Queer Arts Festival

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.