Category: Performance
Performance
Scroll down to see all the performance listings.
Sun Oct 24 | 5pm
Transdisciplinary music performance | Mountain View Cemetery
Rising from the ashes of this summer’s fire ban, QAF and Full Circle: First Nations Performance will reignite our Piano Burning event on Sunday, October 24 at Mountain View Cemetery. Curated by SD Holman and Margo Kane, Annea Lockwood’s infamous work — where QAF veteran Rachel Kiyo Iwaasa performs a piano as it burns to ashes — is re-envisioned through the lens of historically banned First Nations fire ceremonies and contemporary global warming of unprecedented levels.
Margo Kane and Full Circle: First Nations Performance ground this event with cultural knowledge and a focus on Two-Spirit artists: Sempúlyan, who will speak about the spiritual role of fire to communicate with ancestors; Russell Wallace, who has composed a new piece for the occasion; designer Evan Ducharme, who created Iwaasa’s fire-proof ball gown; and Squamish Nation councillor Orene Askew (aka DJ O Show), who will set the piano alight.
Bring a chair, bring a blanket, and dress for the weather!
Watch artists Rachel Kiyo Iwaasa & Evan Ducharme talk about their collaboration in Piano Burning, from our QAF 2021 interview series Studio (ob)Sessions:
Featured artists:
Russell Wallace
Orene Askew
Evan Ducharme
Sempúlyan
Rachel Kiyo Iwaasa
Eowynn Enquist
This event was postponed from its original date of Aug 8, 2021.
View Statement from theArtistic Director here
Indigenous Burlesque | July 17 | 7 pm
Embrace your too-muchness with bombastic burlesque brought to you by the badass babes of Virago Nation, Turtle Island’s first all-indigenous burlesque collective. Featuring special guests Monday Blues and Lynx Chase! Whether you’ve seen it before or always wanted, now’s your chance to relish the many facets of indigenous sexual rematriation from the comfort of your living room.
https://www.viragonation.ca/ https://www.facebook.com/ViragoNation/
Performer Bios
Shane Sable “Mover, Shaker, Mischief Maker; the Furiously Flirtatious Force of Nature”
2Spirit Gitxsan artist and activist Shane Sable has slayed stages all over Vancouver in front of and behind the scenes since 2011. Shane has an abiding hunger for audience engagement and delights in the tension created by breaking the 4th wall of burlesque. Shane is the convening member of Virago Nation – Turtle Island’s first all-indigenous burlesque collective and Festival Administrator for the Vancouver International Burlesque Festival.
RainbowGlitz is one of Virago’s Nations founding members and Vancouvers Rainbow Slut spreading her love medicine in a mix of classic, nerdlesque, exotic dance and pussy cat doll hip hop movements. This Haida, Squamish, Musqueam and black artist will leave you wanting to throw your gold at the end of her rainbow.
Instagram: @jaibrend
Scarlet Delirium: Vancouver BC’s Raven Goddess! The Kwakiutl Indigi-Babe! Scarlet Delirium has been enjoying the slow burn of Burlesque and Cabaret since 2010 and is a founding member of Virago Nation. During the daylight hours doubles as Costume Designer for herself and her Burlesque family.
Instagram: @scarlet_delirium
Sparkle Plenty is Vancouver’s glamedian, weirdlesquer, and word-maker-upper who has been delivering beautifully bizarre burlesque acts for over 10 years! This fiery goddess is Cree and Metis with mixed heritage and is a proud sister of the first ever all Indigenous burlesque group, Virago Nation. You can find her teasing and emceeing with the Screaming Chicken Theatrical Society as well as on stages all over Vancouver, Toronto, Las Vegas and more.
Instagram: @sparkleplentys
Monday Blues is an Afro-Indigenous burlesque artist, and has been performing burlesque professionally since 2011. Monday has traveled the globe as a solo female adventurer and loves to live outside her comfort zone. Her most recent endeavours include being an avid entrepreneur, both in Sex Work and coaching capacities, as well as pursuing her passion on the burlesque stages all over Canada and the US. Monday strives to exist without limits and wants to help others feel just as empowered.
Instagram: @missmondayblues
Lynx Chase: A true showpony at heart, Lynx Chase has always been passionate about movement and performance arts. Over the years she has trained in a variety of disciplines ranging from Aerial Hoop, Silks, Contortion, Partner Acrobatics, Bellydance & Capoeira; however it wasn’t until she discovered Pole Dancing in 2012 that she found her true vocation. Lynx has been professionally teaching in Vancouver since 2015 and has also showcased her gravity defying acts at various events and festivals across the province such as Retro Strip Show, Bass Coast and Shambhala Music Festival. It is her hope to continue to share her craft with the world by demonstrating the strength, sensuality, artistry and grace that goes hand in hand with the art of pole and exotic dance.
Instagram: @laylaylay
Dance Performance | July 25 | 7 PM | July 26 | 2 PM
In his Swan Song, contemporary dance legend Noam Gagnon sashays the fine line between pain and pleasure in a fetishization of something glamorous and beautifully twisted: a monster beautified.
Synopsis: This piece is a reflection on the quest for love, through revisiting the worlds of childhood, both real and imagined.
How do we feel when we are hammered or deformed under pressure, but not quite enough to break? How can we be malleable and flexible, deform and reform without losing our core selves?
In ‘This Crazy Show,’ the body becomes a place of transformation, of transmutation, and of transfiguration. Alternately agitated, delicate and humourous, Noam Gagnon choreographs and performs, pushing himself to his physical limit to explore and expose “the art of artifice” in a culture obsessed with pretending authenticity. ‘This Crazy Show’ explores just how precarious and ambiguous identity can be, through the evolution of the body and the self as both are continuously morphing, unfixed and boldly celebrated.
“Because I dream, I’m not.” – Léolo
I wanted to take up the challenge of exploring new avenues of creation by playing with the range of humanly possible transformations, transmutations, and transfigurations. ‘This Crazy Show’ tackles the theme of the perpetual quest for love by revisiting the worlds of childhood, real and imagined, through the bionic woman as superhero metaphor.
“We gratefully acknowledge the support of the McGrane-Pearson Endowment Fund.”
Visit Vision Impure website.
Drag Performance | July 24 | 7 pm | 
The QAF proudly welcomes The Darlings—Continental Breakfast, PM, Rose Butch and Maiden China—to the stage, ahem, screen, with a new performance created around the festival theme of ‘wickedness.’ The multidisciplinary, non-binary drag performance collective has been taking the Vancouver scene by storm for the last two years and is currently titillating social-distancing audiences through aptly titled online performances Quarantine I & II. Their work challenges the boundaries of conventional drag, and explores genderqueer, non-binary, and trans experience through the use of movement, poetry, performance art, theatre, and immersive/interactive installation.
The Darlings are Chris Reed, Desi Rekrut, Rae Takei and Kendell Yan.