanich Road) featuring two of the cities hottest up-and-coming ensembles Beacon Hill Brass and the Emily Carr String Quartet.

Ian McDougall is a trombonist and composer renowned for his rhythmic energy and sensitive lyricism. Though McDougall is best known as one of Canada’s leading jazz musicians, he is also a prolific composer with an extensive body of work that stretches into the classical vein. This concert will focus on his works for brass and string instruments.

Beacon Hill Brass will be performing a range of repertoire by McDougall including Bells and Cavatina for brass quintet, Three Vignettes and a Variation for tenor and bass trombone, and Conversations for tuba and double bass. These pieces will be complemented by Ian McDougall’s string quartets Transitions, Pacific Green, and Blues; performed by the Emily Carr String Quartet.

sirenscrossing: Imbolc {in the belly}

By The Dance Centre on January 11, 2008 - 6:42pm

UK-based Canadian director Carolyn Deby returns to Vancouver with her unique brand of ground-breaking site specific performance. Imbolc {in the belly} will lead audiences on a traveling urban performance experience around a sequence of downtown Vancouver locations hosting events and installations, in an investigation of the human relationship to nature within the urban environment. Also featuring video by Clancy Dennehy and performers from Vancouver and London, the work will reveal a series of thought-provoking images – a visual poetry examining the journey from death to new life, from darkness into light.

The work follows the massive critical and popular success of city:skinned which took audiences at the 2006 Dancing on the Edge Festival around the Downtown Eastside. So dress appropriately, and get ready for what promises to be an extraordinary experience!

Shows run Tuesday-Saturday.
Info www.thedancecentre.ca Tickets www.ticketstonight.ca

The Spring 2008 Langara College Community Lecture Series

By Langara on January 15, 2008 - 5:02pm

Join past and present instructors in Langara College's 50th series of free lectures surrounding this Spring's theme: Crossroads.

January 23
Barrie Brill The Colour Blue at the Crossroads

January 30
Peter Prontzos The Right Brain, Crossroads of Ideas and Emotions

February 6
Alister Browne Cheating

February 13
Deborah Blacklock The Crossroads of Evolution: Are We Ready?

February 20
Cathy Sosnowsky Choices at Famous Crossroads in Literature

February 27
Dale Beyerstein Choosing Your Path

March 12
Bradley Hughes The Crossroads of the Russian Revolution

March 19
Veda Abu-Bakare Crossroads in Science

March 26
Chuck Sigmund Where Has the Universe Come From?

April 2
Jeff Webster Time at the Crossroads: The Psychology of Looking to the Past and the Future

For more info, contact Linda Hale at lhale@langara.bc.ca or 604.323.5365.

PuSh Festival presents small metal objects

By ZoeQ on January 23, 2008 - 11:32pm

small metal objects
Back to Back Theatre (Australia)

For small metal objects, the venue is the city. Audience members equipped with headphones become an installation for the general public; the general public becomes the extras within a dramatic narrative. It is a theatrical masterpiece that examines the role spectator and spectacle.

January 30-February 1, 5pm; February 2-3 1pm & 3:30pm
Vancouver Public Library, Central Branch Promenade
Tickets $28/$22 Tickets Tonight
www.pushfestival.ca

PuSh Festival presents Instructions for Modern Living

By ZoeQ on January 23, 2008 - 11:46pm

Duncan Sarkies and Nic McGowan (New Zealand)

A show to please your ears, tickle your funny bones and haunt your soul. Instructions for Modern Living is a dark and witty exploration of the hidden life of late-night dwellers. In the tradition of artists like Laurie Anderson and Marie Brassard, Instructions for Modern Living is a time capsule of the ‘wee small hours.’ Music and dialogue combine to create a tragicomic sound-montage of what goes on behind closed doors in urban and suburban society. Video images of nocturnal surveillance footage create a deliciously hypnotic backdrop to the tales of people who find it difficult to sleep at night.

“McGowan’s music really amplifies the impact of the dialogue. Sarkies is not just a skilled writer, but a fine actor as well... it’s a bloody good show.”—Sunday Star Times

Duncan Sarkies is an award-winning short story writer, playwright, and screenwriter, best known for writing one of New Zealand’s highest grossing films, Scarfies and nominated for Writer's Guild Award for Flight of the Conchords.

Nic McGowan has achieved critical acclaim for his work as a prolific composer, producer and engineer. A multi-talented recording and performing artist, his audio designs extend across the mediums of music, theatre, radio drama, film and television.

January 30-February 2, 9pm
Vancouver East Cultural Centre

PuSh Festival presents Clark and I Somewhere in Connecticut

By ZoeQ on January 27, 2008 - 2:51pm

Rumble Productions/Theatre Replacement (Vancouver)

In the summer of 2005 actor/writer James Long salvaged a collection of seven photo albums and travel journals from an alley near his East Vancouver home. What started as a simple trip to the country carried the creators on narrative jags across propriety, oceans, and beyond.

January 30-February 2, 9pm; February 2-3, 4pm

Tickets: $28/$22
Tickets Tonight www.ticketstonight.ca

More info: www.pushfestival.ca

PuSh Festival presents Palace Grand

By ZoeQ on January 27, 2008 - 2:54pm

Palace Grand is a unique solo show which takes place in a theatre within the theatre: a miniature vaudeville stage which floats in space, inhabited by a single oppressed actor. An utterly physical evocation of an ill-fated expedition and a reliquary of sublimely beautiful and iconic artifacts from a mythic northern terrain, the play investigates a uniquely human condition: cacoethes scribendi—the incurable passion for writing. A sort of Yukon Heart of Darkness, Palace Grand cuts deep into the northernmost reaches of Canada on the trail of two men: Walker, a writer who disappears into the wilderness and The Tracker, a bounty hunter hired to find him. Together the two represent separate halves of a single narrative. What remains of this narrative is brought to life by a third man, The Operator of a remote transmitting station whose presence has little to do with their story, but without whom it would be lost.

Caught somewhere between Beckett and Chaplin and taking the mythic Klondike gold rush as its setting, this delirious snowbound fantasy reminds us of our frightening ever present quest for self. The play won three Jessie Awards for Performance, Set Design and Lighting in 2004. This PuSh-commissioned presentation reimagines the critically acclaimed original production.

PuSh Festival presents Glow

By ZoeQ on January 27, 2008 - 2:58pm

Chunky Move Artistic Director Gideon Obarzanek and German interactive software engineer Frieder Weiß have together created an intimate interactive solo performance in which the motion of the human body is used to trigger and control music, lighting and animation. A digital landscape is generated in real time in response to the dancer’s movement, with the body’s gestures extended by and in turn manipulating the surrounding video world.

The relationship between the light and graphics and the human body changes throughout Glow. At first the dancer seems to control the magical display of light and geometric patterns, but gradually it becomes difficult to separate the elements of body and light, as movement, graphics and sound powerfully meld into a single entity. Then eerily, projected shadows take on a dramatic form of their own and begin to impact on the dancer’s behaviour.