Queer Arts Festival

BY GAIL JOHNSON, STIR VANCOUVER

Queer Arts Festival 2021 Dispersed: it’s not easy being green runs July 24 to August 13 online and in-person at various venues. It’s not easy being green: a Curated Visual Arts Exhibition runs the same dates at Sun Wah Centre’s lower ground floor, with a tour on July 27 at 5 pm PDT.

WHEN THE TEAM at Pride in Art Society was planning the theme for Queer Arts Festival 2021, it was a different time: events like it are typically devised years in advance, and nobody had even heard of COVID-19. What was top of mind was the climate crisis, with Greta Thunberg sounding the alarm while sailing the Atlantic. It was settled: the theme for this year’s fest and its curated visual-art exhibit would be “it’s not easy being green”.

Enter the pandemic, and the novel coronavirus took over everything, bumping the environmental emergency out of the headlines. However, the 2021 fest’s it’s-not-easy-being-green theme remains as relevant now as it was before the virus entered our lives—maybe even more so.

It works on multiple levels beyond the obvious difficulties humans are having at keeping the planet green. There’s green as a representation of land, tying into Indigenous rights and sovereignty and the ongoing effects of colonization. It represents evergreen issues such as renewal, growth, and the supernatural on one hand and power, greed, and poison on the other. There are pop culture underdogs, anti-heroes, and oddities who are green, from Kermit the Frog to Elphaba the Wicked Witch of the West to the Mandalorian’s Baby Yoda. Green is also the colour of aliens, or others.

“In early 2019 when we chose ‘it’s not easy being green’, there was this apocalyptic fear and dread referred to as the climate catastrophe,” QAF artistic and executive director SD Holman tells Stir by phone. “Indigenous-led anti-pipeline demonstrations shut down Canada, and more people recognized that we are interdependent with the Earth and animals for our very survival. The climate situation seemed to be pressing down like this tidal wave; it seemed like there was this worldwide acknowledgment that this was happening. Right on the heels of that, the pandemic happened and shoved aside everything. Then there was plastic—lots and lots of plastic.”

And then people around the world were asked to stay home and away from other people.

“I feel like the mainstream learned about isolation and about space and what it’s like to feel unsafe in public, in danger of standing too close to somebody—the wrong person—the fear of stepping outside of one’s home or family bubble, which could mean death,” says Holman, a queer award-winning image-based artist. “Queers and marginalized people have felt that their whole lives. ‘It’s not easy being green’ still resonated. The pandemic and all of those risk factors are all too familiar to radicalized and queer people and all the people in the margins.”

Holman curated it’s not easy being green: A Curated Visual Art Exhibition with two-spirit artist Jeffrey McNeil-Seymour; they will lead a tour with guest artists on July 27.

“The announcement of the Tk’emlups te Secwépemc confirmation of 215 unmarked graves of children, then 725-plus took its toll, and the numbers continue to rise,” McNeil-Seymour says. “The Cancel Canada Day rally at Vancouver Art Gallery where Sarah Brooke Cadeau and Audrey Siegl’s truth speak reverberated off the glass and concrete of downtown Vancouver, waking the hearts and minds of the thousands that gathered to show us all what love looks like. 

“The culmination of these ongoing events comes at a cost,” McNeil-Seymour says. “Preparing for show readiness is a heavy labour. The heavy emotional labours are especially felt by artists and visionaries. It’s not easy being green—indeed.”

The exhibition features an eclectic group of artists from across Canada and as far away as India working in photography, sculpture, drawing, painting, printmaking, film, and other disciplines. Here, they upcycle and recycle apocalyptic fear and dread into artwork and social change.

Featured artists include Beric Manywounds, Blake Angeconeb Chad Baba, Duane Isaac, Falak Vasa, Grace House, Ho Tam, Isaac Murdoch (whose Ojibway name is Manzinapkinegego’anaabe / Bombgiizhik), Jay Pahre, Kali Spitzer, Katherine Atkins, Kathleen Ross, Manuel Axel Strain, Oluseye, Pablo Muñoz, Preston Buffalo, Tejal Shah, and Tsohil Bhatia.

“We have invited featured artists from around the globe, from diverse contexts,” McNeil-Seymour says. “Duane Isaac is a stand-out for us. Like Isaac, the exhibition’s relationship-building with the featured artists; the storytelling of their process, vision…made us, made me take pause. The artists gathered here are amplifying the ripples of change.”

Holman, whose project Butch: Not Like the Other Girls toured North America in 2014 and is available in book form in its second edition, is proud of the Queer Arts Festival, which is one of just a handful of its kind in the world. Holman also founded SUM Gallery, the only mandated queer visual-art gallery in Canada at present. “I hope there’s more,” Holman says. “I salute those ones who came before. They died of exhaustion or gentrification or both.”

QAF 2021 Dispersed: it’s not easy being green takes place online and in-person, making the 2021 event the first in the fest’s 13-year history to take on a hybrid format. Last year’s edition was fully virtual, the hope being to reach as many people as possible despite the pandemic. It worked: the fest doubled its audience and had viewers from 50 countries on six continents. What was especially remarkable, Holman says, was that those nations included ones where people could be killed for being part of a queer activity. Holman wanted to maintain that potential to connect with people near and far this year while also offering in-person events, once it was deemed safe to do so. There’s a movie night on the rooftop of Sun Wah Centre, a dance and music performance in Vancouver’s cemetery, and opening and closing parties. (For the full program, see QAF.)

Promoting queer art is hard and at times seemingly thankless work, Holman admits, but it’s always necessary, and sometimes it’s life-altering or even life-saving.

“I don’t think of myself as ambitious, but I do have a lot of drive, and I want it to be good,” Holman says. “I want the recognition for the artists who are doing some of the finest work through history, period. We still know the terrible statistics: two-spirit and queer people of colour are the most vulnerable youth to suicide and bullying. Those statistics hit you in the face all the time. If we can get the art there, art has that ability to get past the confirmation biases. Art is that thing that changes people.”

For more information, see QAF.

by Charlie Smith, Georgia Straight on July 22nd, 2021

Even though the term two-spirit originated with Indigenous people on the Prairies, it had immediate appeal to Orene Askew, a member of the Squamish Nation council.

Askew’s mother is Indigenous and her father is African American, hailing from Gary, Indiana, where his parents lived down the street from the famous Jackson family.

“When people ask me about two-spirited, my definition of it makes sense to me,” Askew told the Straight by phone. “I have a masculine and a feminine spirit inside of me.”

Askew, also known as DJ O Show, is a pillar of Vancouver’s LGBT+ community, serving on the boards of the Queer Arts Festival, Out on Screen, and Vancouver Pride Society. A passionate motivational speaker and lively DJ, she has won a B.C. Indigenous Business Award, a Stand Out Award from the Vancouver Pride Society, and a 2021 Alumni of Excellence award from Capilano University. But what really energizes her is helping young people.

“I’m a part of the first generation that didn’t go to residential school,” Askew said. “I can see the difference in the way the youth of today think.”

According to her, they’re not as jaded by trauma as their Indigenous elders, who were forced to attend the church-run residential schools.

“They’re so optimistic and they’re incredible,” she continued. “And I want to try to be a good leader for them because I want them to take over and I want them to take care of me when I’m an elder.”

More recently, Askew has been learning about the term Indigiqueer from young people in her community, particularly during the Kindred Spirits digital artist residency in May and June. Askew was one of the faculty members offering weekly presentations to two-spirit and Indigiqueer artists, who could sign up for free. An online exhibition at the Queer Arts Festival is described as the “digital culmination” of Kindred Spirits, focusing on how identities and futures can be described through self-portraiture that extends beyond colonial framing.

In one Zoom presentation to the young people, Askew played her 30-minute audio documentary, Our Dark Secret, which is about residential-school survivors in her community. She did this just after the leadership of the Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc revealed that unmarked and undocumented graves of 215 children had been located on the grounds of the former Kamloops Indian Residential School.

“I felt it was like the perfect timing to play it for the youth and the other mentors,” Askew recalled. “And people talked about their feelings. It was really healing that day.”

Askew’s mother was a huge fan of Motown songs, which influences the music she makes today. Recently, Askew recorded her first hip-hop track with Vancouver producer Jane Aurora.

“I think it’s really good and I can’t wait to release it,” she said. “We’ve applied for a grant to film a music video, so we’ll find out in the next couple of weeks if we’ve got it.”

As an elected councillor with her First Nation, Askew was on a committee that entered the first float by the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh in the Vancouver Pride Parade. She described it as “awesome” to see two-spirited Indigenous people dancing so freely on the float.

In addition, the Squamish Nation has created a rainbow sidewalk at the foot of Capilano Road, not far from the Chief Joe Mathias Centre, which is a major community gathering spot.

Things are going so well for Askew that she’s been featured in a documentary by Human Biography, which has featured celebrities such as Meryl Streep and Susan Sarandon in the past. According to Askew, the film about her will drop next month.

But it wasn’t always such a joyous existence. She was raised in a B.C. housing project as a child before she and her mother moved to Eslhá7an (a.k.a. the Mission reserve), west of Lonsdale Quay.

On occasion, she said, she would be called the n-word, which was very confusing. She would think: “Why are they calling me that? That’s my family.”

As she grew older, she realized that people who insulted her were probably taught that word. And she tried not to take it so personally.

In fact, Askew admitted that on some days, she actually forgets that she’s Black because she’s been so immersed in Indigenous culture for her entire life.

“I say it all the time,” she said with a laugh. “I feel like a stork kind of just dropped me off: ‘Here you go; kind of deal with it.’

“That’s the thing: if you saw me walking down the street, you wouldn’t think I was First Nations at all.”

Carlito Pablo, Georgia Straight on July 27th, 2021

This year’s Queer Arts Festival marks a homecoming for dancer and choreographer Alvin Tolentino.

The founder and artistic director of the Co.ERASGA dance company said that he was one of the original performers in the Vancouver festival when it started as Pride in Art in 1998.

“It’s kind of a full circle to come back to it and to be part of it again,” Tolentino told the Straight in a phone interview.

The 2021 Queer Arts Festival runs until August 13 and reunites Tolentino with E. Kage of Onibana Taiko.

Onibana Taiko is a three-member ensemble that blends traditional Japanese drumming with other art forms and what festival organizers describe as “feminist queer punk aesthetics”.https://12306f8e14e35d8971988c32112a3525.safeframe.googlesyndication.com/safeframe/1-0-38/html/container.html

The band formed in 2016, bringing together Kage, Noriko Kobayashi, and Leslie Komori.

In connection with Kage, Tolentino related that he created a work called OrienTik/Portrait in 2005. In it, he and dancer Andrea Nann performed to the music of Kage on the taiko (Japanese drum) and classical pianist Alison Nishihara.

“They played experimental, traditional, and contemporary music, and so I worked with them at that time to create a full-length piece,” he said.

When Onibana Taiko was creating a concept for the 2021 Queer Arts Festival, Tolentino’s name came up.

“This is a reunion, in a way,” he said about Kage.

Tolentino and Onibana Taiko will present a dance-and-music performance called Ceremony for Rebel Spirits on August 7. The show starts at 8 p.m. near the Chinese pavilion of Vancouver’s Mountain View Cemetery (5455 Fraser Street).

Tolentino explained that Ceremony for Rebel Spirits will represent the obon, a traditional summer festival in Japan honouring the dead.

“The narrative is about this reawakening of the spirits and being with the spirits,” he said about the collaborative work.

The obon is held in Japan during August, and it is believed that the spirits return to visit their loved ones at this time. It is an occasion for family reunions.

Customarily, people visit ancestral graves and bring flowers and pray for the dead. Tolentino noted that obon is similar to a cherished tradition in the Philippines called All Saints’ Day, which is marked on November 1.

As with Japan’s obon, the joyful event is a time for families to get together and share memories.

This Philippine occasion of remembering the dead is also called undas, said to have come from the Spanish word honra (“honour”).

“It has that kind of similar feeling, and the dance which I’m going to evoke is about meeting the spirits, and the music awakens those spirits as part of the festivity,” Tolentino said.

Onibana Taiko’s logo features an image of the higanbana, or red spider lily, which grows on Japanese grave sites.

Tolentino said Ceremony for Rebel Spirits seeks to commemorate people who fought for noteworthy causes and against all forms of discrimination.

Communing with spirits also serves as a reminder of unfinished struggles and the need to persevere.

“Queer people still get bashed in other parts of the world, and being gay is still not being accepted in some other parts of society,” Tolentino noted.

He pointed out that queer artists have a particular knack to “provoke” serious examination of issues in society.

“And so as queer artists, we cannot stop. We have to continue to fight for freedom and acceptance,” he said.

This is why Tolentino feels happy returning to the Queer Arts Festival. “Our story is still the same and still continuing to be rebellious,” he said.

As gay man and artist of colour, Tolentino is the quintessential rebel.

“I have always followed my creative instinct. I do not follow the crowd to create my work. I have stayed true to my calling,” Tolentino said.

He added that he’s proud to be a part of the festival’s legacy.

“I was there to signify the relation of queer arts and dance in a generation wherein art for queer was just being talked about or just beginning to bloom in Vancouver,” Tolentino said.

For Tolentino, “being a rebel is doing, continuing, and redefining the idea and meaning of being an artist for 30 years, and now, to dance for the dead in the spirit of obon”. 

The site-specific performance by Onibana Taiko and Alvin Erasga Tolentino is part of Queer Arts Festival 2021

Sponsored Post by Pride in Art Society · stir · 22 Jul 2021

Ceremony for Rebel Spirits is more than a dance and music performance. It’s an experience where Japanese folk tradition meets punk in Vancouver’s only cemetery, an opportunity for audience members to commune with the ancestors via Obon dance, song, sensu (fan) cheerleading, fue, shamisen, incense, and kick-ass taiko.

The event is a collaboration by Onibana Taiko 鬼束太鼓 and Alvin Erasga Tolentino Dance and part of Queer Arts Festival 2021 Dispersed: it’s not easy being green. It takes place August 7 at 8 pm PDT at Mountain View Cemetery.

Onibana Taiko consists of three Nikkei veterans of Vancouver’s taiko community, whose performances draw from Japanese traditional arts, festival drumming, and folk music and dance, all with a touch of feminist queer punk aesthetics.

As a group, Onibana draws its name from a type of flower that grows in the grave sites of Japan. Through taiko, the group seeks to transform shadowy elements into beauty, bridging the divide so as to commune with ancestors.

The group’s members include E. Kage, a taiko artist and digital audio artist who embraced the art of taiko as a way to express their empowerment as a mixed-race queer youth; Noriko Kobayashi, a musician and author of The Development of Canadian Kumi-Daiko and Asian Women Kick Ass Through Japanese Drumming; and artist Leslie Komori.

Alvin Erasga Tolentino is a Filipino Canadian choreographer and dance artist and the founding artistic director of Vancouver’s Co.ERASGA. His dance creations are driven from the need to intricately illustrate the human experience of light and dark and the infinitely complex relationship between nature and humanity. His choreography challenges the exploration of hybridity to reveal the private and public territory, identity, gender and the issues within the traditional and contemporary cross-cultural dialogue.

Tickets ($25) for Ceremony for Rebel Spirits can be purchased here.

QAF 2021 Dispersed: it’s not easy being green takes place from July 24 to August 3. A festival pass, $99, guarantees attendance at all events and saves over one third on individual event prices.

More information is at Queer Arts Festival.

Amber Turnau · Hello BC

Although we can share our pride year-round, Pride Month in June brings us all together to celebrate, advocate for, and support the LGBTQAI2S+ community. Though festivals and celebrations in British Columbia are adapting for the second year in a row, there are still plenty of virtual and in-person events planned across the province to build connections, be seen, and wave the flag of support and love. Communities large and small plan to celebrate Pride in meaningful and innovative ways throughout the year.

SUNSHINE COAST

Rally for Pride: June 26, 2021

Take your Pride on the open road with a socially distanced car rally from Halfmoon Bay to Gibsons on the Sunshine Coast. Dress up, decorate your car, and create a fabulous “To Wong Foo” movie moment. Those not participating in the car rally can line up along the parade route to cheer from the sidelines (at a safe distance, of course).

VICTORIA

Virtual Victoria Pride Week Festival: June 28-July 4, 2021

This year’s theme is about finding power through community connection. The Victoria Pride Society is hosting a series of virtual events that provide a safe space for the LGBTQAI2S+ community to celebrate resilience and togetherness. Programming includes a virtual dog walk, a special meet-up for youth, and a literary event. On July 4, the community of Victoria is encouraged to “Pride Up” their homes, businesses, and neighbourhoods in celebration.

VPS/ECAH Queer Art Show: July 14-30, 2021

The Victoria Pride Society is also teaming up with the Esquimalt Community Arts Hub to showcase “For the Love of Us ALL,” a queer art exhibit that explores community, love, Pride and diversity.

PRINCE GEORGE

Prince George Pride: July 5-9, 2021

Prince George is joining in the Pride fun this July. Their roster of events includes a virtual drag show and a car rally with stations and photo opportunities along the way. The iconic town mascot, Mr. PG, will also be holding the pride flag all week long. Stay updated on the Prince George Pride Facebook page.

COMOX VALLEY

Queer Culture Summer Series: June 25-July 30, 2021

Parnell Productions is teaming up with 40 Knots Winery to host a series of drive-in movie nights. Watch your favourite classics like Mamma Mia!  and Grease under the starry summer skies. Tickets are available online and all proceeds go to the Langley Parnell Bursary, which helps fund a University of Victoria education for individuals in the local LGBTQAI2S+ community.

VANCOUVER

Vancouver Pride Festival: July 19-August 3, 2021

This year’s Vancouver Pride Festival programming is full of amazing virtual and in-person events. Dance the night away when you tune into the Pride Summer Series online concerts, attend the pride history and human rights panels, watch drag story time, or participate in one of the pop-up style COVID-friendly Pride Lounges dotted around town. The Vancouver Mural Fest is also curating an Art Walk featuring queer public art. The marquee event is the Decentralized Pride Parade on August 1. Get your bubble together, dress up in Pride flare and share on social media using #VanPride for a chance to win prizes and be part of the live broadcast. 

Vancouver Queer Arts Festival: Jul 24-Aug 13, 2021

The Vancouver Queer Arts Festival amplifies unique perspectives and lived experiences from the LGBTQAI2S+ community through art, film, and literature. The event will be in hybrid format, with events taking place virtually and in-person throughout Metro Vancouver. The schedule includes a diverse line-up of outdoor screenings,  exhibits, intimate gatherings, and workshops.

KAMLOOPS

Virtual Kamloops Pride Week: August 26-29, 2021 

The Kamloops Pride team has pulled together a host of entertaining online events for the 2021 season, including stand-up comedy, drag shows, movie nights, and B-I-N-G-O. The week culminates with a virtual Pride parade shared on August 29. Parade participants can submit a video of their own personal display of Pride by August 15 for a chance to be featured in the final edit.

NELSON

Touchstones Pride History Exhibit: Aug 14-October 30, 2021

This year marks the 25th anniversary of the first ever Pride parade in Nelson. Touchstones Nelson Museum of Art and History plans to run a Pride History exhibition to celebrate the diverse LGBTQAI2S+ community and mark this momentous milestone.

Kootenay Pride Week: August 30-September 6, 2021

Kootenay Pride is one of the town’s most anticipated weeks of the year. While the event program has not yet been finalized, you can expect online and in-person events (if health restrictions allow). Follow Kootenay Pride on Facebook and Instagram for details.

KELOWNA

Kelowna Pride and Out in the Valley: September 2021 (dates TBD)

Kelowna Pride, the largest Pride festival in BC’s Interior, returns with virtual and in-person celebrations for the 2021 season. The festival date and program details will be announced this summer, but mark your calendars now.

Visit wineries, distilleries, breweries and cideries for a series of mini music fests, on the weekends after Labour Day. You can also participate in a bike, vehicle, or water parade (if mother nature cooperates). The Pride Market is returning to the House of Rose Winery, with a focus on LGBTQAI2S+ owned businesses, merchants and allies.

The highly anticipated signature event, Kelowna’s Next Drag Superstar, is celebrating a 10-year anniversary and will feature an All Stars edition with previous winners.

FERNIE

Elk Valley Pride Festival: September 23-26, 2021

The fifth annual Elk Valley Pride Festival is set to hit Fernie this September, featuring in-person and online events for the whole family. The event program is packed with fun activities, including drag story time, craft night, a community bike ride, cooking classes, and live performances. Follow the Fernie Pride Society on Instagram for the most up-to-date info on Pride 2021.

WHISTLER

Whistler Pride and Ski Festival: January 23-30, 2022

For the snow-minded, it’s never too early to start thinking about winter. The annual Whistler Pride and Ski Festival is slated for January 2022. Pending provincial health guidelines, the festival—which is set to celebrate its 29th year in 2022—will feature skiing and snowboarding events, arts and culture experiences, and gatherings.

Rebecca Bollwitt · Miss 604 · Jun 8 2021 9:09am PDT

Queer Arts Festival – Dispersed is a three-week eco-apocalyptic exploration of queer experience and artistic expression in the face of an ongoing pandemic and marginalization. Vancouver’s premiere artist-run, multidisciplinary roister of art and culture, Queer Arts Festival (“QAF”) is back for its 13th year this summer, in a hybrid format with both online and offline events and performances.

Queer Arts Festival – Dispersed

• Where: Various venues & online
• When: July 24 to August 13, 2021
• Tickets: Limited quantity of early bird passes are available online for $69 (that’s a 50%+ discount) only until July 1st.

For the first time, QAF’s suite of visual art, performance, music, literary and  workshop events will be presented in a dispersed format across the Lower Mainland—from the depths of the Sun Wah Centre and rooftop overlooking historic Chinatown, to Mountain View Cemetery, False Creek and QAF’s usual stomping grounds, the Roundhouse Community Arts Centre. Following the success of last year’s online festival, QAF will also have a streaming component.

Event highlights include: Jeffrey McNeil-Seymour and SD Holman’s visual art curation; a fabulously punk Japanese folk music and dance performance from Onibana Taiko and Alvin Erasga Tolentino; and a reimagining of Annea Lockwood’s 20th-century classic, Piano Burning, where fire becomes a vehicle for reclamation and decolonization (yes, they are burning a piano).

Event Lineup

ArtParty!
Saturday July 24, 7:00pm to 10:00pm
Festival Opening | SUM & Sun Wah 268 Keefer
QAF’s opening: animating the Sun Wah Building from the basement, to the SUM gallery to the rooftop overlooking Chinatown and beyond, they’re launching the Dispersed QAF in champagne style with DJ O Show.

it’s not easy being green: Curated Visual Art Exhibition and Tour
Saturday July 24 to Friday August 13
Visual Art | SUM  & Sun Wah 268 Keefer Lower Ground
Navigating the heart breaking and familiar landscape of apocalyptic post-colonial collapse, artists selected by Co-Curators Jeffrey McNeil-Seymour and SD Holman explore how Queer Art unfurls and blooms in continued and stubbornly vibrant survival. 

Tuesday July 27, 5:00pm
Visual Art Tour | SUM & Sun Wah 268 Keefer
Come together for our Visual Art Tour with the curators Jeffrey McNeil-Seymour and SD Holman, guest artists, and a gallery of intimate friends old and new.

Language as a Virus: Queer isolation stories
Saturday July 24 to Friday August 13
Sonic Installation | around False Creek & Online
An interactive audio/radio/networked soundwork from Bobbi Kozinuk that invites the user to explore themes around the COVID pandemic and its effect on queer and diverse communities. 

Language as a Virus: The Tour
Monday July 26, 5:00pm  
Audio Art Tour | Creek Side CC (TBC) False Creek
Join artist Bobbi Kozinuk in an exploration of her work, Language as a Virus: Queer Isolation Stories.

Studio (ob)Sessions
Monday July 26 – throughout festival
Digital Discourse | Online | tbd
In the connective void that has been this pandemic pause, QAF takes you on a few house calls. Visit with several festival artists in their creation spaces, a digital dialogue to allow a connection from the artist in their corner of space to you and where you call your place. 

Screen Greenery
Saturday July 31, 9:00pm
Media Art Screening | SUM & Sun Wah 268 Keefer Rooftop
BYOB (bring your own blanket and that other B) Curated by Fergie and Ben!  Rooftop screening of edutainment for the pandemic- very queer and rather green short films.

Queerotica
Monday August 2, 8:00pm
Literary Readings | SUM & Sun Wah 268 Keefer Rooftop
Curated by Josie Boyce, slip into a little green something and enjoy readings by Vancouverite writers. Bring your own blanket or chair.

Onibana Taiko and Alvin Erasga Tolenti
Saturday August 7, 8:00pm
Dance and Musical Performance | Mountain View Cemetery
When Japanese folk tradition meets punk, audience members are invited to commune with the ancestors via obon dance, song, sensu (fan) cheerleading, fue, shamisen and kick-ass taiko.

Piano Burning
Sunday August 8, 8:00pm
Performance Art| Mountain View Cemetery
QAF and Full Circle First Nations Performance present new commissions by Russell Wallace and Evan Ducharme reimagining Annea Lockwood’s classic work, performed by Rachel Kiyo Iwaasa.

Glitter is Forever
Friday August 13, 7:00pm to 10:00pm
Closing | SUM & Sun Wah 268 Keefer Rooftop
Join the festival closing and take your last chance to see all the art @ QAF 2021 at the Sun Wah Building from the basement, to the SUM gallery to the rooftop.

Kindred Spirits
Saturday July 24 – Friday August 13
Community Visual Art | Online
The digital culmination of the Kindred Spirits digital artist residency run by and for 2Spirit and Indigiqueer artists. Guided by Faculty members Dayna Danger, DJ O Show, Raven Davis and Art Auntie Shane Sable, this digital exhibition focuses on re-storying 2Spirit identities and futures through community connection and self-portraiture beyond colonial constructs.

Pride in Art Community Show
Saturday July 24 – Friday August 13
Visual Art | SUM & Sun Wah 268 Keefer
The community show honours Pride in Art founder, activist, and Two-Spirit artist Robbie Hong’s legacy with an open community exhibition. This year, QAF is throwing what was once refused up on their walls. Join community artists in a Salon des Refusés (or perhaps Recyclés) celebrating works that were previously censored or rejected.

Pillows for the Pandemic
Wednesday July 28, 7:30pm
Workshop | SUM gallery or Online
Falak Vasa leads us in a pillow-making workshop, based off of their own series of pillows created during the ongoing covid-19 pandemic offering small comforts that are controllable.

Queerer than Queer: Lessons from Nonduality for Deep Planetary Healing
Thursday August 5, 7:00pm
Workshop | SUM gallery or Online
Is the universe queerer than we can suppose? From the foot of the Himalayas in Himachal Pradesh, Tejal Shah will guide us through this interactive workshop. Explore the possible impact that an embodied understanding of nonduality can have on our affective world and relationships to ‘others’.

Gathering of Wishes and 1000 Paper Butterflies
Wednesday August 4, 6:00pm
Workshop | SUM gallery or Online
Naoko Fukumaru and Eva Wong in Phase 1 of Mass Reincarnation of Wish Fragments 願片大量転生 (Ganhen Tairyou Tensei), where participants create origami and utilize the ink bleeding process to create a butterfly with their own unique patterns and colours.

Follow the QAF on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram for more info.

Miss604 is a proud media sponsor of the Queer Arts Festival

Annual celebration’s 13th edition returns with some live and outside shows across the Lower Mainland to complement its online offerings

Dana Gee · Vancouver Sun · 20 Jul 2021

Last year, when the COVID-19 pandemic forced the shutdown of live events, people scrambled to find a new way to get their shows and festivals in front of an audience.

The prevailing plan for many turned out to be online presentations. The Queer Arts Festival (QAF) was one of the first festivals to move forward with a full online program last summer.

One year later, and the QAF is celebrating its 13th anniversary with a combination live and online approach to the July 24 to Aug. 13 festival. This year’s theme is Dispersed: it’s not easy being green.

“Last year, it was quite a wild ride but we doubled our attendance. We hit every single continent except for Antarctica, 50 countries,” said festival founding artistic director SD Holman, adding that 20,000 plus people signed up for the online events. “So 50 countries and even countries that had to get around their own censorship laws. That was pretty special and that leads me to this year, which we are doing a hybrid festival.”

That hybrid model includes live shows, live streaming, an online art gallery, workshops and outdoor exhibits and events.

Outside events include a couple of shows at the Mountain View Cemetery and a sonic installation in and around the False Creek area.

The cemetery will play host to the Onibana Taiko and Alvin Erasga Tolentino show on Aug. 7 at 8 p.m.

Described as a combination Japanese folk meets punk rock, the show is certainly an attention grabber.

“The structure of it is something called Obon. Obon is sort like a Japanese Day of the Dead,” said Onibana Taiko drummer Leslie Komori.

The annual Obon festival is a Buddhist ceremony that connects the living with the dead through dance. Komori sees this performance as not only that but also as a way for people to ease into the return of live entertainment and maybe ease into living with all the grief that has grown immensely over the past 15 months.

“Given this year of COVID and the experience of a lot of loss and addition to the discovery of all the unmarked graves in different Indigenous residential schools, it’s hard to just jump back into life,” said Komori, who will be joined by bandmates E. Kage and Noriko Kobayashi. “I think it is like a ceremony to get us back to some kind of normal, to recognize what we have lost this past year and in years before.”

The Taiko and dance event will have performers moving from location to location in the cemetery. It will end with a queercore punk song.

“It’s kind of a processional, I guess, with a punk rock ending,” said Komori.

Also kind of punk rock is the other cemetery show, Piano Burning. Piano Burning is a reimagining of Annea Lockwood’s original 1968 performance piece. The Aug. 8, 8 p.m. event is a commissioned piece by Lil’wat composer Russell Wallace that includes a fireproof-red ball gown created by Métis designer Evan Ducharme. Rachel Kiyo Iwaasa will perform on the burning piano.

“We are very afraid of death,” said Holman, who co-curated Piano Burning with Margo Kane of the Talking Stick Festival. “Cemeteries — they are places of beauty. I love cemeteries. Every place I travel I go to cemeteries. The idea that it is being activated as an art space really appealed to me.

“Oh and the neighbours are quiet,” added Holman.

In other outdoor events, this time over in False Creek, electronic media artist Bobbi Kozinuk has created two new shows.

Language as a Virus: Queer Isolation Stories (Jul 24-Aug. 13) is a sonic installation that allows punters to move from location to location and connect with stories. Language as a Virus: The Tour (July 26, 8 p.m.) offers up an audio art tour.

“They will be able to hear the stories change on the FM (radios will be supplied) as they go around,” said Vancouver’s Kozinuk. “We are trying to get people to experience the work live.”

Each station/community centre has a web page that highlights the people and their stories associated to the location.

In the past she has used neighbourhood parks with transmitters as areas to experience these soundscapes/soundtracks.

These days, though, not that many people roam around with FM radios, so QR codes are now in play.

A long-time supporter of the festival, Kozinuk is also a board member.

“I find as queer artist, a trans artist it is very important to get stuff out there in people’s view,” said Kozinuk, when asked what QAF meant to her. “I came out as trans 20 years ago and I didn’t really have any examples from anyone on how to do it. Whereas younger people now go to the Queer Arts Festival and they realize there are people out there like them, people who have experiences that they can relate with.”

The connection is further solidified by the simple fact there is some very interesting art at play in this festival, art that speaks to people across the board.

“These are artists that are chosen because they are good artists. Not just because they are queer. So to have that as young queer people and have that for young artists to see that is invaluable,” said Kozinuk.

For Komori, a Japanese lesbian, the festival ticks not just artistic boxes but it ticks and kicks open doors to the wider queer world.

“I love the diversity. Sometimes you know queer things can tend to be white cis male,” said Komori. “The Queer Arts Festival has really attempted to have a real diversity of just really different types of folks. There are so many intersections that I really appreciate that.”

Dates, times and descriptions of all QAF events can be found at queerartsfestival.com.

Dgee@postmedia.com

twitter.com/dana_gee

Charlie Smith · The Georgia Straight · Posted: Jul 21, 2021 9:54 AM PDT

Growing up in Winnipeg, visual artist Dayna Danger experienced conflicting identities. With Tio’tia:ke, Métis, and Saulteaux/Anishinaabe heritage, the 34-year-old Montreal-based artist described feeling “really ostracized” as she was raised in Polish Roman Catholic traditions.

Danger, who prefers the pronouns they and them, is also proudly Indigiqueer.

As a photographer, Danger strives to create a world in which people can exist freely without having to conform to gender and sexual norms.

“I’m really interested in BDSM culture—and that plays a lot into my work as well,” Danger told the Straight by phone.

That’s on display in the beading of leather fetish masks featured in some of Danger’s photographs, as well as in the creation of other tools commonly found in dungeons. Danger’s art blends sexuality and Indigeneity in ways that startle and challenge viewers.

One example on her website shows a naked Indigenous woman holding giant moose antlers over her genitals. There are other images of women with what appear to be long horse tails protruding from between their legs or their butts.

This year’s Vancouver Queer Arts Festival will feature Danger in its online Kindred Spirits community art showcase from this Saturday (July 24) to August 13.

Danger was one of the faculty members for the Kindred Spirits digital artist residency in May and June, which offered online mentorship to young, Indigiqueer artists.

Danger noted that their art has been influenced by how pornography manipulates bodies through the lens for pleasure.

In addition, Danger is drawn to “performance photography”, in this regard having been inspired by Winnipeg artist Lori Blondeau.

“I say that she did the fur bikini before Kim Kardashian did,” Danger quipped, referring to Blondeau’s Lonely Surfer Squaw. “And she’s Métis too.”

Danger enjoys building items for many of their photographs so as to “have sovereignty over the narrative of being an Indigenous person”.

Sometimes, Danger’s photographs incorporate the type of bold and surprising imagery one might expect in Vancouver Indigenous artist Dana Claxton’s juxtaposition of the modern with the traditional. Danger augments this with high-fashion, over-the-top sexuality that might remind some of the work of the Felliniesque U.S. photographer David LaChapelle.

Then there are elaborate symbols and cues placed in many photographs, along with different shades of lighting, to create a narrative. One photo on Danger’s website shows a woman on the edge of a bed, dressed in sexually provocative lingerie but with a fake beard on her face. Her disinterested male partner is far off to the side, ignoring her, sending a message that he’s likely far less heterosexual than people might initially think.

According to Danger, the Kindred Spirits project reflected the huge need to mentor two-spirit and Indigiqueer young people who want to express themselves through their art.

“It became this really great support where we were able to talk about the different topics that come up and are concerning in our communities.”

At the interview’s close, when asked if there were any final points they would like to mention, Danger responded by emphasizing the importance of making space for Indigiqueer and two-spirit people to make art together to benefit the rest of the community.

“I feel it can become an inclusive thing where it’s not just about us having our own space but making space for all of us to exist together in safety,” Danger stated. “I would really love to see more support, especially from Indigenous and non-Indigenous communities, to advocate for that to happen.”

To learn more about the Queer Arts Festival in Vancouver, visit the website. It runs from July 24 to August 13.

by Rebecca Bollwitt, Miss604 blog

This weekend Miss604 is proud to sponsor the Queer Arts Festival, kicking-off Saturday, July 24 and running until August 13 at various venues across the city and online. The Coquitlam Summer Concert Series is also launching online, and the Chilliwack Sunflower Festival starts on Monday. There’s a lot to look forward to in the coming weeks but first, your list of things to do in Vancouver this weekend is right below:

Friday, July 23, 2021
Sponsored by Miss604: Burnaby Village Museum
I, Claudia
Vancouver Pride Summer Sounds
Bard in the Valley (live!)
Olympic Cauldron Lighting 6pm-9pm
Richmond Night Market
Abbotsford’s Sun & Soil Concert Series
Art & Cocktails | Vancouver Downtown Gallery Hop
London Drugs Robson Re-Opening with Live Music and More
Pride Lounge at Stanley Park Brewpub
Afro Van Connect presents Black Spaces Symposium Virtual
Summer POP! Outdoor Concerts in Surrey Parks
Mission Folk Music Festival
Vancouver Pride Art Walk
UNINTERRUPTED VR from a City Bridge
Family Fun at Steveston’s Heritage Sites

Saturday, July 24, 2021
Sponsored by Miss604: Queer Arts Festival – Dispersed
Sponsored by Miss604: Summer Concert Series with Redwoods
Sponsored by Miss604: Burnaby Village Museum
VanPride Classroom Series
ArtParty! Festival Opening @ QAF 2021
London Drugs Robson Re-Opening with Live Music and More
Mission Folk Music Festival
Tokyo 2020 Celebration at BC Sports Hall of Fame
Richmond Night Market
Intro to Whiskeys Class
Summer POP! Outdoor Concerts in Surrey Parks
Afro Van Connect presents Black Spaces Symposium Virtual
Granville Island Brewing’s “Sweat with Granville” Fitness Event
Vancouver Maritime Museum Storytime Saturday
I, Claudia
Girls and STEAM Mentor Café: The World of Video Games
UNINTERRUPTED VR from a City Bridge
Bard in the Valley (live!)
Summer Farmers Markets
Art on Clark, Port Moody
Vancouver Pride Art Walk
Japanese Canadian Historic Powell Street Walking Tours
Expressions of Reclamation an Indigenous Artists Talks Series
Family Fun at Steveston’s Heritage Sites

Sunday, July 25, 2021
Sponsored by Miss604: Queer Arts Festival – Dispersed
Sponsored by Miss604: Summer Concert Series with Redwoods
Sponsored by Miss604: Burnaby Village Museum
I, Claudia
Vancouver Park Board Free Swim to Survive Session
London Drugs Robson Re-Opening with Live Music and More
Summer POP! Outdoor Concerts in Surrey Parks
Granville Island Brewing’s “Sweat with Granville” Fitness Event
Mission Folk Music Festival
Summer Farmers Markets
Vancouver Pride Art Walk
Richmond Night Market
Family Fun at Steveston’s Heritage Sites

Month-Long Events/Attractions

• Vancouver Pride
• The Da Vinci Experience at Tsawwassen Mills
• Imagine Van Gogh
• Stanley Park Train
• Wings and Wizards at BC Place
• Burrard Arts Foundation Artists in Residence
• UNINTERRUPTED VR from a City Bridge
• The Polygon Gallery’s Interior Infinite
• Summer Exhibitions at Surrey Art Gallery: Cindy Mochizuki and Henry Tsang

CBC reporter and former Olympian Karin Larsen and viaSport CEO Charlene Krepiakevich look ahead to the start of the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games. We get a tour of Bobbi Kozinuk’s sound art installation “Language as a Virus,” and QMUNITY co-executive director of programs and services Anoop Gill discusses maintaining connections in queer communities during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Click here to listen to the radio interview.

Posted on July 21, 2021 by jminter, jayminter.com

Summer swiftly moves along bringing more activities and adventures to us each week.

Stage: The Arts Club Theatre returns to the stage, with I, Claudia opens Thursday. Running until August 15th at the Newmont Stage at the BMO Theatre Centre.

Festival: The Mission Folk Music Festival 2021 – Folk at Home gets underway this Friday, July 23.  The festival features three main stage concert showcases online Friday, Saturday and Sunday, and it’s all free!

Dance: Kokoro Dance’s 27th Annual Wreck Beach Butoh performances with set, costumes, and lighting provided by Mother Nature, will take place July 24th and 25th, on Wreck Beach at the foot of the #4 Trail just west of the UBC Museum of Anthropology

Kokoro Dance Wreck Beach Butoh Photo: Robert Seaton

Pop-Up: Vancouver non-profit, Instruments of Change, is bringing Infectious Gratitude to neighbourhoods around Vancouver in a series of free pop-up shout out events happening this summer.

EXTENDED: The success of the stunning Imagine Van Gogh: The Immersive Exhibition at Vancouver Convention Centre, has meant it has now been extended to September 7, 2021 giving you even more time to see this amazing spectacle of Van Gogh’s masterpieces

Arts: Queer Arts Festival (QAF) is returning for 2021 with Dispersed – it’s not easy being green, opening July 24, 2021 and running until August 13 wth a hybrid digital and in-person suite of visual art, performance, music, literary and workshop events in a dispersed format across the Lower Mainland

Gallery: Interior Infinite, The Polygon Gallery’s first feature exhibition curated by Assistant Curator Justin Ramsey, is on view from until September 5, 2021. A group show exploring carnivalesque expression as an act of resistance against the status quo, featuring a group of 15 international artists whose works span photography, video, performance, and sculpture, including Nick Cave, Dana Claxton, Zanele Muholi, Aïda Muluneh, Skeena Reece, Yinka Shonibare CBE (pictured above), Sin Wai Kin, Carrie Mae Weems, and Zadie Xa.

Audio:  The Arts Club Listen to This series of audio plays adds My Father is the Greatest Man in the World by Tai Amy Grauma, joining Someone Like You, by Christine Quintana,  Night Passing: by Scott Button  and UNEXPECTING: by Bronwyn Carradine for listening online.

Drink>: Until August 1,  Vancouver Foodster Iced Summer Drink Challenge cools your palate as participating cafes are rolling out their best iced summer drinks to complete for the title of favourite Iced Summer Drink.

Hawaii: For a limited time, until August 15th, take a trip to the tropics as Fly Over Canada presents Hawaii from Above, a soaring, sense-awakening journey over islands.

Mystery: Green Thumb Theatre and BC Summer Reading Club are asking youth to help solve, the Misadventure at the Lighthouse an original script, created especially for BC Summer Reading Club participants, and the program’s 2021 mystery theme: ‘Crack the Case!’.

Markets: For your farm fresh produce and supplies Vancouver Farmers Markets at Riley Park, Trout Lake, Kitsilano, West End and Mount Pleasant are now open until the autumn with Downtown opening this week and False Creek market opening soon.

Rides: Playland is open Friday, Saturday and Sunday to provide plenty of thrills and fun for the whole family.

Outside: Get out and enjoy Push Walks, from PuSh Festival unique audio walks with artists through the urban spaces that have given them inspiration, listen and walk to one of the six Walks now available where you find your podcasts.

ArtWalk<:  Get out and about exploring North Van Arts’ North Shore Culture Compass, to find sights, or public outdoor art

WHAT’S ON QUEER BC JULY 9, 2021

2021 Queer Arts Festival (QAF): Dispersed — Vancouver’s QAF announces its first hybrid format festival in it’s not easy being green, opening Jul 24, 2021.

Vancouver BC, Jun 8, 2021 | Vancouver’s premiere artist-run, multidisciplinary roister of art and culture,

QAF is back for its lucky 13th year in QAF 2021 Dispersed: it’s not easy being green, running Jul 24 – Aug 13, 2021.

Join QAF for a three-week eco-apocalyptic exploration of queer experience and artistic expression in the face of an ongoing pandemic and marginalization. For the first time, QAF’s suite of visual art, performance, music, literary and workshop events will be presented in a dispersed format across the Lower Mainland—from the depths of the Sun Wah Centre and rooftop overlooking historic Chinatown, to Mountain View Cemetery, False Creek and QAF’s usual stomping grounds, the Roundhouse Community Arts Centre. Following the success of last year’s online festival, QAF will also have a streaming component on queerartsfestival.com.

Event highlights include: Jeffrey McNeil-Seymour and SD Holman’s visual art curation; a fabulously punk Japanese folk music and dance performance from Onibana Taiko and Alvin Erasga Tolentino; and a reimagining of

Annea Lockwood’s 20th-century classic, Piano Burning, where fire becomes a vehicle for reclamation and decolonization (yes, we are burning a piano).

ART-BC.COM

Queer Arts Festival (QAF) is returning for 2021 with Dispersed – it’s not easy being green, opening July 24, 2021.

After a digital-only festival last year, the easing of COVID restrictions allows Vancouver’s premiere artist-run festival to return for its first hybrid format festival.  For its 13th year, QAF 2021 Dispersed: it’s not easy being green, runs July 24 – August 13, 2021, presenting a suite of visual art, performance, music, literary and workshop events in a dispersed format across the Lower Mainland; venues include the Sun Wah Centre and rooftop overlooking historic Chinatown, to Mountain View Cemetery, False Creek and QAF’s usual stomping grounds, the Roundhouse Community Arts Centre.

Following the success of last year’s online festival, QAF will also have a streaming component on queerartsfestival.com. Starting everything off is ArtParty! the Festival Opening Gala at Sun Wah Centre in Chinatown on Sat Jul 24, 7 – 10pm. The Gala launches Dispersed in champagne style with DJ O Show!  Other festival highlights include; it’s not easy being green: Curated Visual Art Exhibition, from Saturday July 24 – Friday August 13 co-curatored by Jeffrey McNeil-Seymour and SD Holman; a punk Japanese folk music and dance performance from Onibana Taiko and Alvin Erasga Tolentino, Saturday August 7^th; and a reimagining of Annea Lockwood’s 20th-century classic, Piano Burning, where fire becomes a vehicle for reclamation and decolonization (yes, we are burning a piano), August 8th. The festival closes Friday August 13 with Glitter is Forever, the festival closing from the Sun Wah rooftop with DJ O Show and a final chance to see all the art @ QAF 2021.

For the full QAF line-up, schedule and to buy festival passes, visit queerartsfestival.com

by Charlie Smith, Georgia Straight on June 11th, 2021

estival season is underway in Vancouver, minus the communal feasts that have been a hallmark of events like Greek Day on Broadway and Italian Day on the Drive. Damn that pandemic!

However, there is still plenty of sizzle coming at you virtually during the next couple of months, plus some events with a live component. Here are some highlights.

Talking Stick Festival Summer Sojourn

(until July 1)

Last week, we told you about Embodying Power and Place, which is a monthlong artistic representation of chapters in the final report of the National Inquiry Into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls. On June 15, the festival will present Dances With Our Ancestors, which includes pieces by Christine Friday, Maura Garcia, and Rebecca Sadowski.

Indian Summer Festival

(June 17 to July 17)

This one has it all: musical, theatrical, and literary events, plus a walking tour of the Punjabi Market, all spaced out over the course of a month. Two highlights? Seven-time Grammy-nominated sitarist and composer Anoushka Shankar next Saturday (June 19) from her home, followed a week later by Indian tabla master Zakir Hussain. Book lovers won’t want to miss Booker Prize–nominated novelist Avni Doshi in conversation with Scotiabank Giller Prize–winning short-story writer Souvankham Thammavongsa.

Dancing on the Edge

(July 8 to 17)

Vancouver has emerged as a globally respected centre for contemporary dance in the 21st century, no small thanks to its breadth of talent. At this year’s Dancing on the Edge Festival, there will be commissioned works by Ouro Collective, Raven Spirit Dance, Billy Marchenski, Immigrant Lessons, Generous Mess, Rob Kitsos, and Meredith Kalaman. That’s in addition to presentations by dance artists Wen Wei Dance, Radical System Art/Shay Kuebler, Rachel Meyer, Lesley Telford/Inverso Productions, CAMP, and others.

TD Vancouver International Jazz Festival

(June 25 to July 4)

The Snotty Nose Rez Kids, Tonye Aganaba, Helen Sung, Jill Barber, and DJ Kookum are just some of the featured acts at this grand music festival. And if you’re eager to see how the future of jazz might look like in a world of growing racial consciousness, be sure to check out Irreversible Entanglements, featuring the vocals of spoken-word artist and activist Moor Mother, a.k.a. Camae Ayewa.

Powell Street Festival

(July 1 to August 1)

In normal years, the Powell Street Festival is held over the B.C. Day long weekend in Oppenheimer Park in the heart of Vancouver’s old Japantown. But this is no normal year, so the 45th annual event will be free throughout July before it ends with a bang on July 31 and August 1. That includes a “flash mob” performance of the Paueru Mashup Dance in Oppenheimer Park, opportunities to listen to durational taiko drumming from the rooftop of the Japanese Language School, and Randall Okita’s virtual-reality film The Book of Distance at the same location.

From the comfort of home, people can watch on-demand streaming of Dub This Road with British hapa singer Denise Sherwood and Vancouver’s Sawagi Taiko and Onibana Taiko. Other on-demand shows feature Kazuma Glen Motomura and Sammy Chien; Jody Okabe, Rup Singh and director Aya Garcia; and Shion Skye Carter and Skye Carter.

Mission Folk Music Festival

(July 23 to 25)

Famous fathers Jim Cuddy and Barney Bentall will share songs and family stories with their musician sons, Devin Cuddy, Sam Polley, and Dustin Bentall. For those missing the Vancouver Folk Music Festival this year—and who might not have been in the mood to drive to Mission anyhow—plenty of folk acts are available in your living room.

Queer Arts Festival

(July 24 to August 13)

This year’s QAF is billed as Dispersed: it’s not easy being green, featuring a curated visual art exhibition at the Sun Wah Centre in Chinatown. This year’s fest also includes Bobbi Kozinuk’s interactive Language as a Virus: Queer Isolation Stories (from July 24 to August 13), as well as Queerotica literary readings curated by Josie Boyce (August 2) and music and dance with Onibana Taiko and Alvin Erasga Tolentino (August 7).

Vancouver Mural Festival

(August 4 to 22)

This one is pretty straightforward. Artists are hired to make the blank walls of buildings look far more beautiful. The neighbourhood becomes more appealing. Everyone’s happy, including the property owners, whose land is now in a hip area.

The festival also serves a useful social purpose. For example, the VMF’s Black Strathcona Resurgence Project is offering a tangible reminder of the Black community, centred in Hogan’s Alley, which was deliberately displaced by the white establishment and largely erased from popular memory when the viaducts were built. The new murals going into the neighoburhood are one way to counter this erasure and remind Vancouverites of what once existed in our city.

Carnaval del Sol

(August 6 to 29)

Online and in-person events are planned for the largest Latin American festival in B.C. and the U.S. Pacific Northwest. We’ll provide more information when it becomes available.

Last year, Carnaval Del Sol put on an impressive virtual festival on fairly short notice, thanks to its large contingent of community volunteers and to help from the Vancouver Latin American Film Festival programming director Christian Sida.

BY JANET SMITH, STIR VANCOUVER

IT’S WHAT everyone in the performing arts community has been waiting for: announcements from theatre companies that stages will reopen.

The first out of the gates have released plans to host audiences not just outdoors, but to invite up to 50 back indoors again this summer.

In the wake of recent news from provincial health authorities that venues will be allowed to welcome indoor audiences by June 15, Arts Club Theatre Company unveiled a summer season of two solo shows alongside an audio play starring Carmen Aguirre.

I, Claudia, Kristen Thomson’s award-winning tween story, starring Lili Beaudoin, will play to limited audiences at the Newmont Stage from July 22­ to August 15. Beneath Springhill: The Maurice Ruddick Story, a musical celebrating the singing coal miner who kept crews spirits alive after the Nova Scotia disaster of 1958, will greet a live crowd at the Granville Island Stage from August 5 to 29. Aguirre’s audio play Mala, written by Melinda Lopez, is available September 1 to 28. Tickets for the shows will go on sale on June 16, at artsclub.com.

Artistic director Ashlie Corcoran said in a press announcement about the Art Club’s summer lineup, “Once the province announced the plans to lift restrictions, which included allowing limited indoor gatherings, we celebrated the news. Then we got busy doing what we do best—creating live theatre! And all this will be done in the most stable, safe way possible.”

July 8 to 17, the Dancing on the Edge festival has confirmed it will host limited, live events in the Firehall Arts Centre and its courtyard (Immigrant Lessons), at Russian Hall (Rachel Meyer), and at the Dr. Sun Yat-sen Chinese Classical Gardens (dumb Instrument dance).

The Queer Arts Festival (July 24 to August 13) also released news that it would be hosting in-person outdoor events later this summer, including the Onibana Taiko and Alvin Erasga Tolentino Japanese folk-punk and dance show at the Mountainview Cemetery in August.

Meanwhile, the Massey Theatre revealed a full 2021-22 season that kicks off in November with concerts by Martha Wainwright and Bill Henderson. The new year will see touring shows like comedian Shaun Majumder’s LOVE in February.

“We are so proud to have made it through this pandemic as an organization. We’ve pulled together one of our most exciting programs ever to bring people back to cultural experiences,” said Jessica Schneider, the theatre’s executive director,in the announcement.