The Georgia Straight -PuSh Festival - January 13, 2022

JANUARY 13 – 20 / 2022 | FREE Volume 56 | Number 2813

HOUSING PRICES

PuSh

Nowhere to go but up?

COLLEEN HARDWICK

Supports a city of villages

Festival How to Fail as a Popstar creator Vivek Shraya created a critically acclaimed theatrical memoir from her lack of success in the music world

ST-REMY BRANDY

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DINE OUT

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COVID-19 DEMOS

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CHRISTIE RESIDE

NEWS

Colleen Hardwick promoter plugs her vision for the city

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CONTENTS 9

There’s no point in building $2-million condos or $2-million single-family housing.

– local historian Jak King

Some have blamed neighbourhood associations for the supposed delay in the delivery of new housing in the city. These critics often describe local residents as NIMBYs (the acronym for Not in My Backyard, which refers to community opposition to new developments).

“NIMBYs and YIMBYs [Yes in My Backyard], they’re just insulting names,” King said.

King said that people simply use those phrases in order to “not engage in the conversation that they should”. He added that it is “foolish to suggest that residents of the neighbourhood should have no say whatsoever in the way their neighbourhoods develop”.

“I know that there are parties like OneCity [Vancouver], which believes that there should be just one neighbourhood in the city and that everything should be the same,” King said. “That’s just nonsense to me.

“I mean when I first came here in the ’70s,” King continued, “the thing that attracted me to Vancouver was that this was a city of villages.

“You know, Kits was different from East Side, and East Side was different from Southlands, et cetera, et cetera,” he said.

2

THE GEORGIA STR AIGHT

COVER

Nonbinary theatre artist, writer, and musician Vivek Shraya’s How to Fail as a Popstar shows all of us that it’s okay not to succeed in everything we do.

by Carlito Pablo

eighbourhood advocate Jak King has made up his mind about who he thinks is the best next mayor of Vancouver.

That would be city councillor Colleen Hardwick.

“She’s got the right ideas for city governance,” King told the Straight in a phone interview.

The longtime resident of GrandviewWoodland is part of TEAM for a Livable Vancouver, the new civic party Hardwick joined last fall.

King said that what attracts him most to Hardwick is that she “understands that elected officials and the [city hall] staff have to listen to the residents of Vancouver”.

“She’s a great believer in bottom-up ideas, and I think she will help strengthen the neighbourhoods to allow the neighbourhoods to have a much greater voice in city planning than we’ve had at least for the last 10 years,” he said.

January 13-20 / 2022

By Charlie Smith Cover photo by Vanessa Heins

5

REAL ESTATE

A report by Dexter Realty declares that a continuing housing shortage means the cost of Vancouver homes will likely remain high in 2022.

By Carlito Pablo

8

LIQUOR

Ask St-Rémy master blender Cécile Roudat if she loves her job and you get an answer that, tellingly, doesn’t require any words.

By Mike Usinger

Coun. Colleen Hardwick supports Vancouver as a “city of villages”, says local historian Jak King.

“And I think that one of the joys of the city is that you can go from area to area and they’re different. We don’t want them all looking the same.”

King came from London to make a fi lm in Vancouver in 1978 and ended up staying for good. In Grandview-Woodland, King said, his neighbourhood “accepted change over the last 30 years”. “But it’s been nice, gradual change,” he added.

Last year, King released a book that chronicled the community’s battle against city hall in the draft ing of a new development plan for the East Vancouver area. His book is titled Battleground: Grandview— An Activist’s Memoir of the Grandview Community Plan, 2011-2016.

“Developers push on us massive changes, which people object to,” King said.

“And I think if we have a better relationship between the neighbourhoods and the city, where a real, genuine conversation can happen, that would help a lot.”

One thing TEAM for a Livable Vancouver promises to deliver is affordable housing, whether ownership type or rental.

“There’s no point in building $2-million condos or $2-million single-family housing,” King noted.

The city’s official profi le, based on the 2016 federal census, shows that the median personal income in Vancouver is $39,000.

The accepted measure of “affordability” is 30 percent of income for housing costs.

Hence, applying this 30 percent standard, someone earning an income of $39,000 should pay only $975 for a one-bedroom unit or studio in Vancouver.

TEAM for a Livable Vancouver also promises to stabilize land values by “ending inflationary spot-zoning”. “What we’ve seen is that the upzoning they’ve done over the last few years has done nothing but increase land values, and that’s increased the unaffordability,” King said.

“We have to break that cycle,” he added. g

JANUARY 13 – 20 / 2022

e Start Here

14 16 6 7 4 15 2 18 12

ARTS BOOKS EDUCATION FOOD HEALTH MUSIC NEWS SAVAGE LOVE THEATRE

Vancouver’s News and Entertainment Weekly Volume 56 | Number 2813 #300 - 1375 West 6th Avenue, Vancouver, B.C. V6H 0B1 T: 604.730.7000 E: gs.info@straight.com straight.com DISPLAY ADVERTISING: T: 604.730.7020 E: sales@straight.com

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COVID-19 hospitalizations rise 23.5 percent over three days.

Environment Canada warns of heavy rainfall headed toward Vancouver.

Number of Canadians obtaining medical help in dying is on the rise.

Renovations can help you fall in love with your home again.

Researcher says Omicron will boost hospitalizations of children and youths.

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THE GEORGIA STR AIGHT

3

HEALTH

Vaccine critic claims government will provoke war

A

by Charlie Smith

n opponent of vaccine mandates has raised the prospect of civil war in Canada if governments don’t stop making life more difficult for the unvaccinated.

James Davison, an administrator of the Stand United Facebook page, made the comment at a January 8 rally outside the Global TV B.C. station in Burnaby.

“Our best bet to avoid them taking it to the next level is to hold them accountable,” Davison declared. “That’s our best weapon right now. Because if we can’t succeed legally—if we can’t succeed now, legally—then we are going to be in a civil-war situation. That is a fact.

“That’s where this is leading to, because they will round us up,” he warned the

crowd of about 250. “They will put us in an institution, call us whatever they want, demonize us however they want to through these organizations like Global News, CTV, CityNews, News 1130. It’s programming.

“And at this point in time, all you can do is try to handle this professionally—at this point in time,” Davison emphasized. “It’s not time, here right now in Canada, to take it to the next level. We don’t want to start with the vandalizing and, you know, tipping over things and making a mess of our country. But I’ll tell you: at this point we’re at right now, the damage is done.”

Several people in the movement opposing mRNA vaccines have made no secret that they are firearms owners, including

A crowd of about 250 antivaccine protesters gathered on January 8 outside Global TV B.C.’s studios in Burnaby to hear organizers and speakers blame media for pandemic restrictions.

Davison, who’s an administrator of the Stand United Facebook page. On December 22, he posted video on Facebook of himself firing at a target range.

At the rally, he expressed the hope that governments and employers can be discouraged from taking measures against those who refuse COVID-19 vaccines through notices of liability. These notices warn officials that they will be held legally liable for any actions they take against “freedom of anatomy”. In addition, Davison urged the crowd to send these notices to people who work in the media to hold them accountable for what he believes is misreporting.

The mRNA vaccines, such as those manufactured by Pfizer and Moderna, teach cells to make proteins that trigger an immune response.

One of the earliest researchers, Robert Malone, has criticized their use on children, which has galvanized opponents of mRNA vaccines, including Davison. Malone has come under criticism by others, such as the Atlantic magazine writer Tom Bartlett, for “spreading vaccine misinformation”.

“They’re using the media, the mainstream media, to twist the minds of all of these impressionable people that have been brought up to trust the government,” Davison said. “We’re Canadians. Okay. We trusted our government because we were educated to. It’s called indoctrination.”

According to Davison, there’s a deliberate attempt underway by the elites to trash the economy, which will justify officials showing up at people’s doors and confiscating their property. He said that this drift into tyranny has begun with a medical passport. Next, he said, the government will introduce a “credit-social score”. Then, he added, these two methods of government surveillance will be attached to the use of currency.

“So, okay, you can’t participate in 4

THE GEORGIA STR AIGHT

JANUARY 13 – 20 / 2022

If it wasn’t for the media…it would have been another flu season.

– James Davison

society but now you can’t buy, sell, or trade anything because we’re cutting you off of your money,” Davison said.

That elicited a strong reaction from the crowd, with one shouting “the number of the beast”.

“That’s right,” Davison continued. “It’s called Revelations here. This is called Biblical crap. And if you people don’t wake up and fight now, you’re not going to have anything to fight for later. This is why it’s so important that we use the tools we have in place now.”

He emphasized that under Canada’s Constitution, the government cannot force anyone to put anything in their body.

Moreover, to him, COVID-19 is just another case of the flu, but it’s being used to justify extraordinary measures that will take away people’s liberties.

“If it wasn’t for the media, this would have never affected any of us,” Davison claimed. “It would have been another flu season. And you know what? Some people die every year from the flu.”

Statistics Canada has reported that there were 874 flu deaths from 2009 to 2019 (according to a CTV News report), whereas the B.C. government has reported more than 2,400 COVID-19 deaths since March 2020. g

REAL ESTATE

Record sales in 2021 set stage for pricier homes

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by Carlito Pablo

report by Dexter Realty tells everyone to brace for a fascinating year.

“As the Metro Vancouver housing market comes off a record sales year, we are entering what could be the most interesting 12 months this region has ever seen,” executive Kevin Skipworth wrote.

Skipworth is a partner, managing broker, and economist with the Vancouver realty company. He issued his latest report on the heels of the 2021 annual recaps released by the Real Estate Board of Greater Vancouver (REBGV) and the Fraser Valley Real Estate Board (FVREB).

The two boards have stated that last year’s sales set new records in their respective jurisdictions.

In Greater Vancouver, residential sales totalled 43,999 in 2021, marking a four percent increase over the previous all-time record of 42,326 in 2015.

Over at the Fraser Valley, realtors made 27,692 sales in 2021, an increase of 15.5 percent over the previous best annual record of 23,974 in 2016.

With this backdrop, Skipworth lists three realities that he believes will define the housing market in 2022.

CANADA DOES NOT HAVE ENOUGH HOUSING SUPPLY

To make matters worse, Skipworth said that the government “does not have…the political gumption to provide the housing needed for the biggest surge in immigration this country has ever seen”.

“According to Statistics Canada, this country absorbed 123,000 immigrants in the third quarter of 2021 alone: the highest level for any quarter since 1946, at the end of World War II,” he wrote.

For the entire year of 2021, Skipworth stated, Canada welcomed 403,000 new residents.

“If former immigration surges are any indication, up to 30% of newcomers to Canada will immediately or eventually— usually within two years—locate to B.C. and 95% of these will come to Metro Vancouver,” he explained.

However, the “supply of housing in Metro Vancouver has fallen to record low levels”.

He wrote that this is “due primarily to local governments” and that “construction of new homes is not keeping pace with the current population, let alone meeting the needs of a hundred thousand newcomers every year”.

The REBGV stated in its January 5, 2022, report that the new year started with 5,236 active listings.

This level represents a 26.7 percent decrease compared to November 2021 (7,144).

The board noted that it’s the lowest

With a benchmark price of over $2 million for a Vancouver detached home, it’s no surprise that this two-bedroom condo near Marine Drive Station sold for $760,000 on January 2, 2022.

level of year-end active listings in more than 30 years.

It’s no different in markets served by the FVREB. The Fraser Valley board reported on January 5 that as of the end of December 2021, there were only 1,957 units for sale, which is the lowest in more than 40 years.

Skipworth stated: “Criticize the supply side discussions all you want but a fundamental flaw in the Metro Vancouver and many other real estate markets that we are experiencing right now is a significant lack of homes.”

FEDERAL GOVERNMENT WANTS TO TAX HOMES MORE

What’s the proof?

Skipworth cited a new report funded by Canada’s national housing agency, which calls for a new and additional tax on houses.

The report was published by Generation Squeeze, with funding from the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation.

The paper recommended a “surtax” of 0.2 percent to 0.5 percent for homes valued between $1 million and $1.5 million, 0.5 percent on homes with a worth of $1.5 million to $2 million, and one percent for homes valued $2 million and more.

“Will they slap a capital gains tax on the sale of principal residences next, despite its strenuous denials?” Skipworth asked.

Taxation is an example of a demandside measure meant to dampen activity in the market.

However, Skipworth argued that demand-side measures “clearly are not the long-term answer”.

“At some point there needs to be real effort to increase supply and allow it to be increased in a meaningful way,” he wrote.

HOMES WILL REMAIN EXPENSIVE

“The final reality that every home buyer, seller and renter in Metro Vancouver will face is that the cost of housing here is never going to come down,” Skipworth stated.

This comes “despite the barriers to

demand that every level of government has thrown up over the past 10 years”.

“The price increases are being fueled by the housing shortage, and the shortage is because of rising prices,” Skipworth said.

How is that?

By way of illustration, Skipworth noted that the benchmark price of a detached house in Vancouver, Richmond, West Vancouver, and Whistler is now more than $2 million.

It is over $1.8 million in North Vancouver, Port Moody, and most of Burnaby.

“Sticker-shocked home owners are reluctant to list their home because they don’t know where they can afford to move to,” Skipworth stated.

Over at the Fraser Valley, the benchmark price of a detached home has increased to $1.5 million, a 3.6 percent rise compared to November 2021 and 39 percent more compared to December 2020.

“It won’t be easy, but Metro Vancouver has never been an affordable market,” Skipworth pointed out.

That shouldn’t come as a surprise, though, because there is “nowhere better to live in Canada”.

In December 2021, the Canadian Real Estate Association released a forecast stating that the average price of a home in the country could post an annual increase of 7.6 percent in 2022.

The association qualified that this is a “somewhat conservative” prediction.

It doesn’t look pretty for people wanting to buy homes this year.

“The bottom line: buyers will continue to struggle in 2022,” Skipworth stated.

Although there may come a “rush of new listings in January and into the spring…it won’t be enough”. g

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THE GEORGIA STR AIGHT

5

EDUCATION

Why Adrian Dix and Bonnie Henry are losing favour

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by Charlie Smith

ue to the Omicron variant, Ontario and Quebec public schools have transitioned to online learning until January 17. In Manitoba, all students except K-6 children of critical-service workers and K-12 students at “high risk” or with special learning needs will be taught online until January 17.

But in Canada’s three westernmost provinces—B.C., Alberta, and Saskatchewan—all students from K-12 returned to classroom instruction on January 10. B.C.’s “enhanced safety measures” include making three-layered masks available, restricting visitors, holding virtual assemblies, and staggering breaks.

B.C.’s approach is not going over well with a growing number of very well-educated people. Some are pointing to the rising U.S. hospitalization rate of people under the age of 18 with the Omicron variant of COVID-19. They say this justifies closing schools right now in B.C. Others are upset over the lack of carbon-dioxide monitors and HEPA (high-efficiency particulate air) filters in B.C. classrooms, which was the subject of last week’s Georgia Straight cover story. Quebec has

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Jennifer Heighton, a cofounder of Safe Schools Coalition B.C. and a Grade 5 teacher, says the province has done a poor job in communicating the airborne reality of COVID-19 transmission.

installed these monitors in its classrooms and Ontario has put HEPA filters in all learning environments.

According to a Leger poll for Postmedia, B.C. provincial health officer Dr. Bonnie Henry’s approval rating is at 62 percent, which is down from 69 percent

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in June. Health Minister Adrian Dix’s approval rating is at 55 percent, down from 69 percent in June.

The public often perceives that the opposition to policies advanced by Henry and Dix is coming from vocal right wingers who falsely liken COVID-19 to the sniffles or a cold or the flu. (COVID-19 is not just a respiratory disease; the virus can also attack the cardiovascular system, internal organs, and the brain.)

The problem that Henry and Dix have is that they’re also losing the confidence of some of the very people who were most supportive of them in 2020. Back then, Henry and Dix had the wind at their backs when they were facing down the knownothings who thought fears about the virus were overblown.

How did Henry and Dix get in this situation? It’s simple: by underplaying the mostly airborne nature of the disease’s transmission.

That’s reflected in the decisions around HEPA filters and carbon-dioxide monitors in classrooms. It’s on display whenever you see a bus driver not wearing a mask because they’re under the impression that Plexiglas barriers are sufficient.

Meanwhile, as of this writing, casinos remain open in B.C. And N95 masks are not being made available to teachers, let alone health-care workers at COVID vaccination and testing centres.

It’s gotten so bad that those who oppose vaccine mandates and even receiving COVID-19 vaccines have taken to quoting public-health officials to justify their positions.

They’ll cite Dr. Patricia Daly’s comment that vaccine passports were introduced to increase vaccination rates rather than emphasizing their role in decreasing transmission of COVID-19.

Those opposed to wearing masks to prevent COVID-19 transmission cite Henry’s comment in paragraph 178 of this 2015 Ontario arbitration decision, in which she mentioned “scant evidence about the value of masks in preventing the transmission of influenza”.

They’ll point out that Henry went maskfree at a B.C. Lions game. Or that as small businesses have been hammered for extended periods, the lifting of one publichealth order coincided with the Canucks’ home opener and the imposition of another wasn’t going to take effect until after two more Canucks home games.

I hate to say it, but there have been times when Henry and Dix have actually given the antivaccine movement oxygen.

That’s most notable in their refusal to launch a massive government advertising campaign to educate the public about how COVID-19 is transmitted.

This is something that deeply troubles Jennifer Heighton, a Grade 5 teacher and cofounder of Safe Schools Coalition B.C.

They have not educated the public that it spreads through the air…

– Grade 5 teacher Jennifer Heighton

“I do think a communications campaign—a good one about how COVID-19 spreads—would be extremely advantageous for B.C.,” Heighton said. “And it hasn’t been done. They have not educated the public that it spreads through the air— that it’s like smoke.”

She added that she has seen excellent public-education campaigns from the U.K., which show how people can enhance their safety when they open windows. (To see these videos, go to Straight.com.)

These types of campaigns have not been launched by the B.C. government. “There is a lot that the B.C. public doesn’t know,” Heighton said.

Moreover, she maintained that had this information been conveyed earlier in a clear manner, it would have likely reduced the transmission of COVID-19. That’s because she believes that many people will do the right thing if they’re provided with accurate information.

“I do think there should be some accountability and there should be some reckoning for the decisions that have been made,” Heighton said. g

FOOD

Dine Out Vancouver food trucks make comeback

S

by Charlie Smith

treet Food City is returning to this year’s Dine Out Vancouver Festival.

The food-truck pod was a fixture on the north side of the Vancouver Art Gallery at the annual event dating back to 2011. But in 2021, due to the pandemic, organizers cancelled Street Food City.

This year, there will be 13 food trucks ready to dish up meals in the giant square bounded by Hornby, West Georgia, and Howe streets. Participants include: Chickpea, Disco Cheetah, Mama’s Fish & Chips, Melt City Grilled Cheese, Mom’s Grilled Cheese, Mr. Arancino, Old Country Pierogi, REEL Mac and Cheese, Salty’s Lobster Shack, Shameless Buns, Super Thai, Taste of Malaysia, and Via Tevere Pizzeria Napoletana.

Street Food City will be open from Saturday (January 15) to next Sunday (January 23) from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. on weekdays and 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. on weekends.

“Absence makes the heart grow fonder, so we’re especially excited to bring Street Food City back this year—and we’re sure the public shares our enthusiasm for its return,” Dine Out Vancouver Festival manager Lucas Pavan said in a news release.

“We and the participating food truck oper-

As part of the Dine Out Vancouver Festival, a baker’s dozen of Vancouver’s food trucks will pack the square north of the Vancouver Art Gallery, serving meals from grilled cheese to lobster.

ators look forward to welcoming guests to the Square for some delicious food and good times. It’s a great way to kick off the new year and for Vancouver to reignite its love for our local food trucks.”

The Dine Out Vancouver Festival is produced by Destination Vancouver and runs from Friday (January 14) to January 31. It’s Canada’s largest food and drink festival and is celebrating its 20th year this month.

As part of the Dine Out Vancouver Festival, hundreds of local restaurants, breweries, and winemakers offer multicourse, fixed-

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price menus, which can be viewed online at dineoutvancouver.com. On this website, it’s possible to search by name, menu price, cuisine, and neighbourhood, as well as make reservations. In addition, visitors to the site can choose whether they’re interested in menus for breakfast/brunch, lunch, dinner, takeout, and vegetarian or gluten-free dining.

Participating hotels are offering a $50 Mastercard prepaid gift card per night that can be used to cover some of the cost of dinner, a room, or for shopping. There’s a threenight maximum on the gift-card offer.

Dine Out Vancouver also has a long list of events planned to coincide with the festival, including a return of the Vancouver World Chef Exchange.

On January 25, Toronto-based celebrity chef Rob Gentile, Toronto pasta chef David Marcelli, Oliver’s Phantom Creek Estate Winery chef Sarah Fiore, and Giovane Bacaro chef Scott Korzack will prepare a $250 all-inclusive multicourse dinner with wine pairings at Giovane Bacaro in the Fairmont Pacific Rim. The next chef event takes place on January 26 at Alimentaria Mexicana on Granville Island. There, chef Joaquin Cardoso of Loup Bar in Mexico City will collaborate with the team at Alimentaria Mexicana on a $100 all-inclusive meal with an optional wine pairing for an additional $50.

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THE GEORGIA STR AIGHT

7

LIQUOR

St-Remy’s Roudaut balances innovation and tradition

E

by Mike Usinger

ndlessly informative as she is today as the master blender at St-Rémy in France’s scenic Loire Valley, Cécile Roudaut had some learning to do after deciding to enter the wine and spirits industry. Her journey to the celebrated French distillery started with the decision to study biology. That led to laboratory work in the cosmetics industry, where she began in quality control and then moved into research and development. Roudaut remembers the first time she saw a product she’d worked on appear on a shelf.

“I was so proud,” she says in charmingly accented French, interviewed at Vancouver’s Rosewood Hotel Georgia. “It was a real revelation for me—that I wanted to work doing something where I was creating things.”

A stop in the pharmaceutical industry drove home the importance of precision and keeping to rigorous standards, after which Roudaut decided to step out of her comfort zone with a jump into a job with a Loire Valley winery.

“At first in wine, I knew nothing,” she says with a laugh. “When I had the interview, I said ‘Well, when they are in

…I wanted to work doing something where I was creating things.

– master blender Cécile Roudaut

Cécile Roudaut has discovered that small casks create big flavours in the brandy world.

transparent glasses, I know white, red, and rose. But that’s all.’ ” That might be a bit of exaggeration for comedic effect. Born in Saumur in the Loire Valley, Roudaut’s introduction to the region’s wine industry came through her father.

“He taught me things about wine, but only from the Loire Valley,” she reminisces.

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THE GEORGIA STR AIGHT

JANUARY 13 – 20 / 2022

“I had no idea about wines like Bordeaux or Burgundy other than I liked them. But they gave me the chance to do training, which I did every evening and Saturday for two years. I learned about grapes, about tasting, and blending, and it was marvellous. I learned a lot.”

That led Roudaut to the Rémy Cointreau group in the mid-’90s, and a research and development role for everything from wine and brandy to whisky to tequila. Over the years she would become a trusted sounding board to St-Rémy’s legendary master blender Martine Pain.

“We worked together on limited editions, and in 2016 when Martine retired, Rémy Cointreau group proposed to me the position of master blender,” she recalls. “I accepted with a lot of happiness.”

On this day, Roudaut is in Vancouver for a launch of her St-Rémy Signature brandy. Over the course of an hour at the Rosewood Hotel Georgia, she’s part educator, part historian, and part endlessly enthusiastic raconteur. What comes through immediately is that she’s immensely proud to be part of a brand-making tradition that dates back to the late 1800s.

St-Rémy’s brandy-making process starts with the harvesting of select red and white grapes from France’s most distinguished wine-growing regions, including the Loire Valley, Rhône, Champagne, and Languedoc-Roussillon. First comes the distillation where wine is turned into eau de vie by heating in signature copper columns.

“Copper is a tradition for St-Rémy for cognac—it is very important,” Roudaut says. “Why? Because copper has two properties. The first is for heating—it is a very good conductor, and second it’s a very good catalyst for chemical reaction. We don’t know exactly how it works, but we do know if you put wine in stainless-steel columns you don’t have the same results as copper. The eau de vie is fatter, not fruity, and not elegant the way it is when you put it in a copper column.”

After distillation, complex eau de vie is matured in small virgin oak casks before finishing in traditional oak casks. A key word for Roudaut when it comes to the

creation of St-Rémy brandy is “small”.

“The maturation process is done in small casks of 350 litres,” she relates. “That’s very important—the ratio of contact between the wood and the liquid is high at 70 square centimetres. Competitors in French brandy often use big vats, and the contact ratio for them is only 16 square centimetres. After one year in small casks, you obtain marvellous results. It takes eight-and-a-half years to obtain those same results in big casks.”

While innovation is important to Roudaut, she places just as high a value on tradition as St-Rémy’s master distiller.

Both came together with Signature.

“I wanted to put St-Rémy in new barrels to see if the results were good or not,” she says. “And the results were good—lots of coconut and vanilla. But the DNA of StRémy wasn’t respected, so I had the idea to do the second maturation process using our traditional casks. And that led to Signature.”

As for what’s inside that bottle, Roudaut couldn’t be more excited to break things down at the Rosewood. After pouring two glasses she says: “Explanations are good, but it’s better to smell and taste. Inside your glass you have a beautiful golden amber colour and a richness. You can see the legs on the glass, and on-the-nose vanilla and coconut with no aggressivity—it doesn’t burn.

“On the front notes there are apricots, peach, and almond,” Roudaut continues.

“On the back, again no aggressivity—it’s very smooth with no deception between the nose and the palate. What you smell is what you have in the mouth—the virgin wood, coconut, charred fruits.”

The beauty of St-Rémy Signature is, she suggests, its versatility. We’ve been conditioned to think of brandy as something to be consumed neat.

“Signature is a very versatile product— so smooth and balanced that you can easily use it in many cocktails,” Roudaut opines.

The key to changing perceptions is education. On that front, swap out whisky for St-Rémy Signature brandy in an Old-Fashioned and prepare for a whole new experience.

Understandably, Roudaut gets excited when she talks about possibilities on the cocktail front. In fact, excitable, not to mention endlessly enthusiastic, are pretty much perfect descriptors to describe her in person. Some life decisions pay off more handsomely than others, with Roudaut a great example of someone who took a chance and dove into an industry that was a mystery to her at first.

Asked if she loves her job, she takes a sip of Signature, laughs, and then beamingly says: “Look at my face. And then tell me what you do you think?” g

PuSh FEST

How to Fail as a Popstar sends a positive message

T

by Charlie Smith

itles are extremely important to Calgary-based singer, theatrical performer, author, and visual artist Vivek Shraya. She takes great care in naming her works, whether it’s with previous books like I’m Afraid of Men and The Boy & the Bindi, or her new book, People Change, or her stage show, How to Fail as a Popstar. To her, a title can be evocative. It can be terrifying. It can challenge people. Or it can draw people in.

“I really think about the title as its own form of art, if not an extension of the art,” Shraya tells the Straight by phone.

In fact, she says that the title of How to Fail as a Popstar, which will be performed at this year’s PuSh International Performing Arts Festival, is what persuaded her director, Brendan Healy, to take on the project. Described as a theatrical memoir, the show sees Shraya sharing through anecdotes, song, and dance how she hoped to make it big in the music business. It received rave reviews when it premiered in Toronto in 2020 shortly before the pandemic turned out the lights in theatres across the country.

“I think the play is an opportunity for people to not only bear witness to my failure but to think of their own and honour it,” Shraya says. “To really think of their own and [say to themselves], ‘Like, wow, this thing didn’t work out and that kind of sucks. It kind of hurts. Here’s a space where I can sit in that feeling as opposed to needing to project a kind of resilience,’ if that makes sense.”

As a nonbinary South Asian kid born in Edmonton in 1981, Shraya gravitated to pop music, taking inspiration from Madonna, Whitney Houston, and other divas. It’s no coincidence that there’s a great deal of ’90s and early 2000s pop music in her show.

“When people think of pop music, it’s sort of seen as trivial,” Shraya says. “But when you’re a queer brown kid in Edmonton, I think pop music is an escape.

It was for me. It’s how I felt I was going to get out and survive, by getting on a stage and performing.”

Shraya devours music biographies and, along the way, discovered how stars like Timbaland, Mariah Carey, and Joni Mitchell became so successful. Shraya hoped to write a similar autobiography but realized that few people were familiar with her music.

On a certain level, it troubled her that the biographies of successful music-industry figures so often followed a similar narrative. These celebrities would convey a message that they always knew that they were destined for success: the stars would align if only they worked really hard and just believed in themselves. But Shraya realizes that there are many thousands of “not-success stories”, where people had the

What does it mean to tell an anti-success story?

– Vivek Shraya

Calgary’s Vivek Shraya created How to Fail as a Popstar as a pathway for people to process the reality that not everyone gets to be a Madonna or Timbaland. Photo by Vanessa Heins.

same belief in themselves and also tried their very best but didn’t break through in the way they would have liked. So through her show, she has created a pathway for such people to process those emotions.

“I was really thinking: what does it mean to tell an anti-success story and the importance of telling an anti-success story?” Shraya says. “Especially in a time of social media where everything is about, ‘Look at me, I’m amazing.’ ” She said the title How to Fail as a Popstar suddenly entered her head. And she felt that theatre was the right art form because audiences don’t need to be familiar with a back catalogue for it to work on-stage.

Nowadays, in addition to writing and performing, Shraya is an assistant professor of English in the creative-writing pro-

gram at the University of Calgary. Even though she loves being on-stage, where audiences can look at her as a nonbinary performer, she actually downplays this side of herself in the classroom. Her new book, People Change, reveals that she prefers wearing a “uniform”—a white dress shirt with black leggings—so that she’s approachable to students while not overexpressing her gender.

“Being at the front of the classroom, my job inevitably involves being looked at, but when you are gender non-conforming, you are also prey to a particular kind of omnipresent fixation, a perplexed gaze,” Shraya writes in People Change. “So here I choose assimilation as a means of self-preservation, because the freedom to express my interiority through my external choices is

a privilege I don’t always have.”

She wants to take attention away from her appearance so that more emphasis will be placed on education and learning. It’s a deliberate choice born out of consideration for her students. In her interview, Shraya also comes across as an exceedingly considerate person, thanking the Straight for covering her work and expressing gratitude to audience members courageous enough to attend live theatre in the midst of the pandemic.

Her new book and the stage show both acknowledge that, in her younger years, Shraya was a devotee of a popular Indian guru, Sathya Sai Baba, who died in 2011.

With his giant afro and bright orange robe, Sai Baba presented a rock-star aesthetic to the then impressionable Shraya.

“That was, like, one of my early introductions to a public persona,” she says.

Sai Baba also talked a lot in his life about being the embodiment of masculine and feminine energy. That prompts Shraya to suggest that it’s “not a leap, in some ways, that I’ve ended up who I am and with the life that I have chosen when these were some of my earliest experiences”.

“This was someone who was not only talking about in a lot of ways being gender nonconforming but in a lot of ways he was beloved, right?” Shraya adds. “And so when you’re a 13-year-old kid and you’re trying to figure out how to be loved and how to be safe, he made sense as being aspirational.”

Because Hinduism is entrenched in this idea of devotion, Sai Baba was, in a way, the first love of her life, even though she no longer prays to him. But she does reveal that she sings a bhajan (a Hindu prayer) in the show and that as a child, she was fascinated with Bharatanatyam dance.

“You know, people will always cherish and remember the first love of their life— and the love of their life will always be part of their fabric,” Shraya says. “Sai Baba will always be part of my fabric.” g Vivek Shraya’s theatrical memoir, How to Fail as a Popstar, will be performed on February 1 and 2 at Performance Works as part of the PuSh International Performing Arts Festival.

JANUARY 13 – 20 / 2022

THE GEORGIA STR AIGHT

9

GROUNDBREAKING WORKS • ECLECTIC MUS T H E AT R E D A N C E M U LT I M E D I A M U S I C

CAPITALISM WORKS FOR ME! TRUE/FALSE STEVE LAMBERT (USA)

Capitalism: what has it done for you lately? This interactive installation project requires nothing from participants but the push of a button and an honest personal reckoning.

Have your say!

RUBY SINGH’S VOX.INFOLD RUBY SINGH (VANCOUVER)

This ensemble vocal performance features rich, varied, and supremely evocative compositions, as well as sound design so immersive that the music can be felt as well as heard.

JAN 20-23, 25-30 | LOBE STUDIO PRESENTED WITH INDIAN SUMMER FESTIVAL

JAN 20–24 | VANCOUVER PUBLIC LIBRARY CENTRAL BRANCH

AALAAPI | ̈́Дͪ

LION LION (MONTREAL)

Two women come together in an acrobatic dance that evokes tenderness and tension. A psychodrama played out in physical terms, Se prendre is a truly haunting experience.

JAN 29-31, FEB 2-4 | WATERFRONT ESTATE, DEER LAKE

COLLECTIF AALAAPI | LA MESSE BASSE (NUNAVIK | MONTREAL)

Set in Nunavik, and ingeniously combining the aesthetics of radio and theatre, this collectively created work is an interrogation of language—and a forward movement towards true reconciliation.

JAN 29-30, FEB 1-2 | WATERFRONT THEATRE & SELECT ONLINE PRESENTATIONS

P U S H F E ST I VA L .CA

THE GEORGIA STR AIGHT

AT PERFORMANCE WORKS

JANUARY 13 – 20 / 2022

CREATED BY: V COMMISSION (TORONTO)

In this catchy, recounts her j back. Blendin offers us a tale

FEB 1-2 | PE

This soiree features a One Hit Wonder costume contest, as well as musical acts, a DJ, and some drop-dead-gorgeous drag artists. It’s the perfect cure for the late-pandemic blues!

DETAILS AND TICKETS AT

10

HOW TO

THE FRANK THEATRE COMPANY @ CLUB PuSh

Jan 20 - Feb 6, 2022

@ P U S H F E S T I VA L

Portraying the a spiritual inqu beyond the he PRESENTED WITH

SE PRENDRE

FOLLOW US

A TARRAGON T WORKSHOP C

JAN 20-22 |

PRESENTED WITH THE VANCOUVER PUBLIC LIBRARY & LIVING THINGS FESTIVAL

PRESENTED WITH SHADBOLT CENTRE FOR THE ARTS

OUR FA LOVERS BROTH

FEB 2

TA @

This mash with conte

FEB

S I C • S P E L L B I N D I N G D A N C E • C U T T I N G - E D G E T H E A T R E A N D M U LT I M E D I A P E R F O R M A N C E S

ATHERS, SONS, S AND LITTLE HERS BY MAKAMBE K. SIMAMBA

THEATRE AND BLACK THEATRE CO-PRODUCTION (TORONTO/MONTREAL)

e afterlife of a Black teenager, this show is uiry and a protest for Black life which goes eadlines to examine the reality of injustice.

BORN TO MANIFEST

VIOLETTE

DO YOU MIND IF I SIT HERE?

Laced with krump, popping, and martial arts styles, Joseph Toonga’s dance performance is a kinetic expression of defiance, with racial identity as the site of both oppression and pride.

In this audacious combination of live theatre and Virtual Reality, viewers are invited one by one to enter a woman’s apartment; don a headset; and embark on a dark, magical journey...

This multimedia allegory tells the story of social planners working to repurpose Vancouver’s Russian Hall 30 years from now—and dares us to reimagine our city’s future.

JAN 25-27 | PERFORMANCE WORKS & SELECT ONLINE PRESENTATIONS

JAN 26–30 | ROUNDHOUSE COMMUNITY ARTS & RECREATION CENTRE

PRESENTED WITH THEATRE REPLACEMENT

JOSEPH TOONGA OF JUST US DANCE THEATRE (UK)

JOE JACK & JOHN (MONTREAL)

FIREHALL ARTS CENTRE AND TOUCHSTONE THEATRE

O FAIL AS A POPSTAR WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE’S VIVEK SHRAYA (CALGARY) AS YOU LIKE IT: NED AND PRODUCED BY: CANADIAN STAGE A RADICAL RETELLING

BY CLIFF CARDINAL

I SWALLOWED A MOON MADE OF IRON 䧮ㅱ♴♧卐꜈⨞涸剢❭

With this subversive updating of the Bard’s classic, cultural provocateur Cliff Cardinal aims to surprise and provoke.

ERFORMANCE WORKS

FEB 4-6 | YORK THEATRE

B3

LA GODDAM VOIE LACTÉE MAYDAY (MONTREAL)

A MUSIC PICNIC (TORONTO) PRODUCTION, IN ASSOCIATION WITH POINT VIEW ART AND CREATIVE LINKS (MACAU)

, cathartic theatrical memoir, Vivek Shraya journey to the edge of pop-music fame and ng songs, stories, and more, the performer e of unlikely heartbreak.

evening of genre-blending madness hes the music of Indigenous ancestors the breaks, cuts, and booming bass of emporary dance grooves.

JAN 26-29 | RUSSIAN HALL

SUPPORTED BY THÉÂTRE LA SEIZIÈME & REALWHEELS & ROUNDHOUSE COMMUNITY ARTS AND RECREATION CENTRE

| FIREHALL ARTS CENTRE

ALKING STICK CLUB PuSh

THEATRE REPLACEMENT (VANCOUVER)

CROW’S THEATRE (TORONTO)

Based on the poems of an immiserated factory worker, Njo Kong Kie’s song cycle uses imagery, piano, the human voice, and more to create a tragic but beautiful cry of protest.

Five women conduct a pagan mourning ritual in this wildly eccentric performance. From the rich colours, trance-like dancing, and animalistic utterances emerges something truly cathartic: a ceremony for our grievances.

FEB 4-6 | SCOTIABANK DANCE CENTRE PRESENTED WITH THE DANCE CENTRE

FEB 4–6 | WATERFRONT THEATRE & SELECT ONLINE PRESENTATIONS

TICKETS

IMPACT @ CLUB PuSh with IMMIGRANT LESSONS This dance tournament features teams of four squaring off in a thrilling, genre-defying spectacle that draws on the ethics of street battling. May the best team win, and may boundaries be broken!

An innovation for these times of COVID, and an invitation: walk safely with artists through the urban spaces that have given them inspiration. This series of adventures serves to complement, and enhance, the creators’ works through guided tours of their home turf.

FEB 4

P U S H F E ST I VA L .CA / WA L KS

Purchase tickets on the PuSh website. Some single tickets are sold through our partner box office outlets, and our website will direct you there. PuSh Festival Patron Services is here to make sure you get to the right place — just call 604-449-6000.

PASSES Buy tickets to four shows and save 20%! Book your shows at pushfestival.ca or call us at 604-449-6000.

JANUARY 13 – 20 / 2022

THE GEORGIA STR AIGHT

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PuSh FEST

Our Fathers takes a spiritual approach to BLM

T

by Charlie Smith

oronto theatre artist Makambe K Simamba recognizes why the death of Trayvon Martin and the acquittal of his killer had such a profound impact on her back in 2012 and 2013. “The most central reason that it spoke to me was my younger brother, his name is Liayo,” Simamba tells the Straight by phone from Toronto’s Tarragon Theatre rehearsal hall.

By the time the gunning down of Martin had become a monumental international story, spurring the Black Lives Matter movement, Simamba’s brother was about the same age as the Florida teen. “I really thought deeply about what it would be like if Trayvon was my actual brother,” she says. “The thought terrified me and it broke my heart and it made me so angry and it made me confused.”

The 17-year-old Martin was shot dead after buying a pack of Skittles and a fruit juice at the local 7-Eleven. His killer, neighbourhood-watch volunteer George Zimmerman, was not arrested at the time even though a police dispatcher had told him not to follow Martin in the upscale gated community in Sanford, Florida.

Simamba recalls being about 75 percent sure that Zimmerman would be convicted after he was finally charged, given the evidence, including his 9-1-1 call. But the jury acquitted him. She says she understands that racialized violence continues to exist, but she was devastated that there was no justice in this situation because it was so obvious what had occurred.

“If this was my brother, how do you deal not only with the fact that he’s gone but the fact that the whole justice system in the society that you’re living in is telling you that it’s okay that that happened?” she asks.

“And that the person who did that gets to walk away without consequences?”

The horror remained with her in her body for two years, she says, before she felt ready to write about it. It came when she was doing a three-week intensive program with One Yellow Rabbit Performance Theatre in Calgary. Around that time, Simamba went through a difficult breakup. Then she heard the horrible news that a cousin, who was in her late 20s, had died suddenly in a motor-vehicle accident.

“It made me really think about ancestry because she’s a part of my family as well,” Simamba recalls.

That prompted her to think a great deal about her cousin’s spirit entering the afterlife.

“I kind of was in such a devastated place that, creatively, I did not have the energy to stifle my own impulses,” she says.

Those impulses resulted is her oneperson play, Our Fathers, Sons, Lovers and Little Brothers, which she will perform at the Firehall Arts Centre on the first three 12

THE GEORGIA STR AIGHT

Makambe K Simamba plays Slimm in Our Fathers, Sons, Lovers and Little Brothers, which is rooted in the tragic shooting of Black Florida teen Trayvon Martin. Photo by Dahlia Katz.

I always have this image that I’m walking through ghosts because I think I am.

– Makambe K Simamba

evenings of the PuSh International Performing Arts Festival. Directed by DonnaMichelle St. Bernard, it tells the story of a murdered Black youth named Slimm who struggles in the afterlife to come to terms with a death that he did not choose.

Simamba initially wrote a 10-minute solo, but she has since expanded it into a full-length play after doing extensive research. She visited Sanford so she could feel the world that Martin experienced.

She also travelled to Ferguson, Missouri, and stood where an 18-year-old Black man, Michael Brown Jr., was shot by a

JANUARY 13 – 20 / 2022

white police officer in 2014.

“I feel a strong connection to those stories and I feel those stories live in our bodies,” she says. “We experience racism in many different ways.”

It’s part of her effort to accurately convey the experiences of Black teenage boys who, she says, have had a profound impact on popular culture even as they remain the “most hunted”.

“The entire piece is quite spiritual,” Simamba says. “I always have this image that I’m walking through ghosts because I think I am.”

Plus, she travelled to Montgomery, Alabama, where so much history of the civilrights movement is remembered, including the famous bus ride taken by Black icon Rosa Parks in 1955. It took Simamba back to her childhood—that was the first show that she ever played on-stage, as a third-grade student.

“So I got to go to the Rosa Parks Museum and sit behind her statue,” she says.

“All of the sudden, I was seven years old again. It brought me so much joy. And it felt like a full-circle moment.”

The director of programming at the PuSh festival, Gabrielle Martin, tells the Straight by phone that she feels that Our Fathers, Sons, Lovers and Little Brothers is so interesting because it takes a metaphysical perspective on how our society values Black lives.

“It is a necessary work, and Makambe is an incredible, incredible performer,” Martin says. “I think we’re really lucky to see her at work. I think it’s a challenging subject matter that is really handled very masterfully.”

Martin describes the upcoming show at the PuSh festival as a “remount of sorts” because it’s being taken to another level with a video backdrop and dynamic lighting.

“They’ve gone a little bit deeper with the work,” she adds. “I am really excited to see that and have that version premiere here.”

As Simamba was writing Our Fathers, Sons, Lovers and Little Brothers, the primary audience, in her mind, was Black youths. While she welcomes people of all backgrounds to the show, she says it was extremely important to her that Slimm tell his story to people his age.

Simamba also emphasizes that at the end of the day, what’s behind the headlines are real people and that these young Black lives truly do matter. After all, Trayvon Martin was a 17-year-old kid who had just bought a powder-blue suit for his prom when he was executed because of his race.

“I feel like headlines freeze people in their death,” Simamba says. “I wanted to just remember and humanize this child who did not choose to lead a movement.

He was just walking home with candy and a drink.

“That’s what makes the story so heartbreaking,” she continues. “He never chose to be a martyr.” g The Firehall Arts Centre, Touchstone Theatre, and the PuSh International Performing Arts Festival are partnering in presenting Black Theatre Workshop and Tarragon Theatre’s coproduction of Makambe K Simamba’s Our Fathers, Sons, Lovers and Little Brothers. It will be performed at the Firehall Arts Centre from January 20 to 22, and Simamba will be in conversation with Gabrielle Martin after the show on January 21.

PuSh FEST

Vox.Infold reflects the city’s interdependent arts scene

E

by Charlie Smith

ast Vancouver musician, poet, and artist Ruby Singh thinks it’s passé to celebrate the power of individual genius.

“I think that’s such a tragedy of a way of thinking,” Singh tells the Straight by phone. “It’s an interdependent community that lifts voices, that raises voices, that gathers around and lifts people.”

It’s reflected in his soon-to-be released album, Vox.Infold, which is a collaborative effort between himself and cocreators Dawn Pemberton, Inuksuk Mackay and Tiffany Ayalik of PIQSIQ, Russell Wallace, Tiffany Moses, and Shamik Bilgi. In advance of its release on Bandcamp on January 31, Vox.Infold can be heard in its entirety at the PuSh International Performing Arts Festival in an installation at Lobe Studio (713 East Hastings Street) using 4DSOUND technology.

Singh points out that Lobe Studio has speakers in the ceiling and the floor, enabling him, as composer and arranger, to do things he could never do in a regular recording space.

“I took the stereo mix and turned it into a choreographed dance of voices,” he says. “This is like a 28-speaker decision.

So you’re moving sounds and having them meet at different points in a song and then you can shift everything.”

With great enthusiasm, Singh points out that Lobe Studio is one of only three studios in the world with this capability— and the only one in North America. He says that this studio enables him to send sound flying away or flying back at whatever speed he likes.

“It’s like you’re putting dimension to sound,” Singh adds. “It’s very much ambisonic, so it’s moving and dancing around you. You can really feel the movement of the music and the different voices.”

The first single from the album, “Nakshatra”, was released in December. Its name was derived from “the lunar mansion in Indian astronomy, carrying with it the light that shines through the darkness”, and listeners can hear the Inuit throat singing of Mackay and Ayalik among the other voices.

It was recorded in November and December of 2020, before the arrival of COVID-19 vaccines, which meant the singers were masked and shielded and had to remain three to six metres apart during sessions. According to Singh, the goal was to make an album outside the ambit of capitalism, white supremacy, and other overarching and suppressive forces in our society.

“There was a lot of heaviness in the

JAN

21–23

Beethoven’s Eroica*

Fri, Sat, 8pm | Orpheum Sun, 2pm | Orpheum

Beethoven’s heroic and revolutionary symphony is paired with Sri LankanCanadian composer Dinuk Wijerante’s Polyphonic Lively. Plus VSO Principal Flute Christie Reside is featured in Swiss composer Frank Martin’s haunting Ballade.

Christie Reside

Hear it. Feel it.

Celebrating Copland JAN

Ruby Singh says the singers on Vox.Infold were given lots of leeway. Photo by Kristine Cofsky.

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Thu, 2pm | Orpheum

TODAY!

Three Copland Masterpieces meet a witty counterpart in Joan Tower’s Fanfare for the Uncommon Woman.

Christopher Gaze

It’s like you’re putting dimension to sound.

JAN

28/29 Fri, Sat, 8pm | Orpheum

– Ruby Singh

room,” Singh says. “The album didn’t try and shy away from that. If anything, we leaned into the ideas of pain and grief because those are things that expand us as human beings and expand our humanity.”

He brought along some poetry that he had written, which was incorporated through polyphonic sound. He adds that as part of an effort to decolonize the production, the primary focus was on the process rather than the outcome.

“Everybody was really into that,” Singh says with satisfaction.

It premiered at last year’s Indian Summer Festival, which is partnering with the PuSh festival in presenting it this month.

Singh notes that the title, Vox.Infold, refers to both a shortened term for voice and to folding vocal cords.

“I saw it as knitting voices together,” he says. g The PuSh International Performing Arts Festival and Indian Summer Festival are presenting Ruby Singh’s Vox.Infold from January 20 to January 30 at Lobe Studio (no show January 24).

Chopin, Fauré & Bologne*

This (almost) all French concert features award-winning Canadian Chopin specialist Charles Richard-Hamelin in a ravishing program led by Maestro Tausk.

Charles Richard-Hamelin

FEB

4/6

Debussy, Satie & Tan Dun Fri, 7pm | Orpheum Sun, 2pm | Orpheum

Discover the colour of music with master French composer/orchestrator Debussy, the playful Erik Satie, and renowned Chinese composer Tan Dun. Andrew Crust * Note: Large symphonic pieces require more musicians on stage. To keep the musicians safe and provide increased physical distancing on stage, the VSO has changed the programming of its Jan 21–23 and Jan 28–29 concerts.

VancouverSymphony.ca JAN 13 TEA & TRUMPETS SERIES SPONSOR

JAN 21, 22 MASTERWORKS GOLD SERIES SPONSOR

BROADCAST MEDIA PARTNERS

MEDIA SPONSOR

JAN 23 & FEB 6 SYMPHONY SUNDAYS SERIES SPONSOR

604.876.3434 JAN 28, 29, MASTERWORKS DIAMOND SERIES SPONSOR

Concerts presented at 50% capacity, in adherence with Provincial Health Orders

JANUARY 13 – 20 / 2022

THE GEORGIA STR AIGHT

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ARTS

VSO’s top flute player is stoked for the spotlight

W

by Steve Newton

hen you’re a kid trying to learn how to play guitar, you might have a guitar hero you’re trying to emulate, maybe Jimmy Page or Jimi Hendrix. Or if you’re into classical, maybe you want to be the next Andrés Segovia.

But what if you’re a f lute player?

How many famous f lautists are there to pattern yourself after—besides the guy from Jethro Tull?

For Vancouver Symphony Orchestra principal flautist Christie Reside, it wasn’t like she’d spent any time trying to duplicate Ian Anderson’s flute licks on “Living in the Past”.

“I definitely had teachers and players that I

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THE GEORGIA STR AIGHT

looked up to,” Reside says on the phone from her East Van home, “but I think my musical inspirations came more from violin and piano—like, I loved listening to old recordings of Isaac Stern and [Arthur] Rubinstein and David Oistrakh. I mean, that’s really where I found a lot of inspiration.”

The Calgary-raised Reside didn’t have to look far for further motivation, as both her parents were flute teachers, and her brothers learned to play the instrument as well. She remembers getting a flute for her fifth birthday.

“It came to me really easily,” she recalls.

“I didn’t really struggle with it in the same way that I struggled with piano when I tried to learn that.”

JANUARY 13 – 20 / 2022

What I like about [Frank Martin’s Ballade] is that it’s so dark and intense and furious.

– Christie Reside

Reside’s journey to becoming the VSO’s top flute player included earning a bachelor of music degree at McGill University, where she studied under Timothy Hutchins, who has been principal flute with the Montreal Symphony Orchestra since 1978.

“I learned so much just from listening to him play in our lessons,” she raves. “He’s just a phenomenally talented flutist.”

Reside won the position of second flute with the VSO when she was only 19, and has been principal flute since 2004. She’s garnered some fond memories along the way, most of which revolve around working with the orchestra’s second flute player, Rosanne Wieringa.

“We play really well together,” Reside says, “and we’re great friends, so any time we play something with great first- and secondflute parts—like a Beethoven symphony or a Dvorak symphony—those are always my favourite moments in an orchestra. I feel like we have a really special bond.”

Another VSO moment that stands out for Reside was the time that former conductor Bramwell Tovey asked her to play a “beautiful” solo piece by Leonard Bernstein called Halil. She has also performed as a soloist with the symphony orchestras of Montreal, Quebec City, Edmonton, Calgary, and Victoria.

So how does that work, one might ask.

Do those other symphonies just call just her up and say: “Hey, we understand you’re a smokin’-hot flute player. Can we borrow you for a bit?”

“Yeah, kind of,” she replies with a laugh.

“For Montreal and Quebec, that was the result of competitions I won when I was younger. And some, like Victoria, they just call you up and say, ‘Hey, you want to play with us?’ It’s great when that happens.”

Reside is a member of the Standing Wave Ensemble, a chamber ensemble specializing in commissioning and performing new works by Canadian composers. She also keeps busy as an adjunct professor at UBC and a faculty member at the VSO School of Music. For her, the rewards of teaching are many.

“It’s a great way to grow as a musician myself if I’m working through this repertoire with all kinds of different musicians,” she points out just before being asked what she thinks is the most important thing to teach a flute player.

Calgary-raised Christie Reside has held the position of VSO principal flute since 2004.

“For me, I would say it’s a combination between building confidence—which is a really difficult skill for many of us who are so focused on critiquing ourselves every day in the practise room—and helping them cultivate a love of music and art that will, hopefully, last them a lifetime.”

Reside’s own confidence may be put to the test somewhat next week when she joins conductor Otto Tausk and the VSO for Beethoven’s Eroica, a program that will see her take the spotlight on Swiss composer Frank Martin’s 1939 Ballade for flute, strings, and piano.

“I’ve played this piece many times before,” she says, “but never with orchestra.

It’s a really common competition piece, so, of course, it’s virtuosic and technically challenging, but what I like about this piece is that it’s so dark and intense and furious.

It’s not your typical pretty flute music.

“For me, the intensity that comes through this piece, I’m sort of interpreting it as almost like a jonesing. You know, Martin was very clear that he chose this title, Ballade, because he really wanted the soloist to tell a story and to have the opportunity to exercise their musicianship. And for me, the underlying theme in this piece is one of like really jonesing for something that is right in front of you, sort of having this almost jittery longing, but holding yourself back. It’s almost that kind of intensity.” g Christie Reside will be featured with the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra at the Orpheum Theatre on January 21 and 22 at 8 p.m. and January 23 at 2 p.m.

MUSIC

Compact disc sales rally in decidedly sad fashion

A

by Mike Usinger

s difficult as this might be to fathom today, there once was a time when CDs were not only a thing, but the music world’s coolest thing. Record stores not only charged $19 for them, but had no shortage of takers willing to line up for Nevermind, Use Your Illusion (both volumes), and Blood Sugar Sex Magik, as well as everything ever released by Hootie and the Blowfish, Counting Crows, and the Spin Doctors.

Audiophiles (briefly) loved compact discs for the way they sounded on bookshelf-size Mission 753 speakers—the pops, hisses, and skips of vinyl were no longer a distraction. Thieves loved them because they cost a lot, were easy to steal from parked cars, ground-level condos, and detached homes, and could then be immediately traded in for cash at Charlie’s Music City on Granville.

Then came MP3s, Napster, and streaming services. Suddenly no one wanted to pay $20 for something that took up valuable space in a 360-foot Yaletown studio apartment. Which partially explains why Apple Music and Spotify today are kings, and CDs are something hung on strings

Adele’s 30 and Taylor Swift’s Red were among the big sellers in 2021 as CD sales experienced growth for the first time since 2004, while sales of wax cylinders and 8-tracks remained flat.

in backyard gardens to keep the crows, rats, and Fred Durst away.

But that changed a little last year, with CDs experiencing a growth in sales for the first time since 2004.

For those who hadn’t been born yet, 2004 was when click-wheel iPods were still shiny and new, with no one caring they tapped out at 40 GB of storage.

Facebook was newly launched but was only available to those attending Harvard and looking to find the next frat party. Beyoncé was still best known as a member of Destiny’s Child.

Flash forward to 2021. According to Billboard—citing stats from MRD Data—nearly 41 million CDs were purchased last year, representing a

1.1-percent jump from 2020’s 40.16 million units sold.

Leading the way on the comeback front was Adele, whose 30 sold 890,000 compact discs. Taylor Swift came in second and third with reworked versions of Fearless (263,000 copies moved) and Red (clocking in 237,000).

If there’s a cloud to this silver lining it’s that back in the glory days of compact discs (a.k.a. the mid-’90s) the above figures would have represented first-day, openinghour sales at Tower, Sam the Record Man, and A&B Sound.

Continuing on that thread, vinyl outsold compact discs for the first time since MRD started tracking music sales in 1991.

And while streaming is how the vast majority of people consume music, vinyl is once again the leading format for album purchases in the U.S. Of all physical albums sold in the U.S. in 2021, 50.4 percent were vinyl copies.

That means that CDs, despite a small bump in popularity, continue to bring up the rear along with cassette tapes, 8-tracks, wax cylinders, and old-timey player pianos. On the positive side, among those, they remain the easiest to steal. g

Jack White hasn’t been lounging around the house

G

by Mike Usinger

iving us something in common with the rest of us, Jack White is making it crystal clear he’s had quite enough of sitting around the house. Or, if you prefer, sprawling Nashville estate.

The former White Stripes frontman turned solo artist (when he’s not busy with Dead Weather and the Raconteurs) has released a live-performance video for last October’s single “Taking Me Back”.

What you get in the self-directed clip is four guys plugging and old-school rocking out.

Consider “Taking Me Back” part of White setting the table for not only two new albums in 2022, but also a return to normalcy with an ambitious touring schedule.

The Supply Chain Issues Tour will see White travel both sides of the Atlantic with shows not only in North America but overseas in the U.K., Spain, Germany, Switzerland, and France. Vancouverites will get the chance to see White at the Pacific Coliseum on June 7. The tour kicks off in the singer’s former hometown of Detroit on April 8.

As for new material, White’s never been one for leisure time. As he once told

Jack White is famously of the opinion that men look sexier with a little snow on the roof, and even hotter when their hair is the colour of Hawaiian Shaved Ice Blue Raspberry Snow Cone Syrup.

the Straight, “I get bored with the idea of being complacent. I feel a responsibility— not really a guilt, but responsibility—to

the word artist. That’s a heavy, heavy word to say out loud, to even think of yourself as an artist. A lot of people throw

that word around. If someone who’s 80 years old comes up in an airport and says, ‘What do you do for a living?’, if I have the gall to say ‘artist’, instead of musician or producer or whatever, I’m really going to be responsible to that word—it’s not an excuse to not work.”

Not done there, he continued with, “So I push myself. I gave myself over to it a long time ago—gave myself over to not having a normal life or a normal experience, to not coming home and sitting on the couch and watching TV at night. I don’t get to have that. That was the sacrifice. But the good things that have come from that, the experiences and the things that have been created that didn’t exist before, I owe a lot of respect to.”

In light of that, it’s no surprise White hasn’t spent the past two years sitting around the house watching The White Lotus, Squid Game, and Fargo reruns during the pandemic. Two full-lengths are scheduled for release later this year, with Fear Of The Dawn arriving on April 8, and Entering Heaven Alive scheduled for July 22. White has described the records as entirely different, with each defined by different inspirations, themes, and moods. g

JANUARY 13 – 20 / 2022

THE GEORGIA STR AIGHT

15

BOOKS

B.C. author delves into the life and times of a diva

A

by Charlie Smith

strange thing happened when a 34-year-old Bollywood star was found dead in his Mumbai home on June 14 last year.

Police claimed that Shushant Singh Rajput had committed suicide due to mental-health issues, allegedly related to nepotism in the film industry. Suicide is an extremely complex event involving everything from brain biochemistry to family history to a desire to escape the self to immediate life circumstances.

That makes any direct linkage of suicide to a single event a fool’s errand, at best.

But in the case of Rajput’s sad ending, the storyline was established by police, notwithstanding claims by his own family that it was triggered by a girlfriend stealing his money. And that set the Internet trolls loose on those who had allegedly benefited from nepotism in Bollywood.

Their prime target was Kareena Kapoor Khan, an incredibly successful actor with a glorious 20-year career, who happened to be married to a Muslim star, Saif Ali Khan.

The right-wing trolls were merciless in casting aspersions on Kapoor Khan, whose family played a pivotal role in the development of the Indian film industry, dating back to before Partition in 1947.

This deeply upset B.C. writer and Georgia Straight contributor Gurpreet Singh because he has long admired Kapoor Khan’s work.

In addition, he saw the insults being rained upon her as yet another symptom of the growing intolerance and illiberal mindset infecting Bollywood. To him, it symbolized what’s happening in India under the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which hopes to turn the country into a Hindu state.

But Singh didn’t just fume about the ongoing war on secularism and freedom of religious expression in India. He decided to do something about it, writing a book, From Nazneen To Naina: 20 years of Kareena Kapoor Khan in Bollywood and What That Means for India and the Rest of the World. The 143-page account of her career was published

by Ludhiana-based Chetna Parkashan.

For fans of Bollywood and Kapoor Khan, there’s extensive analysis of her movies and her performances. But this is a Bollywood book with a twist: it also offers a tremendous amount of historical context behind the roles she played and demonstrates how far the political pendulum has swung to the right in Bollywood over the course of her career.

For example, her debut film, Refugee, focused on hardships faced by stateless Bihari Muslims. It featured Kapoor Khan as Nazneen M. Ahmed, a Muslim seeking a homeland.

“Nazneen’s parents had to leave the Indian state of Bihar when Muslim Pakistan was separated from Hindu-dominated India as a result of which communal violence broke out,” Singh writes. “Hindu and Muslim fanatics were fighting pitched battles on the 16

THE GEORGIA STR AIGHT

Hindu and Muslim fanatics were fighting… battles on the streets.

– author Gurpreet Singh

Georgia Straight contributor and local broadcaster Gurpreet Singh’s new book explores why Bollywood star Kareena Kapoor Khan has been trolled so viciously by right-wingers in India.

streets. The bloodshed had resulted in a massive transfer of population.”

However, Singh adds in the book, “the liberation of Bangladesh forced them to flee for the second time because of cultural reasons and discrimination from Bengalispeaking Muslims”.

This contextualization of real history helps explain how Nazneen’s parents ended up falling into the hands of human traffickers. Nazneen gives birth to a baby, therefore becoming “a symbol of peace between the warring nations”, according to Singh.

From Nazneen to Naina also devotes a fair amount of attention to Agent Vinod, a 2012 thriller. The theme was again unity, with Kapoor Khan playing a British-Pakistani spy opposite her husband, an Indian spy.

Singh writes that this film “had an important theme of how the two countries need to unite and fight against those involved in global terrorism and the arms industry”.

In another Kapoor Khan film, Bajrangi

JANUARY 13 – 20 / 2022

Bhaijaan, she plays a Hindu woman who’s helping a Pakistani Muslim girl separated from her mother at a railway platform. It also carried a positive Indo-Pak message, so, naturally, the religious bigots on both sides of the border called for the film to be banned.

In 2018, BJP-supporting trolls were again enraged after Kapoor Khan posted a photo of herself calling for justice over the rape and murder of an eight-year-old Muslim girl, Asifa Bano, by Hindu fanatics in Kathua. At this time, Singh writes, Kapoor Khan was characterized as an apologist for Muslims.

But Singh points out that Kapoor Khan wasn’t intimidated. She has continued to speak out on various other issues, unlike so many other Bollywood A-listers. Examples include her public comments on the Black Lives Matter movement and the police killing of Minneapolis resident George Floyd.

“Not only that, she denounced racism and bigotry within India against Muslims and so called Untouchables,” Singh writes.

“She also made a statement against the killing of a father and son by the police in Tamil Nadu and made repeated appeals to help artisans and migratory workers suffering due to lockdown.”

The nepotism controversy is only the latest in a string of manufactured episodes intended to tarnish Kapoor Khan. It carries a double sting because her husband, another major star, is the son of famed Bollywood star Sharmila Tagore.

The reality, as Singh reports, is that the couple’s ancestors were leaders in the fight against British colonial rule. Kapoor Khan’s great-grandfather and family patriarch, Prithviraj Kapoor, inspired young people to participate in the independence movement through his plays. Saif Ali Khan’s mother is the grand-niece of Nobel Prize–winning author and poet Rabindranath Tagore, who denounced the British Raj and called for India’s independence.

Singh is clearly disgusted that the people now attacking Kapoor Khan support a party that traces its lineage to a fascist movement that didn’t participate in the Quit India Movement, aimed at securing independence. The author quite rightly emphasizes there’s no way that Kapoor Khan could have thrived for so long in Bollywood merely due to nepotism.

The reality is that if actors don’t connect with audiences, they don’t generate boxoffice receipts regardless of their family connections. For evidence of that, there’s the somewhat chequered acting career of Abhishek Bachchan, who is the only son of Bollywood legend Amitabh Bachchan.

Another example is Kapoor Khan’s father, Randhir Kapoor, who never came close to matching the career success of sibling Rishi or father Raj. The pernicious influence of Hindusupremacist ideology on films coming out of Mumbai is becoming increasingly apparent—and it’s something that Singh has been tracking for quite a while in his articles on Straight.com.

Who knew that writing about Bollywood would become a job for a veteran political beat reporter? Sadly, that’s become a necessity in Narendra Modi–ruled India. g

CHILL.

Enjoy stress-free reading without the noise on CreatorNews.

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JANUARY 13 – 20 / 2022

THE GEORGIA STR AIGHT

17

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Financial Domination comes in different flavours

by Dan Savage

b I’M A GAY man in his forties. I very much love my husband, but two years ago we acknowledged that our desire for each other sexually just wasn’t there anymore. Thanks in part to reading your column for many years, we were able to have a calm conversation about whether we wanted to remain together in a companionate marriage or split up.

We decided to stay together, and I’m glad we did. Sex was the thing we fought about most, and our relationship improved when we took that conflict off the table. My husband has a couple of fuckbuddies that he sees, while I do most of my playing online.

(We had this conversation at the start of the pandemic, and playing online feels safer.)

One of things I’ve been able to explore in the last year is FinDom. I really get off on sending money that we can spare to younger, hotter guys and being degraded for my pains.

Thing is, almost all the guys doing FinDom are straight. It’s often a part of their persona they play up: they’re hot straight guys demanding cash tributes from “pathetic fags” that they would never touch in real life.

As much as I like having my wallet drained by a hot young straight guy calling me a fag, I would so much rather give my money to a hot and dominant young gay man. Why do so few gay young men get into this? Do young gay men realize how much money they’re leaving on the table? Could you please tell them?

- Chances Are Some Hot FinDoms Are Gay

“I don’t know why there aren’t more gay FinDoms out there,” said Master AJ, “but I’m certainly not the only one.”

AJ is 23-year-old sexually dominant gay man who lives, works, and drains gay subs all over the world from his home base in the Pacific Northwest. He first stumbled over the FinDom scene on Twitter when he was a kinky

Dan Savage suggests that gay FinDoms can be found online by doing a little bit of research.

gay college student struggling to pay his rent.

“I was working two jobs, and while I wasn’t desperate, I was thinking about money a lot,” said AJ. “So the idea of being in control— Anorexics Anonymous which I was already really& Bulimics into—and domin12 Step based peer support program which addresses the mental, emotional, & him ating someone by demanding cash from spiritual aspects of disordered eating that he’d earned?Tuesdays It was huge rush.” @ 7apm @ Avalon Women's Centre 5957 West Blvd Most male FinDoms go- 604-263-7177 to such great lengths to emphasize how straight they are that AJ sometimes wonders. “There are no male Doms I’ve seen draining cisgender women,” said AJ. “So if these guys really are straight, they would have to stumble on the gay FinDom scene or have the idea to start targeting a community they weren’t a part of in order to establish themselves.” And having seen how much pleasure so many straight-identified male FinDoms get out of dominating gay men, “it seems possible that at least some of these guys aren’t being completely truthful about their sexualities”.

Why would a gay or bi male FinDom claim to be straight? Because, as AJ points out, it’s going to make him more appealing to a significant segment of the gay finsub

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community. “There are a lot of gay men who fetishize being bullied by straight men,” said AJ. “And a lot of gay subs enjoy the idea that they are tributing to someone who will never be attracted to them. Which I find kind of laughable, because being gay doesn’t necessarily mean a guy has a chance with me.”

There’s also the issue of antigay slurs in FinDom play and how those slurs land.

“Slurs get used a lot in the FinDom/kink scenes,” said AJ, “and they really can sound and feel different, depending on the sexuality of the speaker.” Meaning that for some gay men, being called a fag by a straight guy in a safe, controlled, and consensual way—like during a cash-draining session—feels more degrading (in a sexy way) than being called a fag by another fag ever could. “But other gay men prefer gay FinDoms because they don’t like hearing slurs from straight men,” said AJ. Zooming out for a second…

While it may be the case that a small handful of gay FinDoms pretend to be straight to attract gay subs, CASHFAG, I think something else is going on here. Namely, financial domination and other forms of online sex work have so lowered the “gay for pay” bar that the kind of straight man who wouldn’t have been able to profit off gay male lust 20 years ago—because he wouldn’t have sex with other men on-camera for money—is now posting photos of his feet on Twitter, flipping off the camera, and ordering his gay followers to pay “fag tax”AL-ANON for the privilege FAMILY GROUPS of looking at him.

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some sort of sexual satisfaction from draining gay men but are still straight.” And it’s easy to see why a straight male FinDom who got a little turned on duringCompanion an online draining session with a gay male sub might make a point of emphasizing his straightness—not just to rub his sub’s nose in it, CASHFAG, but to reassure himself.

Still, even though there are more straight FinDoms out there than gay ones, AJ’s bank account and spotlessly clean bathroom proves you don’t have to be a hot straight guy to be a successful FinDom. He’s always been very open about being gay, CASHFAG, and not only do gay male subs all over the world send him cash, but local gay male subs clean his apartment and run errands for him.

“I’ve had a good experience with this,” said AJ. “It’s been both profitable and enjoyable, and I’ve made great connections with so many people, including other gay Doms. I’ve always really liked talking to other gay men—whether they are submissive and into FinDom or not or just intrigued by my profile.”

And if you really want to attract other gay men like him to the FinDom scene, CASHFAG, AJ suggests making an effort to find out gay FinDoms who are already online, diligently promoting their content with likes and retweets, and—of course—sending your favourite FinDom(s) all the money you can reasonably spare.

“Because when you think about it,” said AJ, “tributing to a gay FinDom is like supporting a small queer business, and that’s something we should all be doing.”

Follow MasterAJ on Twitter @CashMasterAJ1. g Massage

Follow Dan on Twitter @FakeDanSavage. Email: questions@savagelove.net. Columns, podcasts, books, merch, and more at www.savage.love.

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12-step fellowship of men & women who share their experience, strength and hope with each other, that they may solve their common problem and help others recover from their sexual addiction.Membership is open to all who desire to stop addictive sexual behaviour. For a meeting list as well as email & phone contacts go to our website. www.saavancouver.org

DISCREET ATTRACTIVE MATURE EUROPEAN LADY OFFERS DELIGHTFUL RELAXATION SESSIONS.

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www.naranonbc.com Nar-Anon 604-878-8844

NEW MANAGEMENT!

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Is your life affected by someone else's drug use?

Nar-Anon Family Group Meeting.

Call the Volunteer 24hr Information line at 604-878-8844 for a list of meeting locations and times. (This number is not monitored)

♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦ 10AM - 10 PM

604.568.9238

YOUR AD HERE

(HIRING) / AIR-CONDITIONED

To place a classified ad call 604.730.7000 or email

#3-3490 Kingsway

NEAR TYNE ST. NEXT DOOR TO SUBWAY

g_cohen@straight.com

www.straight.com

Stay Connected @GeorgiaStraight

Companion

604-957-1030

MING, Nice & Mature.

Totally Renovated!

Welcoming Old & New Clients!

604.568.5255 3-3003 KINGSWAY @ RUPERT

Stay Connected @GeorgiaStraight

BEST MASSAGE ♦ BEST SERVICES 872 Seymour St. Downtown, Vancouver

$80/30 min (incl. tips)

604.568.1112 7 DAYS 10AM -11PM

5 VISITS - 1 FREE 10 VISITS - 3 FREE FREE Parking at Rear •

HIRING

604.436.3131 w w w.greatpharaoh.com

5-3490 Kingsway, Van. NEWLY RENOVATED! E S T A B L I S H E D 19 9 3 HIRING: 778.893.4439

JUNE 2 / 2020 GEORGIA JANUARY 13 –25 20– /JULY 2022 THE THE GEORGIA STRSTRAIGHT AIGHT 19

Vancouver's First Retail Cannabis Store

Student Sundays [19+] Open every day from 9AM to 11PM 2868 4th Ave. W Kitsilano (604) 900 1714 Evergreen Cannabis is a private retailer of legal, non medical cannabis. You must be 19 years of age or older to purchase cannabis. ID is checked on premises.

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THE GEORGIA STR AIGHT

JANUARY 13 – 20 / 2022