ARTS

Theatre Dance Multimedia Music Circus

LOLLING AND ROLLING

JAHA KOO / CAMPO (SOUTH KOREA, BELGIUM) With subversive wit, Jaha Koo explores the practice of tongue-tie surgery, which some South Koreans undergo so that they’ll be better able to pronounce the English “r” sound. JAN 19-21 | PERFORMANCE WORKS JAN 19-22 | ONLINE

LE CRI DES MÉDUSES

ALAN LAKE FACTORIE (CANADA) This dance performance, inspired by Géricault’s The Raft of Medusa, is haunting, seductive and dreamlike–a triumph of the imagination. JAN 27, 28 | VANCOUVER PLAYHOUSE JAN 27-30 | ONLINE

NEVER TWENTY ONE

SMAÏL KANOUTÉ/COMPAGNIE VIVONS! (FRANCE) Through evocative, urban-inflected movements, three dancers pay tribute to Black men who have lost their lives to gun violence. JAN 19-21 | SCOTIABANK DANCE CENTRE

SOLILOQUIO

TIZIANO CRUZ (ARGENTINA) This powerful, insightful solo performance examines economic, racial and institutional oppression in Argentina and, by extension, elsewhere as well. JAN 27-29 | ROUNDHOUSE PERFORMANCE CENTRE

ARE WE NOT DRAWN ONWARD TO NEW ERA

ONTROEREND GOED (BELGIUM) Pioneering Belgian company Ontoerend Goed brings their critically-acclaimed new work to the PuSh stage. Technically as well as formally ingenious, Are we not drawn onward to new erA turns time, movement and visuals on their heads–and, like the best works of radical art, it does so in the service of political meaning. FEB 1-4 | FREDERIC WOOD THEATRE AT UBC

SELFIE CONCERT

IVO DIMCHEV (BULGARIA) Camp crooner Ivo Dimchev skips over the boundary between artist and audience, gathering listeners around him for an evening of song and selfie-snapping. FEB 2, 3 | LEFT OF MAIN

THIS & THE LAST CARIBOU

NEW DANCE HORIZONS (CANADA) A series of three works: each of them is poetic and meditative, and each of them explores humanity’s relationship with history and nature. FEB 2–4 | ORPHEUM ANNEX

PERFORMANCE WORKS

TALKING STICK @ CLUB PuSh

FEB 2 • 9PM-2AM

THE BLACK ARTS CENTRE @ CLUB PuSh

FEB 3 • 9PM-2AM

THE FRANK THEATRE CO. @ CLUB PuSh

FEB 4 • 9PM-2AM

Black

COLOURED SWAN 3: HARRIET’S REMIX

MOYA MICHAEL / ANAKU & KVS (SOUTH AFRICA, BELGIUM) This fantastically creative show tackles politics, human history and the very nature of time, all the while maintaining the atmosphere of a carnival. JAN 20–22 | ORPHEUM ANNEX

ADAM KINNER & CHRISTOPHER WILLES (CANADA) Participants are paired with a guide and led on a sensory journey through public space. It’s an adventure in sight, sound and text–one that will renew your sense of possibility. JAN 28-FEB 1 | VANCOUVER PUBLIC LIBRARY CENTRAL BRANCH

A PERCUSSIONIST’S SONGBOOK

JOBY BURGESS (UK) Percussionist Joby Burgess performs his new album of “songs without words.” The virtuosity, range and creativity on display are downright thrilling. JAN 25, 26 | ORPHEUM ANNEX

AFTERNOW

NORA CHIPAUMIRE (ZIMBABWE / USA) Loud, proud and militant, this installation features beautiful video portraits, contemporary opera and one booming stereo system. JAN 28-29, 31-FEB 5 | ROUNDHOUSE EXHIBITION HALL + DUB NIGHTS JAN 28 & FEB 1

THE SEVENTH FIRE

DELINQUENT THEATRE / FULL CIRCLE FIRST NATIONS PERFORMANCE / NEWORLD THEATRE (UNCEDED COAST SALISH TERRITORIES • MST) An immersive audio performance that sources traditional, oral Anishinaabe stories as a way to evoke ceremony in the everyday. JAN 25–29, FEB 1-5 | LOBE STUDIO

RED PHONE

BOCA DEL LUPO (CANADA) This intimate, immersive experience offers participants the chance to act out dialogues in pairs; the site of the performances is a set of fully enclosed phone booths. JAN 29–31, FEB 2-4 | THE FISHBOWL

LONTANO + INSTANTE

COMPAGNIE 7BIS / JUAN IGNACIO TULA AND MARICA MARINONI (FRANCE, ARGENTINA, ITALY) In each of these dazzling shows, an acrobatic dancer teams up with a large, round circus ring for an experiment in perpetual motion. JAN 26–29 | SCOTIABANK DANCE CENTRE

AN UNDEVELOPED SOUND

ELECTRIC COMPANY THEATRE (UNCEDED COAST SALISH TERRITORIES • MST) This beguiling creation features four beleaguered spokespeople on a quest to express the inexpressible. JAN 30-FEB 4 | FEI & MILTON WONG EXPERIMENTAL THEATRE AT SFU

PRODUCTIONS ONISHKA WITH ANAKU (CANADA) Émilie Monnet interprets a recurring dream and reclaims her Anishinaabe ancestry in this captivating multidisciplinary monologue performance. FEB 2–5 | ANVIL CENTRE THEATRE

THE CAFÉ

APHOTIC THEATRE AND ITSAZOO PRODUCTIONS IN PARTNERSHIP WITH THE CULTCH’S RE/PLAY DIGITAL PLAYGROUND (UNCEDED COAST SALISH TERRITORIES • MST) This sold-out, critically lauded live production has now been transformed into an online immersive experience; it allows audiences to explore its vignettes from home. FEB 2–5 | ONLINE (LIVE SHOW SOLD OUT)

SOLDIERS OF TOMORROW

THE ELBOW THEATRE (CANADA) A former IDF soldier explores his personal culpability in the face of complex geopolitical forces in his former country, a place that he loves “with a broken heart”. FEB 3-5 | ROUNDHOUSE PERFORMANCE CENTRE

O’DD

RACE HORSE COMPANY (FINLAND) This mesmerizing circus performance features brilliant design, a beautiful score and astonishing acrobatics. FEB 4, 5 | VANCOUVER PLAYHOUSE FEB 2-5 | ONLINE

FLUEVOG FUNDRAISER

FEB 1 • 6PM-9AM 566 JOHNSON ST.

PUSHFESTIVAL.CA

PUSH FESTIVAL

Drawn gets clever with climate change

by Mike Usinger

With the world as polarized as it’s ever been, at what point do you accept it’s more important to bring folks together than drive them farther apart?

That question becomes an important one when wrapping one’s head around Are we not drawn onward to new erA from the boundary-pushing Ontroerend Goed theatre company.

Those who’ve followed the Belgiumbased collective over the years know that Ontroerend Goed is more than happy to push buttons to make a point.

Recall, if you will, Audience from a decade ago, where a young woman in the crowd is insulted by a performer on stage, and told that the verbal belittlement will only stop when she spreads her legs. Some Fringe audiences used that as a springboard for examining how their beliefs, values, and sense of moral outrage can be manipulated by their fellow human beings. Others simply got angry and irate.

In a more sane world, noone would be angry at the message of Are we not drawn onward to new erA. The play suggests we’ve fucked up the planet so badly we need to be taking drastic action before it’s officially too late. And yet who among us hasn’t argued about climate change with a drunk relative, belligerent dinner-party attendee, or card-carrying member of the Pierre Poilievre fan club?

While it would be easy to spark discussion by pissing off those on both sides of the issue, in Are we not drawn onward to new erA, Ontroerend Goed’s approach is more clever than confrontational, the play running forward for the first half-hour, and then rewinding in reverse. Things start with the dismantling of an apple tree, after which the stage is eventually taken over by piles of garbage and flying plastic bags, a soundtrack featuring William Basinski’s ghostly “Disintegration Loops,” and an unrecognizable language, adding to the sense of chaos.

But, tied into the fact that the production’s title is a palindrome, there’s also a message that anything can be reversible if you try hard enough, which is cleverly depicted in the second half of the work.

Reached via Zoom at home in Belgium, his adorable three-year-old daughter wandering in and out of the room, Ontroerend Goed artistic director Alexander Devriendt notes that Are we not drawn onward to new erA started out with a climate-change conversation with his collaborators. That led to exhaustive reading about climate change, major inspirations including Collapse by Jared Diamond.

“He’s a wonderful scientist and writer, even though his ideas are sometimes disputed,” Devriendt says. “He sees Easter Island as a sort of microcosm of the world, and that’s what I based a big part of the play on.”

One of the biggest challenges was thinking about how to best reach people— all people—with the play’s message.

“If you follow the news there is so much polarization,” Devriendt notes. “And climate change is polarizing, even though it’s something that we should all be able to agree on. It’s easy to preach to the converted when people are coming to a theatre

Ontroerend Goed’s Are we not drawn onward to new erA. Photo by Mirjam Devriendt

show, so we made an effort to really find a balance where we are also adding something to the discussion, instead of trying to make people feel guilty.”

That idea of not getting confrontational is important in Are we not drawn onward to new erA. We live in a world that’s increasingly being divided into “us and them,” making it hard to build the kind of bridges that lead to problem solving.

“I’m watching American politics and it’s fascinating,” Devriendt marvels. “Before Trump, I think I tended to make shows that woke people up and pushed buttons. After Trump, I think it’s more important to perhaps try and console than to try and wake people up.”

He acknowledges that doing something about climate change can seem daunting. Ask yourself this: no matter how concerned you might be, are you willing to make sacrifices like giving up air travel and your next vacation or trading in your car for public transit? And then ask yourself how hard it is to start taking reusable bags to the store, or to cut down on food waste.

“With Easter Island, new research has found that the reasons it collapsed is not so easy,” Devriendt says. “In the original metaphor they cut their own trees to make their statues and that made their own land unsustainable. That seems like a good metaphor for our time when we’re killing the Amazon rainforest, or any tree really.

“I also like that things are more complicated than that,” he continues. “The play is not so simple as ‘Let’s go back to nature.’ That idea is there of course, but at the same time if we go back, what do we give up, which can even lead to discussions like ‘Do you have a kid or not?’ Some people think it’s good for the world not to have a kid, and I understand that discussion. So I hope that the show, and the metaphors that it offers, get people talking and thinking. I really believe it’s important not to be pointing fingers. But if we all want an iPhone, is that something you’re willing to give up?”

Difficult questions? Devriendt could not agree more.

“This isn’t an easy discussion and the play doesn’t give any easy answers,” he says. “But hopefully it gives you a way of thinking about things where a solution feels possible, or opens up your mind instead of closing things off. I’m trying to put ideas in the minds of people who come to see the play, because we’re at the point where we really have to do something.” GS

Are we not drawn onward to new erA plays February 1 to 4 at UBC’s Frederic Wood Theatre as part of the PuSh Festival.

PUSH FESTIVAL

Selfie love

by Mike Usinger

For those who’d rather stay home if the alternative is literally becoming part of the show, it sounds like the stuff that wallflower nightmares are made of.

Bulgaria’s Ivo Dimchev acknowledges the rules for his Selfie Concerts can, at first, seem a little intimidating, especially for those more comfortable hanging out in the background than being the centre of attention. The shows have the singer sitting down with a keyboard and an arsenal of songs. But he only gets performing when someone from the audience approaches with a cell phone and takes a selfie with him.

From there, if at any point the selfies stop, so does the singing. The beauty of the construct, Dimchev suggests, includes the dismantling of the walls that separate a performer from the fans.

“You can have enough distance that you can stand back and enjoy the show as an audience—to see it all happen,” he offers, speaking to the Straight from the back of a taxi in New York. “But the audience also has to be part of it to keep me going. For some people it takes more time, for some people it takes less.”

Dimchev has an arsenal of songs that please those who’ve already discovered him through his constant performing in

Europe and the all-reaching tentacles of the Internet. If one’s worth is measured in views, consider that 2021’s “Banitsa” currently sits at over 1.1 million clicks on

YouTube, with Dimchev and hip-hop artist 100 KIla delivering a boundary-smashing mashup ode to Bulgaria’s favourite philo pastry.

Sounding like a cross between Orville

Peck and Roy Orbison, “Sucker” from last year has the openly queer, fantastically tattooed Bulgarian extolling the endless pleasures of, well, sucking cock, in a style that might be described as retro-lounge chic.

Dimchev has been hailed as a true original by Simon Cowell on X-Factor, and drawn comparisons to gender-bending talents ranging from Freddie Mercury and Annie Lennox to Anohni (formerly of Antony and the Johnsons).

In other words, his fans across the world would be happy to see him sit down with his keyboard and simply sing for an hour. Which doesn’t interest him in the slightest. Empowering others while making a legitimate connection, on the other hand, excites him.

“You empower them, and maybe you rediculate them, but it’s all good,” he says thoughtfully. “They go through a multiple of emotions. Feeling strong, maybe feeling stupid, feeling that they are violating me, and feeling exposed because they’ve been made vulnerable. These are precious things to experience during a concert—things that you normally don’t feel when you go to a show.”

Indeed—assuming your life goals don’t include being picked out of the crowd and hauled up onstage by Taylor Swift at Rogers Arena—the last thing most of us want at a show is having the spotlight turned on us while everyone watches. Which is kind of funny considering that we’ve all made ourselves the centre of attention in pursuit of a perfect selfie, whether it’s annoying our fellow music fans in the pit or standing on the lip of the Grand Canyon.

Dimchev notes that he’s taking a practice no one (with the possible exception of your least-favourite influencer) considers art, and then turning it into something beautifully artistic.

“At first it kind of looks pathetic, because the gesture is pathetic,” the multimedia artist says of the selfies he’s seen at his shows. “It’s a very low artistic gesture—low in the values of people. You actually can’t go lower than that in art.

Google past performances at places like the Mumok museum in Vienna, and you’ll see audience members go from tentative at first to all-in. GS

Ivo Dimchev’s Selfie Concert takes place February 2 to 3 at Left of Main as part of the PuSh Festival.

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PUSH FESTIVAL Finding light in the darkness

by Mike Usinger

The beauty of Coloured Swan 3, suggests choreographer Moya Michael, is the way the work hopes for a better future while acknowledging a painful past. That also sums up the outlook of the South African artist, who grew up in the dark time of apartheid in Johannesburg, and now finds herself looking towards a more optimistic tomorrow in her adopted hometown of Brussels.

“Coloured Swan is just a bunch of guys moving around on stage,” Michael starts out in an interview with the Straight, and then breaks into laughter. “Actually I’m joking. What it is is a fantastical projection into the future where we are trying to create a utopian universe in which our bodies can exist.”

If that sounds hyper-ambitious, it’s not by accident. Vancouver audiences for the PuSh Festival will see what’s being dubbed as Coloured Swan 3: Harriet’s Remix, the production mixing hypnotically looped music, digital projections, DayGlo attire, and symbol-heavy items like ropes and traditional African cowry shells, all meant to spark discussions about race, destiny, and philosophy among audiences.

“Coloured Swan is kind of like an umbrella concept,” Michael offers. “A lot of people call it a trilogy, but I see it as more of a series where I invite people to my world, move around different questions, and try to get people to think.”

There have been three different Coloured Swan works created in recent years, including solos for the choreographer, and another, titled “Eldorado,” for American David Hernandez. All of them riff on the same ideas in different ways.

“Both my solos and David’s solo sort of dealt with our ancestral past, our lineage, and our heritage,” Michael says. “For Harriet’s Remix I really wanted to work with young people and think about a sort of future in relation to the past. There are a lot of visual elements that we use—visual elements and objects on stage—that have deep meaning or are symbolic for us that the audience might not necessarily grasp.

“In the show we talk about the ‘mother ship’, but we also think about the slave ship,” she continues. “For example, we use ropes in the show, and ropes were used on slave ships. There are these sort of morse codes where the performers use the ropes to communicate in a private language, drawing on the floor to sort of rewrite history in a way.”

The past for Michael brings back complex emotions. On one hand she’s beyond grateful for an upbringing in South Africa that was rich on the arts front.

“I was very appreciative of my teachers in South Africa—I wouldn’t have been able to move to Brussels the way I did without them,” Michael notes. “My ballet teacher was like my mom. The tension was not knowing where you would go next as an artist. People were always going to choose the white people first.”

Reflecting back, Michael remembers a world that she didn’t always entirely process at the time.

“Everything in South Africa was compartmentalized,” she continues. “We were put into racial categories, with white on the top, then Indians, coloureds, and Black on the bottom. Black women and coloured women were really at the bottom because we were living in this white supremacist male patriarchal system. Those categories I didn’t really understand at the time.”

Even after moving to Brussels on an arts scholarship, Michael discovered that issues sparked by race don’t always have boundaries.

“I didn’t feel the culture shock at first because I was so excited to be surrounded by so many people from so many different places,” she says. “Later on, I discovered there’s more to Europe than it at first seems. And then the culture shock happened, and the missing home. And, much later on, resenting that, in a way, you were also taught to forget your roots and forget your training back home.

“Contemporary and African dance was what I studied at university, but I’m also trained in ballet,” she continues. “The ballet was never thrown away—it was a standard at school. But when it came to the African dance and the contemporary techniques that I learned when I was younger, they didn’t really matter so much here. That got to me after a while—it was sort of like the colonization of your body.”

As she began to make a name for herself in Brussels, Michael became aware that she was viewed differently than many of her fellow dancers.

“When you are a non-white person performing on stage, you are the one who’s always being raced in a way that white people aren’t,” she says. “It was this sort of exotification where, on stage, reviews would use descriptions like ‘the sensual Moya, the spicy Moya.’ After a while it starts to work on you a little bit.”

And so, rather than get angry, she turned the spotlight on things with her work, including her Coloured Swan series, where she’s above all, convinced that something beautiful is possible no matter how painful the past. “I’m 46 now, and I’ve been here for 25 years, and only now is my work kind of being recognized,” she says. “I’m very lucky, and very aware of my privilege as I’m one of the associated artists at the Royal Flemish Theatre. A lot of people will say ‘Why are you with the Royal Flemish Theatre,’ and some will say, “because she’s black’—completely diminishing my 25 years of experience and 25 years of contributing to the ecosystem of dance here in Belgium. So I guess it’s something that I still run up against. Yes, I am very lucky. But I’ve also worked my ass off.”

The struggle continues, making Coloured Swan 3’s longing for a mother ship and a utopian world seem not only real, but important.

“With the Royal Flemish Theatre, I’m very aware of the institution that I’m in,” Michael says.

“And I’m bringing community into these places—bringing people in who look like me and who have never been inside these spaces. In a very sly way, I’m creating a platform with my work for other artists like me to become involved. To go through a lot of things, issues, and feelings together. To be seen.” GS

“Coloured Swan 3: Harriet’s Remix” includes hypnotic loops, digital projections and DayGlo attire. Photo by Danny Willems

Coloured Swan 3: Harriet’s Remix plays January 20 to 22 at the Orpheum Annex as part of the PuSh Festival.

Know your local (TatToo artist)

Zion Greene-Bull is offering Black people free tattoos for Black History Month. We explore where the idea came from—and more

>WHAT DO YOU DO?

So I’m a tattoo artist, and a graphic illustrator. I do illustrative tattooing, which is kind of my thing. A lot of my artwork is centered around my Blackness and queerness. I belong to, and also cater to, those communities. [For Black History Month] I raised a bunch of money so I could tattoo for free. All February, I’m fully booked up with Black folks so that they can get free tattoos. No charge, no deposit, nothing. They come in, they get a tattoo, and they walk away.

>WHERE DID THE IDEA COME FROM?

I was telling a friend last summer that I hate charging for what I do. It’s so personal, then at the end I have to say, “OK, this is how much you owe me.” I have to charge money to live, of course, but I was just like, I hate this.

So I said to my friend, “Wouldn’t it be so awesome if I could tattoo other Black people for free?” And my friend was just like, you could probably do that. Like, you should do that. And so I thought about it. And I was like, I bet you I could do this for Black History Month.

I put the idea out there on Instagram and it blew up. And I had so many people reaching out to me to be like, “How do I donate to this? What do I need to do to help you?” I put together a campaign and a plan, and raised all the money I needed for it.

My practice generally is to serve the community, but with this project I wanted to do something as anti-capitalist as possible—and still, you know, be able to survive.

>HOW’D YOU GET STARTED IN THE INDUSTRY?

I was always into art, but originally I was doing watercolour painting and line drawing. I was also really into getting tattoos. So I go get a tattoo. But there’s ignorance in the industry about people who are more melanated. And I’ve had a number of bad experiences where I’d get a comment about my skin tone, that I might not want to get this colour because of my skin tone. There’s also this myth that Black skin is thicker, which is not true.

So I was like, it would be really cool— and necessary, especially on the West Coast—if there were more Black tattoo artists for people to go to. We really only have a handful here, where we have a one per cent Black population. I also wanted to emulate the tattoo experience that I wanted to get. So I really felt a calling to do this.

>WHY DID YOU FEEL LIKE THIS WAS IMPORTANT?

Tattooing originated in Indigenous and African cultures, right? And it became appropriated. The opportunity of it was taken away for many of us, because of the monopoly on that trade. And you can’t go to school for tattooing. It’s something that is really just passed on from person to person. So when you have that, plus job inequities and racism and homophobia and transphobia, and all these things that prevent people from certain backgrounds and identities from being able to learn these skills. Then, we can’t get the treatment we deserve or the tattoos that we want.

Because our people originated with these practices, I think it’s important that we’re able to access them, and practice them in a safe space. You’re altering the body. A lot of people have shared with me their experiences of being treated like a product, or like a canvas, and not like a human being.

ARTS

Zion Greene-Bull at their Vancouver apartment and home studio. Photo by Jon Healy

>YOU’RE TALKING ABOUT RACISM, TRANSPHOBIA AND HOMOPHOBIA. AT THE SAME TIME, YOUR WORK HAS A SENSE OF HUMOUR. HOW DO YOU FIND SPACE FOR HUMOUR IN THE FACE OF ALL THAT?

I see my joy as resistance. And I think that really changed the game for me, like going through June 2020 [after George Floyd] and all the Black grief that came from that. And even this past year—2022 was a really rough year. And seeing everything happening in the States with all the laws targeting people like us. A lot of people don’t want us to be happy.

And I do want to be happy. So I think that’s a big part of it—joy as resistance. I’m so proud of and happy with my identity, I wouldn’t change it for the world. GS