Posts Tagged ‘Strathcona/Downtown Eastside’

Shadow Catch

Date: December 2 – 4, 2011
Location: Firehall Centre for the Arts
Website: www.vancouverpromusica.ca and www.tomoearts.org

Shadow Catch is a Japanese Noh-influenced, brand new chamber opera that weaves together four stories from Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside. Rich with local history and haunting characters, this riveting tale features an original libretto by celebrated Vancouver poet Daphne Marlatt, an evocative score by four Vancouver composers – Dorothy Chang, Jennifer Butler, Farshid Samandari, and Benton Roark, music direction by Marguerite Witvoet, and stage direction by Asian theatre specialist Colleen Lanki. Shadow Catch tells the story of a young runaway newly arrived in Vancouver who spends the night in Oppenheimer Park—and the four spirits who appear to him in his dreams to recount aspects of the dynamic pre-war history of the Powell Street neighbourhood.

Shadow Catch Promotional Video from Benton Roark on Vimeo.

With support from the City of Vancouver’s 125th Anniversary Grants Program and the participation of the Government of Canada.

Artists Walking Home

Date: June – December, 2011; upcoming walk on Sunday, November 13, 2011,  Saturday, December 3, 2011
Location: Downtown Eastside
Website: artistswalkinghome.ca and www.walkinghomeprojects.com

Artists Walking Home is a year-long collaboration between Walking Home Projects and 221A Artist Run Centre comprised of a series of walks guided by local artists, designers, and architects that will invite public participants to learn about the complex historical and social conditions of Vancouver through the embodied experience of the cities cultural producers. Participants will experience a direct connection to the city’s immediate environment – both natural and constructed – and to gain an understanding of how ideas and intention become policy, resulting in action and infrastructure which shape our social and lived experiences in public spaces.

Join Artists Walking Home for upcoming walks in November and December:

Tacit Past: Marks of Vancouver’s History
Sunday, November 13, 2011
Presenter: Samantha Knopp
http://artistswalkinghome.ca/tacit-past

“I think, therefore I am.” Is it right to privilege the mind over the body?

In this walk, Artists Walking Home invites you to experience the alternative and embrace embodied learning. By going into the heart of Vancouver’s beginnings (Gastown, Chinatown and the Downtown East Side), Samantha Knopp will highlight the tangible layers of history and the contestations that surround their physicality. Drawing upon her interests in three-dimensional representation, the walk will invite viewers to share their experiences as they interact with the marks of the past, present and future.

Walk Information
Arrive at: 1:45pm
Walk Starts: 2:00pm (2 hours max, no latecomers)
Rain or Shine, Dress Weather Appropriate
Limited Capacity: 20
Cost: $21

Maraya
Saturday, December 3, 2011
Presenter: M. Simon Levin
http://artistswalkinghome.ca/maraya

Maraya comes from the Arabic word for reflection; image, mirror – mirage; it is meant to make you wonder. Like Narcissus’s deep wondrous gaze, Maraya asks us to reflect, to look again at our own civic mirroring – at what it is that makes here special. It asks, how is here any different from there? The Maraya Project is a dialogue between a network of weary travellers, local pundits, aspiring artists, curators, public intellectuals, writers, photographers, academics, conversationalists, programmers, bloggers, silent walkers, anarchists, and urban planners. We need you to help us reflect on how cities move, how the ground beneath our feet is in constant motion. In an age when the material city has become thoroughly enmeshed in virtual representations, the singularity of place is occluded by a multiplicity of mass-mediated images.

Join M. Simon Levin on False Creek for a walk that both reflects and distorts the Vancouver seawall, and gives us pause to see ourselves. Please bring a camera or an image capturing device—we’ll provide the reflection.

Walk Information
Arrive at: 10:45am
Walk Starts: 11:00am (2 hours max, No late-comers)
Rain or Shine, Dress Weather Appropriate
Limited Capacity: 20
Cost: $21
Walk starting point: Davie at Pacific Boulevard

The starting point for the walk will be emailed to participants after pre-registration.

For registration inquiries visit artistswalkinghome.ca/tacit-past or email hello@artistswalkinghome.ca.

With support from the City of Vancouver’s 125th Anniversary Grants Program and the participation of the Government of Canada.

Founding Neighbourhood Founding Community: We Are The People


Date: April 7 – April 10, 2011
Location: Ukrainian Hall
Website: www.vancouvermovingtheatre.com

We Are the People is an original musical celebration commemorating 125 years of laughter and tears in the Downtown Eastside – the heart of our city. Presented by Vancouver Moving Theatre Society, this special concert of songs of “struggle and loss, celebration and perseverance” showcases the home-grown creativity of this inner city community and reflects the Downtown Eastside’s cultural diversity and urban aboriginal residents. We Are The People features a talented team of professional musicians and Downtown Eastside residents and emerging artists, and premieres the week of Vancouver’s birthday at the venerable Ukrainian Hall in Strathcona/Downtown Eastside. 

With support from the City of Vancouver’s 125th Anniversary Grants Program and the participation of the Government of Canada.