The Georgia Straight - Chutzpah Fest - Feb 9, 2017 by The Georgia Straight

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CONTENTS www.cityuniversity.ca

find out

University of British Columbia. Mark Pilon photo.

START HERE

HEALTH

Vancouver Centre Liberal MP Hedy Fry has long advocated for harm-reduction measures for illicitdrug users, and in light of the fentanyl crisis, she wants an open debate on legalizing hard drugs. > BY TR AVIS LUPICK

FOOD

If the way to your partner’s heart is through the stomach, here are six Valentine’s Day restaurants and their must-have dishes. > BY GAIL JOHNSON

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15 39 39 33 12 34 39 36 8 24 25

The Bottle Confessions I Saw You Local Discs Real Estate Red Meat Savage Love Straight Stars Straight Talk Theatre Visual Arts

26 Arts 34 Music

> BY MIKE USINGER

SERVICES MOVIES

Poetic Paterson snaps smaller moments; Spain tangos with live-action Oscar shorts; Pixar pleases in animated academy briefs; script doctors didn’t look Below Her Mouth.

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Mira Awad joins singer David Broza as part of a music project that boldly crosses the divides in Israel—and around the world.

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36 Careers 35 Real Estate

MUSIC

Hogtown duo USS pushed their latest album, New World Alphabet, in a new direction by “honeymooning” in California. > BY K ATE WILSON

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In Telemetry, dance artist Shay Kuebler takes a new direction into transmitting and receiving. David Cooper photo.

Kuebler sends bold new signals > BY JA NET SM IT H

ropelled by skittery electro beats, tap master Danny Nielsen is hoofing it in a perfect circle around a throbbing mass of dancers. He sends waves of movement through them with each click of his feet. Are they the eye of some cyclone he’s creating? Is he an electron revolving around a supercharged nucleus? These are just two of the ideas that come to mind while watching rehearsals for local dancer-choreographer Shay Kuebler’s complex, breathless new Telemetry at the Scotiabank Dance Centre. The full-evening work, developed from a short he showed at the Chutzpah Festival last year, is set to premiere at this year’s event. After the sweat-soaked runthrough, Kuebler compares the circular setup to a satellite dish or some kind of relay system. “There’s never an endpoint; there’s constant feedback,” he tells the Straight with enthusiasm at a café near the centre. “There are moments when Danny is causing something and the dancers are affected, and then when dancers are causing something and there’s an effect.… Danny is a source of energy and connecting, but as much as they’re receiving they’re always transmitting. “It’s almost like echolocation: he’s sending sound into the space and that’s bouncing off us and we’re sending it back.” It helps to know the genesis of the title. Kuebler discovered the term telemetry a few years back when he

was in Glasgow and a friend was telling him about how he would use portable radio transmitter-receivers to track wolves in the wild. Kuebler instantly saw how he could apply that idea to dance, in which bodies are always receiving and passing on information—and also how it might offer a deeper metaphor for life itself. “I said, ‘Wow, that’s literally the human body,’ and I thought about how our history and memory affect us, all our first-person experiences,” he says. “Our bodies carry all this energy and information we’re not aware of.” It’s clear that Telemetry is a bold departure for one of Vancouver’s most exciting choreographers. The Radical System Art founder is known for an insanely cool hybrid of street and contemporary dance, martial arts, and other popular forms, but his work has always had a more narrative, theatrical feel, often incorporating sociopolitical messages. In Karoshi, he took on the work-till-you-die culture of Japan; in the multimedia Glory, he tackled the rising amount of violence in our world. Now, at 33, Kuebler is going more about pure movement, his various influences converging like the wires of a buzzing hydro station. Interestingly, the new piece has taken him back to tap, a form he started out in as a boy. It played perfectly into the idea of telemetry. “Tap really embodies sound. There’s really no way to bullshit tap,” he says. “You literally can hear and feel what they are doing. It’s very pure.” Tap brought an element of improvisation into the work as well, one that’s

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been eagerly adopted by standout dancers Tyler Layton-Olson, Lexi Vajda, Nicholas Lydiate, Maxine Chadburn, and Hayden Fong, not to mention the hyperenergized Kuebler himself. “It starts sort of with this energy of life, and then things degrade and become less clear, and that speaks to aging and memory—the fact that we’re always chasing time…There’s no unison till the end of the piece,” he says of the individual riffing that happens within the show’s structure. “It’s really about how you have to go through chaos to be able to find a sense of cohesion. “I love my dancers because they can do some crazy, raw things that don’t get lost in some aesthetic purpose,” he adds. “I’m asking so much of my dancers.” Tap virtuoso Nielsen also has become a central force, triggering everything from lights to multiple video projections to sound with his foot-generated rhythms. Kuebler, who’s orchestrated much of this and composed the soundscape, figures 80 percent of the multimedia show now happens live. “It’s raised the stakes, but it’s given us a huge amount of potential,” he admits with a wide smile. “I’m scared, too. There’s fear in the unknown. But it’s good to be scared.” Radical System Art presents Telemetry on February 18, 19, and 21 at the Norman and Annette Rothstein Theatre, as part of the Chutzpah Festival. For much more Chutzpah coverage, see pages 17 to 19.

The Georgia Straight | Vancouver’s News and Entertainment Weekly | Volume 51 Number 2562 1635 West Broadway, Vancouver, B.C. V6J 1W9 www.straight.com Phone: 604-730-7000 / Fax: 604-730-7010 / e-mail: gs.info@straight.com Display Advertising: 604-730-7020 / Fax: 604-730-7012 / e-mail: sales@straight.com Classifieds: 604-730-7060 / e-mail: classads@straight.com Subscriptions: 604-730-7000 Distribution: 604-730-7087 EDITOR + PUBLISHER Dan McLeod ASSOCIATE PUBLISHER Yolanda Stepien GENERAL MANAGER Matt McLeod EDITOR Charlie Smith SECTION EDITORS

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straight talk NEW PHS BOSS AIMS FOR MORE STAFF SUPPORT

Earlier this month, Jennifer Breakspear took the reins of the Portland Hotel Society (PHS) at a difficult time in the Downtown Eastside nonprofit’s history. The 25-year-old organization’s founders were forced to leave in March 2014 following the release of a financial audit that included evidence of mismanagement. Then Ted Bruce, PHS’s first interim executive director, retired after just 14 months on the job. He was followed by Eamonn O’Laocha, who resigned without warning last May after only eight months in that position. Then came B.C.’s overdose epidemic, which put PHS staff on the frontlines of a crisis that killed 215 people in Vancouver last year. In her first interview since she

was named PHS’s new executive director, Breakspear told the Straight her top priority is to ensure staff get support in what is still a difficult time for the organization. “They’re running on fumes and I’m worried about them,” Breakspear said in a Downtown Eastside coffee shop. “We don’t see an imminent end to this crisis in sight,” she continued. “We need to be supporting the people who are doing this work. That’s about giving them the time they need, the staff they need, and the emotional support they need.” Breakspear spent the past four years serving as executive director of the B.C.–based Options for Sexual Health; before that, she spent four years leading Qmunity, an LGBT organization based in Vancouver’s West End. She revealed that the challenges

Jennifer Breakspear is the new head of the Portland Hotel Society. faced by PHS are what drew her to the job. “When I started my work at Qmunity, I was hired to deal with

some issues,” she explained. “I did what I set out to do there. When I was hired at Opt, there were some things that needed to be dealt with and I was brought in to do those things.” Prior to those positions, she worked for 10 years as a paramedic in Ontario. PHS is one of the largest government partners operating in the Downtown Eastside. It is best known for Insite, which for many years was North America’s only low-barrier supervised-injection facility, but PHS also runs 15 supportive-housing buildings in Vancouver and a number of community services such as needle distribution and disposal. In 2016, PHS revenue exceeded $28 million, according to Revenue Canada filings. The bulk of that—76 percent—came from government, primarily via B.C. Housing and

Vancouver Coastal Health. Breakspear said another of her priorities will be to diversify funding. She acknowledged that private money has never been a big part of PHS’s budget but added: “There’s no reason it can’t be.” A second opportunity that Breakspear said PHS is the applications for supervised-injection sites filed by other cities across Canada that are expected to soon receive approval from Ottawa. “Is there a role for us to play?” she asked. Breakspear said PHS could secure contracts to manage those sites, though that’s the more complicated option. The simpler—and perhaps more likely—scenario, she continued, would be for PHS to dispatch consultant teams that would work with communities to get new injection sites off the ground. “We are well situated to do that,” she said. “We could go in, do that sort of thing…but then pull back to Vancouver and have that squad ready to respond elsewhere in the province when needed.” > TRAVIS LUPICK

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Evan Wood has been named the first director of the B.C. Centre on Substance Use (BCCSU), a new research institute the province unveiled at a St. Paul’s Hospital news conference on Tuesday (February 7). “The centre is opening in the context of a crisis,” Wood said. “We need to look at treatment options that will get people away from those sorts of desperate circumstances where they are using toxic street drugs.” That was a reference to the overdose epidemic that last year killed 914 people across B.C. The synthetic opioid fentanyl was detected in 60 percent of those cases. The BCCSU has been established with $5 million in funding from the province (announced in September 2016) plus an additional $5 million provided this month. A private donor, Peter Bull, is also contributing $1 million over five years. The province will cover operating costs of $1.9 million a year. Wood is a UBC professor of medicine who has authored more than 400 research papers, many of them related to addiction and marginalized populations such as that of Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside. In its first major action, the BCCSU released opioid-addictions treatment guidelines that are scheduled to take effect on June 5. B.C. health minister Terry Lake described the document as significant for giving Suboxone—a combination of buprenorphine and naloxone— preference over methadone, which up until now was the most common pharmaceutical treatment for opioid addiction in B.C. Lake noted the guidelines also include oral slowrelease morphine as an alternative treatment for those individuals who do not see results with Suboxone and other conventional therapies. “It would be terrible to squander this crisis and not develop a better system of treatment, prevention, and prescribing for opioid-use disorders,” he said. The guidelines do not include the option of prescription heroin, also known as diacetylmorphine, or intravenous hydromorphone, two treatments that are available to a limited client base at a clinic in the Downtown Eastside. That disappointed some drug users who attended the news conference, including Dean Wilson, a former president of the Vancouver Area Network of Drug Users. “Before fentanyl even came around, we were dying because the drugs are toxic. The drugs have to be prescribed. It’s the only way,” he shouted from the back of the room. “The problem is toxic drugs. We need them prescribed. You’ve been brave before. Be brave again.” > TRAVIS LUPICK

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Hedy Fry, who’s represented Vancouver Centre since 1993, says it’s time to open the door to examine new approaches for reducing overdose deaths.

Liberal MP seeks frank debate on legal heroin Vancouver’s Hedy Fry differs from the prime minister on where the national dialogue on fentanyl should go

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n 1999, Dr. Hedy Fry f lew to with heroin it would be even worse.” Switzerland to learn about The Prime Minister’s Office did how the European country had not respond to an interview request responded to a surge in drug- by deadline. On the campaign trail overdose deaths. in March 2015, a journalist with the “I travelled around with the po- UBC–based Cited podcast asked Trulice,” the Liberal MP for Vancouver deau for his position on prohibition. Centre recounted in a telephone “I disagree with loosening any of interview. If they found someone ad- the prohibition on harder drugs,” Trudicted to drugs who was injecting on deau responded. the street, Fry continued, the police Fry listed a number of benefits she would stop and offer to take the indi- said have been studied at length and vidual to a clinic where there were a proven in peer-reviewed literature. doctor and nurses. Those include significant reductions “That person would register as an in the risk of overdose death and addict and would decreases in both then, as a regiscriminal activity tered addict, go and in policing to a clinic to get and health-care Travis Lupick their drugs,” she costs. told the Georgia Straight. “The state (One 2007 aggregate study that paid for opiates.” reviewed 10 years of scientific literaFry recalled expressing skepti- ture covering heroin-assisted treatcism to the officer serving as her ment [HAT] in six countries was tour guide. published in the New York Acad“I said, ‘People in my part of the emy of Medicine’s Journal of Urban world will say that you are enabling.’ Health. It describes “overall posiAnd he said, ‘No, what we are doing is tive results of completed HAT trials cutting off organized crime. So people undoubtedly justifying some role don’t have to buy adulterated stuff; of HAT in the addiction treatment they don’t have to wallow in the dirt; landscape”. It added, however: “The and they don’t have to mug people and pressure is now on politics to use the steal money to buy their stuff.’ ” evidence generated in the interest of Fry noted that at the time, Van- reduced harms and costs related to couver was dealing with a drug the problem of heroin addiction.”) crisis similar to the one it struggles On January 18, the Straight rewith today. Last year, illicit narcot- ported that Don Davies, the NDP ics killed 914 people in B.C. The syn- MP for Vancouver Kingsway and thetic opioid fentanyl was linked to Opposition health critic, has simi60 percent of those deaths. In 1999, larly said he wants an open debate there were 272 fatal overdoses in B.C. about legalizing hard drugs in reToday in Vancouver, there’s a small sponse to the fentanyl crisis. clinic in the Downtown Eastside where “I think we are at the point, as a a select group of patients receives pre- country, where we can start openscription heroin, or diacetylmorphine, ing a dialogue about finding a better as it is otherwise known. But it’s a method of distributing drugs, legally, tough program to get into and so far to those who are addicted to them so has enrolled barely more than 100 that we can avoid the unnecessary patients. The Swiss initiative that Fry death, destruction, and crime that is discussed would make prescription so clearly associated with the current heroin available with fewer hurdles model [prohibition],” Davies said. “I and to a much wider population. What am in favour of starting that dialogue.” she described was the legalization and B.C.’s health minister and other regulation of hard drugs. high-level provincial officials have “This is the discourse that we must similarly voiced support for prehave now,” Fry said. “Nobody is scription heroin. ramming anything down anybody’s Fry said she personally is against throats. I’m not saying, ‘Let’s legal- decriminalization (often referred to ize.’ But I am saying, ‘It’s time we as the Portugal Model). She noted discussed this, openly and publicly.’ ” that decriminalization would leave In calling for a debate about legal- B.C.’s drug supply in the hands of ization, Fry steps out ahead of any organized crime. “It wouldn’t touch position taken by Prime Minister the fentanyl part of all this,” Fry Justin Trudeau. emphasized. Legalization would inThe Straight recently reported volve heavy regulations, she added, that in a January 29 meeting with bringing supply under government stakeholders in Vancouver, Trudeau control to eliminate the risks of uneffectively said that legalization was wanted substances like fentanyl and not going to happen. the much more toxic carfentanil. “The main thing that I pressed Fry said many studies have shown is that we need to have legalization that legal-heroin programs have and he tried to shut it right down,” worked in countries like Switzerland recounted Laurie Shaver, president for more than a decade now. of the Vancouver Area Network of “Without suggesting that I think Drug Users (VANDU) and one of the our government is going to do it, I frontline responders with whom Tru- do think that it is time to talk about deau met. “He said that he’s had such what is working in the rest of the a hard time with the marijuana that world,” she said. -

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TROUT LAKE COMMUNITY CENTRE FAMILY DAY  MONDAY FEBRUARY 13 Bring your family and friends to this FREE event featuring: live music • dance • performance • roaming performers • instructor demos • family skate • art for kids • gymnastics circuit • family play gym • pottery • cooking demonstrations • cake • youth fundraiser BBQ • food trucks • photography display • comics & cartooning • free books and more Monday, February 13th, 11am-3pm. 3360 Victoria Drive. More info 604.257.6955 • troutlakecc.com. Brought to you by Grandview Community Centre Association No strollers allowed in building. Stroller parking available at north outside entrance.

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FEBRUARY 9 – 16 / 2017 THE GEORGIA STRAIGHT 11

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Canada Post project gets heritage approval The original structure and artwork will be preserved at 349 West Georgia Street during redevelopment

he Vancouver Heritage A plaza will be created on West Commission has endorsed Georgia Street, with water feathe redevelopment of the tures, seats, lighting, plants, and downtown site of the for- public art. mer central Canada Post building. “This is, hopefully, going to enMembers of the civic advis- gage the street a lot more, and we ory body voted were quite pleased unanimously on with that,” Keate Monday (Februsaid. ary 6) to support The proposed Carlito Pablo the proposal to redevelopment of rezone 349 West Georgia Street for the former Canada Post site will residential, office, and retail uses. add 799 new homes downtown, “It went very well from the herit- consisting of 427 market rentals age standpoint,” commission chair and 372 condo units. Richard Keate told the Georgia Straight in a phone interview about RESIDENTIAL developments are arriving ahead of the proposed the project. The redevelopment will involve the Broadway subway in Vancouver. Rezoning applications have been rehabilitation of the heritage building, as well as the addition of three residen- filed to build rental homes at two locations along West Broadway. tial and office towers above. Keate recalled that commission One is at 1296 West Broadway, at members at the meeting kept re- the corner of Birch Street, where a ferring to two other downtown re- 16-storey building has been prodevelopments as good examples of posed for the current location of a Denny’s restaurant. heritage makeovers. The site is between two potenOne is the Reliance Properties building at 564 Beatty Street. tial stations of the subway, which is The six-level brick warehouse projected to extend the SkyTrain’s dating back to the early 1900s Millennium Line from VCC-Clark was restored, with four f loors of Station to Arbutus Street. To the east, a subway station is glass-and-steel office space added planned for the southeast corner on top. The second is the redevelop- of West Broadway and Oak Street, ment of the former 11-storey Stock where a 10-storey office and retail Exchange Building at 475 Howe building is currently under deStreet. Built in 1929, the neo-Goth- velopment. To the west is Granville ic heritage landmark is incorpor- Street, where one of six underated into a new office tower with ground stations for the subway is anticipated. 31 floors. The 1296 West Broadway pro“They tie in very well with the module below, but there is a change posal involves 153 rental homes, of materials,” Keate said about the with retail on the ground level. The other rezoning application two projects. “So it’s clear what’s compatible and what is distin- is for a couple of properties farther west, at the northwest corner of guishable.” In the case of the former Canada West Broadway and Alma Street. The project will consolidate Post building, almost all of the structure built in 1958 will be retained, as the location of a strip mall at 3701 West Broadway and a residential will significant works of art. The artworks include two identi- lot at 3743 West Broadway into one cal 5.8-metre cast-aluminum Can- property. A six-storey building with ada coats of arms on the building’s 94 rental homes and retail on the ground level has been proposed for front façade. Another work of art to be pre- the site. Under phase one of the possible served is the 4.9-metre-tall basrelief of a letter carrier. Carved Broadway extension of the Milleninto red granite, the sculpture is nium Line, B-Line bus service— proposed to be relocated from the which now runs from Commersouthwest corner of the building to cial Drive—will connect Arbutus Street to UBC. another place. UBC-bound buses currently Keate related that during the meeting, members of the Vancou- turn left from West Broadway ver Heritage Commission sug- onto Alma Street and head to West gested to the project proponents 10th Avenue on the way to the that they keep the letter-carrier university. The rezoning application for carving at its current spot. Keate said he likes the landscap- 3701–3743 West Broadway notes ing part of the plan, which will that the site has been “identified open the property—occupying as a potential future location for a an entire city block—to the public. transit station going to UBC”. -

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FOOD

Romantic spots to dine with your Valentine

ith Valentine’s Day almost here, you may be hungry for love— and then some. If the way to your partner’s heart is through the stomach, here are a few especially romantic restaurants to consider taking your sweetheart.

1,000-plus wine list. Must-have romantic dish: seafood tower with salmon tartare, seared red tuna, jellies (often erroneously called “jellyfish”), and scallop ceviche. Spoil your Valentine with a splurge.

BURDOCK & CO (2702 Main Street) If your date is a serious foodie, you’ll want to book a (1600 Howe Street) With an elegant décor featur- table at chef-owner Andrea Carlson’s intimate ing views of False Creek, and with crystal chan- restaurant, where the focus is hyperlocal. With deliers resembling fishnets, its whitewashed brick and this sleek, sophisticated place reclaimed barn planks, the fuses Peruvian, Japanese, room has the feel of a charmand Pacific Northwest cuiing refurbished farmhouse; Gail Johnson sines. An early-bird prix fixe tables are set with antique menu (from 5 to 6 p.m.) currently features lobster silverware and vintage glassware, while food is bisque and Pacific lingcod with “forbidden rice” served on stoneware. The ever rotating menu paella, while standouts among the regular dinner currently consists of dishes such as Fraser Valley offerings include grilled sablefish with aji panca duck-liver pâté with honey-fermented cranberry (a chili pepper from Peru), yam-and-oregano and smoked Desolation Sound mussels alongpavé, and chimichurri made with wakame (a side forest mushrooms and yuzu-miso caramel. brown seaweed). Across the board, executive chef On Valentine’s Day itself, Carlson is offering a Ricardo Valverde is dedicated to sustainable sea- prix fixe menu that will include butter-potato food. Must-have romantic dish: caviar selections bisque with sturgeon caviar and rose-honeyfrom B.C., Germany, and Spain accompanied by and-chili-glazed squab breast and leg confit. buckwheat-potato blinis. Pick more than one so Must-have romantic dish: Marina’s Top Drawer you and your partner can discover and indulge in deep-water oysters from Cortes Island. one of the world’s classiest appies together. MAK N MING (1629 Yew Street) Chinatown’s BLUE WATER CAFÉ (1095 Hamilton Street) Kissa Tanto first united Japanese and French In addition to scoring the Straight’s Golden food here in Vancouver; this modernist new Kits Plates Award for best seafood the past six years joint is the latest to draw from those two distinct running, the swank Yaletown spot also won cuisines. Chefs Makoto Ono and Amanda Cheng top nod as the city’s most romantic for 2016. (who focuses on desserts and pastry) are both Housed in a heritage converted warehouse with formerly of Pidgin and offer seasonal set menus: exposed brick walls and wooden beams, the res- a three-course demi menu and six-course chef’s taurant has an extensive selection of caviar, oys- menu. From February 10 to 14, the two are preters, sushi, seafood from live tanks, Champagne, senting a special Valentine’s Day menu alongside single-malt whisky, and premium sake, plus a the chef’s menu. The former features mirugai ANCORA WATERFRONT DINING AND PATIO

Best Eats

Valentine’s Day is the ideal time to splurge on a delicious meal and spoil your sweetheart—and there is no shortage of romantic dining rooms for those who want to do that in Metro Vancouver.

sashimi and wild caviar pot de crème, while the latter includes kombu-cured snapper and pork chop with black truffle and cauliflower. Musthave romantic dish: the six-course menu’s Dungeness crab noodle soup, for slurping like in Lady and the Tramp. PEAR TREE (4120 Hastings Street, Burnaby) It’s been nearly 20 years since chef Scott Jaeger and his manager wife, Stephanie, opened their outstanding restaurant. Think of it as the Bishop’s of Burnaby, a destination that is guaranteed to impress your date. The menu changes with the seasons; the ingredients are local, organic, and sustainable. Plates include pan-roasted Lois Lake steelhead with butternut squash and pommes dauphine; char-grilled organic Blue Goose beef tenderloin with 36-hour-braised short rib, potato pavé, and broccoli purée; and an appetizer of orangecaramelized scallops with double-smokedbacon risotto. (A prix fixe meal for February

14 features these and other items from the current menu.) Must-have romantic dish: Stilton with candied nuts and toasted brioche to finish off the night right. TABLEAU BAR BISTRO (1181 Melville Street) The French have romance down, so why not get a taste of Paris at this charming spot with characteristic checkerboard floors, brass railings, leather banquettes, and cozy nooks? Classic bistro fare like steak tartare, moules frites, and charcuterie is served up here, while chef Garett Blundell has devised a multicourse prix fixe meal for February 14. Among the choices are crispy-skin arctic char with confit potato, sea asparagus, squid ink, and sauce verte as well as porcini-crusted veal loin accompanied by grilled king oyster mushroom, apple purée, and sauce bordelaise (a traditional sauce made with red wine, veal stock, and shallots). Must-have romantic dish: mushrooms on “toast” (brioche) with foie gras, chicken boudin blanc, and Grana Padano—luscious. -

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FOOD

Fest toasts Canadian wines

his is the last edition of the Estate Winery, with a serious focus Georgia Straight before Van- on terroir expression. With Bordeauxcouver International Wine based consultant Alain Sutre as part of Festival week, culminating his team, they plotted 43 microblocks in the International Festival Tastings on the site. The result is that each lot sessions at the Vancouver Convention of Riesling, Grüner Veltliner, and red Centre from next Thursday to Satur- Bordeaux varieties is perfectly suited day (February 16 to 18). To celebrate to its respective slope, aspect, and soil. our country’s 150th birthday, the festival casts a spotlight on Canada as its LAKE BREEZE VINEYARDS For theme region, with 76 wineries pour- more than 20 years now, Naramata’s Lake Breeze Vineing their best and yards and winery brightest. In the has been behind spirit of national some of the freshrevelry, here’s a Kurtis Kolt est and liveliest small sampling of participating Canadian wineries you wines in the Okanagan. Their Pinot should make a point of visiting with Blanc and Chardonnay are perennial favourites, but those in the know have glass in hand. a particular affinity for winemaker BRITISH COLUMBIA Garron Elmes’s Pinotage.

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Estate Winery has been showing us that the Kootenay mountains offer plenty of potential. Winemaker Dan Barker does double duty, leading the charge at New Zealand’s Moana Park Winery during our winter (their summer) and working here while we’re in vintage. Their estate Pinot Noir is a wine I often use in seminars to illustrate how great this young region can be. CULMINA FAMILY ESTATE WINERY

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CHUTZPAH FESTIVAL

David Broza’s daring BY MIKE US IN G ER

East Jerusalem/ West Jerusalem was conceived and recorded in Israel in 2014, but the album couldn’t be more relevant to the ongoing insanity taking place in North America and beyond today. The project asks an important question, especially in this divisive new era of Donald Trump: what would happen if we put aside our religious, political, and ideological differences and tried to bond over the simple fact that we’re all human? Broza had no trouble finding like-minded artists who were willing to take a chance on doing just that. On the heavy-hitter front, East Jerusalem/ West Jerusalem finds the Israeli superstar working with American producer Steve Earle, hip-hop legend Wyclef Jean, and Palestinian actress-singer Mira Awad. But Broza is even prouder of the friends that he and his less famous support cast made during the creation of the record and the accompanying documentary of the same name. The eight-day recording session took place in East Jerusalem, a Palestinian-dominated area that most Israelis avoid. When Broza first pitched the idea to the members of his backing band, they were afraid to sign on. Reached on his cell before a concert in Jerusalem, the 61-year-old Israeli legend— whose enduring stardom at home has earned him comparisons to Bruce Springsteen and Leonard Cohen—says that he understood their initial reluctance. Some fears are deeply ingrained. “I’m shown a door and told that if I walk through it I’m walking into hell, where I will suffer and burn and people will attack me,” Broza explains. “Then there’s another door where I’m told if I walk through it that everything is going to be okay. Psychologically, I’m not even going to

Building musical bridges

David Broza knew the artists who joined him on his project, like Palestinian actor-singer Mira Awad (below left; photo Nahum Leder), would be taking risks.

“It affects my life and it affects my career,” she continues. “But when you’ve decided that something is important, all that becomes marginal. When I was younger—I’m 41 now and have done a lot in my career—I can tell you for sure that I was afraid. I was afraid how I was looked at, I was afraid of how I was judged, and I was afraid of being misunderstood. I was afraid, period. Everyone here judges you, and everyone wants you to be on their side.” For East Jerusalem/West Jerusalem, Broza set out to get Israelis and Palestinians on the same page.

Israeli rock icon David Broza dared to cross into East Jerusalem to record his latest album, and others followed bother opening that first door. I’m told time after time that East Jerusalem is inhabited by Palestinians who are Jew-haters and Israeli-haters, and it’s not a directive of the government or something that comes from the education system. It’s the way that we live—we live fearing the other.” That fear goes both ways. Awad—who joins Broza on his upcoming tour of North America—was born to a Bulgarian mother and a Palestinian father. The Tel Aviv–based artist considers herself both a Palestinian and an Israeli. But even as a celebrity, her determination to bridge those two worlds has come at a price. “Like David, I was raised to believe in human connections and human kinship—that you don’t really look at religion or nationality or colour as something that divides us or makes us less or more,” Awad says, speaking on her cell during a break on a film set in Israel. “Unfortunately, a lot of people do look at these things. I was raised in a home where I didn’t feel inferior to anyone, although we are somewhat seen as second-class citizens in Israel. I never felt second-class—I always knew what I was worth, because of my parents and my education. But I’m not immune to the divide here, and I have to deal with it every day—that’s a fact.

THINGS TO DO

THE PROJECT WASN’T without its challenges.

Broza remembers being summoned to the East Jerusalem house of one of his closest friends and musical collaborators. That friend, a Palestinian, told him that, for political reasons, he wouldn’t be participating in the project, setting off a quick spiral of self-doubt in the singer. “It hurt, and I felt very vulnerable,” Broza relates. “I doubted myself for a second, but within minutes I managed to talk myself into believing emotionally ‘Okay, this is what’s going to be. Whether others come or don’t come, I am going to be there on January 20 and I’ll start recording.’ I was like, ‘Steve Earle is going to be there, I’ve got the budget, and Wyclef Jean, and I have written the song ‘East Jerusalem/West Jerusalem’. If the musicians don’t come, I guess it will be just me and my guitar.’” Awad notes it wasn’t only Israelis who were taking a chance by working with Palestinians on East

Jerusalem/West Jerusalem. “The complexity of the situation is huge,” she says. “The musicians who play with David were afraid to come into East Jerusalem because they were sure that some Palestinian would take advantage of the situation and—I don’t know—abduct or kill them or hurt them. With the Palestinians, it wasn’t the physical fear, but the pressure that Palestinians are not supposed to be normalizing with Israelis. When you are a Palestinian working with Israelis, it can hurt your livelihood and your social status.” From a strictly artistic standpoint, East Jerusalem/West Jerusalem ends up being both uplift ing and powerful. Broza starts out finding common ground between Spanish flamenco and Steve Earle–brand Americana with the shuffling “One to Three” and then takes an easygoing leap into the waters of Caribbean soul with the title track. Qanun, oud, darbuka, and bouzouki add an exotic air to “Ramallah–Tel Aviv”, and there’s a jazzy reworking of Timmy Thomas’s vintage R&B classic “Why Can’t We Live Together”. Pink Floyd’s “Mother” is reborn as a Middle Eastern jam more suitable for hookah-smoking than firing up the bong, while Nick Lowe’s “(What’s So Funny ’Bout) Peace, Love and Understanding” is augmented by the Jerusalem Youth Choir, which is made up of Palestinian and Israeli teenagers from both the east and west sides of the city. Just as important as what happened in the studio was the magic that took place at the end of each day. “We had eight nights of banquets—every night Israelis and Palestinians laid out a banquet for up to 100 see next page

CHUTZPAH FEST High five

Editor’s choice DIVINE DANCE Last year, Vancouverites got their first chance to experience the sculptural, dynamically beautiful movement of Rome’s Spellbound Contemporary Ballet. The program of short works showed off all the different sides of choreographer Mauro Astolfi’s troupe. Now he returns with an epic full-length work, Carmina Burana, set to the instantly recognizable, rousing choruses of Carl Orff and others. It’s no surprise the work has been performed more than 100 times around the world: Astolfi manages to turn the bawdy medieval texts into something witty, edgy, and wildly virtuosic, all amid playfully used cabinets and tables, and chiaroscuro lighting. Carmina Burana is at the Norman and Annette Rothstein Theatre from March 4 to 6.

Five more events you can’t miss at Chutzpah

MARK SCHIFF (February 20 at the Norman and Annette Rothstein Theatre) The sharp, old-school comedian has toured with Jerry Seinfeld.

THE KLEZMATICS (February 23 at the Rothstein) Celebrate with the klezmer innovators as they fete 30 years.

WRESTLING JERUSALEM (March 1 and 2 at the Rothstein) The one-man show about the IsraeliPalestinian conflict could not be more timely.

LYLA CANTÉ (March 9 at the Rothstein) A Jewish cantor, a Gypsy flamenco guitarist, and a rocking good time.

KYLE ABRAHAM/ABRAHAM.IN.MOTION (March 11 to 13 at the Rothstein) Our first look at a rising U.S. dance troupe with a political charge.

In the spotlight CROSSING CULTURES When the 17th annual Chutzpah Festival rolls out from February 16 to March 13, you’ll see it mix and mash cultures like never before. Amid the programming are Jewish standup Judy Gold and Muslim comic Ali Hassan sharing the stage; a First Nations and Russian-Jewish improv duo (Folk Lordz); and a play called Wrestling Jerusalem that dissects the Palestinian-Israeli crisis. Artistic and managing director Mary-Louise Albert (above) says this shouldn’t be entirely surprising for the Jewish celebration of arts. “Most cultures from the inside know there are many points of view within it,” she says. “It makes total sense in a festival like Chutzpah that we would have this joining. I don’t feel like people assume you think a certain way.” She adds: “It’s important to see how the arts can bring out these issues…And man, I think it’s important in our time, with the ugliness of Trump right now.” -

FEBRUARY 9 – 16 / 2017 THE GEORGIA STRAIGHT 17

CHUTZPAH FESTIVAL

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ara Cheyenne Friedenberg and Silvia Gribaudi may live continents apart, but in one way they inhabit the same territory: a no man’s land between theatre and dance. They also share a gift for physical comedy and a taste for the wonderfully absurd. Friedenberg, here in Vancouver, has created everything from a warped ode to a metalhead (bAnger) to a comically macabre take on Victorian funeral rites (Highgate). In Italy, Gribaudi has conjured ironic solos about the female condition, and tongue-in-cheek works for aging dancers. “People are always asking us, ‘Is it dance? Is it theatre? Is it performance art?’ And of course, it doesn’t matter to us,” says Friedenberg with a laugh, sitting with her fellow artist in a rehearsal studio at the Scotiabank Dance Centre. “If those questions didn’t come up, that would be a good thing.” For Friedenberg, character work and spoken text have always mashed up easily with movement. And that disregard for artistic boundaries is just one of the factors that drew the pair together for the new show empty.swimming.pool, their transatlantic collaboration. Friedenberg says she knew immediately the two would hit it off when she saw Gribaudi’s quirky signature one-woman work, A Corpo Libero, at Dance Base in Edinburgh back in 2013. “I almost peed my pants laughing when I saw it,” she says. “So I went to her after the show. It was about the female body, and I appreciated the raw human aspect of her comedy—because I feel like that’s what I’m interested in.” They really started to click when Friedenberg first invited Gribaudi here to B.C. to do research together. Whenever Gribaudi’s English failed, Friedenberg would attempt to speak Italian, but fall into the Spanish she knows. It led to many laughs, and people,” Brozamusical says. “There were only Building bridges 40 of us in the crew, but everyone fromI had previous page invite friends for the experience of sitting around the same table and eating and having fun. After the first night, the buzz was so big people started calling me and going, ‘Can we come and play?’ They were from all over the place, all coming together. I said, ‘You know that you will be documented for a film?’ and they said, ‘Yeah, yeah—we don’t care. We wanna stay for dinner.’ And so it happened. As it became word of mouth, people began to show up just to watch us, to be there for the recording. They weren’t even musicians—just activists and good people. We left the studio open for everyone to come in.” The singer’s lasting hope is that the bridges that were built with East Jerusalem/West Jerusalem will continue to grow, not only at home but around the world. “We live with scars, but when we constantly think about them we don’t even consider that maybe the person on the other side of the door or the wall is as afraid of me as I am of him,” Broza says. “That he has the same basic needs as I do and really only wants to break bread with me and maybe have a glass of wine or a coffee. When you walk through that

18 THE GEORGIA STRAIGHT FEBRUARY 9 – 16 / 2017

also to some fruitful ideas about communicating. “The show has become about identity, where it’s interesting to see these human beings on-stage push themselves to communicate,” Gribaudi says of a work that includes a lot of play with gestures and spoken bits in both the women’s languages. “That’s remained the spine of the piece, the theme,” agrees Friedenberg. “She does this whole part in Italian. I did this whole thing in English in Italy, when we performed it. And you realize it’s beyond language.” Both women also play around with personas in the piece. Friedenberg is known for losing herself in out-there, riotously detailed characters, but it seems that Gribaudi has pushed her to play with shifts between herself and her stage persona in empty.swimming.pool. “How do we play with our own presence?” Gribaudi asks with a wry smile. “We often put on this mask of another. So here we play around with the character and the human being— maybe to create some confusion. What is real and what is not real?” “It’s a new place of vulnerability for me,” admits Friedenberg. “We challenge each other in different ways.” For a sign of how much the women have connected over their weeks of rehearsal, and how much they share a somewhat twisted sense of humour, look no further than the title of the piece. It was a joke Gribaudi made when she walked into the grey, highceilinged studio for the first time: “It looks like an empty swimming pool.” The moniker stuck. “We liked the idea of potential in an empty swimming pool,” Friedenberg says. “There’s an excitement of ‘What are you going to fill it up with?’ But there’s also a danger—in a poetic and darkly funny way.” Empty.swimming.pool is at the Scotiabank Dance Centre from next Thursday to Saturday (February 16 to 18) as part of the Chutzpah Festival.

door because you made that decision, and you find out that nothing happens to you, you realize that you were psychologically stopping yourself.” He laughingly describes himself as a man with a guitar who travels the world telling stories and playing songs amassed from a career that spans five decades. But that’s selling himself short. Broza is also an ambassador for world peace, delivering a message that, as depressing and divisive as Donald Trump–style politics might be, perhaps all is not lost. “Everybody’s nervous,” he notes. “There’s a nervousness out there, and it’s worrisome. But this isn’t about Muslims, Christians, and Jews. It’s about people, you know, because we’re all people. There’s so much friction and negativity in the Middle East that it makes an incredible laboratory for experimenting. And I’m saying ‘experiment’ because I can’t say we’ve initiated anything that’s brought mass results. But we are building platforms for reeducating people.” David Broza and Mira Awad play the Norman and Annette Rothstein Theatre on February 28 as part of the Chutzpah Festival.

CHUTZPAH FESTIVAL

Improv master Todd Houseman (left) draws from his indigenous culture, while former Vancouverite Ben Gorodetsky harnesses his Russian Jewish heritage.

Folk Lordz turn far-flung cultures into comedy > BY JA NET SM IT H

â&#x20AC;&#x153;We read as many myth stories as we could, and we read lots of Chekhov,â&#x20AC;? Gorodetsky relates. At the same time, they shared their learned heritage with each other. Houseman draws a lot from his fatherâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s career in standup comedy, an art form he traces back to the strong Cree tradition of making people laugh. Along the way he picked up all kinds of Russian words, stories, and dishes from Gorodetsky. â&#x20AC;&#x153;It was the same for Ben,â&#x20AC;? Houseman adds. â&#x20AC;&#x153;He attended many ceremonies with me.â&#x20AC;? As Folk Lordz developed, the pair did even deeper research, heading up to Dene territory in Yellowknife on the advice of Housemanâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s father. â&#x20AC;&#x153;My dad had recently been in that area and told me about the ancient stories there, especially about women hunters, that we were interested in. He said we had to go to this community.â&#x20AC;? â&#x20AC;&#x153;That was a hugely enriching experience for both of us,â&#x20AC;? says Gorodetsky. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve never been in a predominantly indigenous environmentâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;to just sit and listen and cultivate listening.â&#x20AC;? All of this intense research comes together in serious comedy on-stage. As Gorodetsky puts it, â&#x20AC;&#x153;Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s cultural homage: itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s totally researched, and there are educational components without it being annoyingly educational.â&#x20AC;? When Folk Lordz hits Chutzpah, expect a cultural mashup that weaves in a lot of its laughs from a third element: an audience pop-culture suggestion that Houseman and Gorodetsky work into the mix, whether itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s to do with sci-fi or reality television. â&#x20AC;&#x153;We get the third genre and highlight the differences,â&#x20AC;? Gorodetsky explains. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s about juxtaposition, where you might have this supercolourful indigenous myth and then this austere and poetically spoken Chekhovian character, and then a sexual character from reality television.â&#x20AC;? The result is seat-of-your-pants improv that melds deeply researched cultural components and whackedout contemporary touchstones. Through this bizarre mix, Folk Lordz manages to build bridges between cultures that are sorely needed in these scarily divided times. â&#x20AC;&#x153;You feel the effects and feel that hurt and seeming hate,â&#x20AC;? says Houseman. â&#x20AC;&#x153;I do think of this as an optimistic option. I am reminded that I am doing work that is needed and just and important.â&#x20AC;? â&#x20AC;&#x153;It sounds boring to say this,â&#x20AC;? adds his on-stage partner, â&#x20AC;&#x153;but this is such a Canadian show, with an indigenous perspective and an immigrant perspective. Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m proud of the tolerance and innovation we can bring in a small way to a comedy audience.â&#x20AC;? -

en Gorodetsky grew up in a family of Russian Jewish immigrants so bent on maintaining its heritage heâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;d have to do pushups every time he uttered an English word in his Vancouver home. He was immersed in Anton Chekhovâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s writings, folk music, Jewish foolsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; tales, and Russian theatre. Todd Houseman, on the other hand, grew up an urban aboriginal in Edmonton, his Cree father adopted and raised by a GermanPolish family. Houseman spent his youth digging into his Cree roots, reaching out to elders, and learning indigenous stories. Now the two friends bring their disparate backgrounds together in Folk Lordz, a multicultural comedy-improv duo unlike anything else out there. â&#x20AC;&#x153;We first gravitated toward each other because of our physical presence on-stage: we saw something familiar in the other weirdoâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s approach,â&#x20AC;? Gorodetsky says with a laugh, speaking to the Straight over the phone with his comedy partner from Edmonton before heading to Vancouverâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Chutzpah Festival. â&#x20AC;&#x153;We both have such a strong interest in our cultural identities. We thought, â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;How can we apply this passion for storytelling?â&#x20AC;&#x2122; â&#x20AC;&#x153;We both found one another as contemporary comedic dudes who can understand the value of history and culturally specific comedic experience.â&#x20AC;? â&#x20AC;&#x153;Our personalities are similar on- and off-stage, and then thereâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s our improv styles and our keenness for preserving our cultures,â&#x20AC;? adds Houseman. Gorodetsky traces his passion for his heritage to his parents, whose ancestors had lost their own Yiddish to the Russian ethnic cleansing of the early 20th century. â&#x20AC;&#x153;In Canada, my parents also saw so many in the Russian diaspora who had lost their language. So for them it became very important to preserve their language and their heritage,â&#x20AC;? he says. Houseman had to look a little farther to search out his roots. â&#x20AC;&#x153;I grew up off the reserve. I grew up with a lot of questions about my identity and I sought a lot of answers,â&#x20AC;? he says. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Those questions started in high school, not getting those answers, so I would reach out to elders. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m still very aware that I donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t speak my language, I donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t live on a reserve, and I donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t know how to powwow-dance,â&#x20AC;? he adds. The two met after Gorodetsky moved to Edmonton from Vancouver in 2010, when both were members of the Alberta capitalâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Rapid Fire Theatre. From there, they decided to form Folk Lordz in late 2013. Their early days were spent doing re- Folk Lordz performs February 22 at the search in a place seldom associated Norman and Annette Rothstein Theatre as part of the Chutzpah Festival. with comedy: the library.

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FEBRUARY 16 to MARCH 13

Tickets from $23 MARK SCHIFF THE KLEZMATICS 30th ANNIVERSARY TOUR Grammy-winning superstars < USA “captivated the audience, bewitching it with their singing, passion, and sound.” Feb. 23 > Norman Rothstein Theatre

DAVID BROZA & MIRA AWAD IN CONCERT charismatic & energetic < ISRAEL “(Broza) plays with all his heart, with all his body.” “(Awad’s) music... was intensely seductive.” Feb. 28 > Norman Rothstein Theatre

YOSSI BERG & ODED GRAF DANCE THEATRE ISRAEL > provocative & poignant dance Canadian Premiere of 4Men, Alice, Bach, and the Deer Feb. 25 – 27 > Norman Rothstein Theatre

USA > stand-up comedy Regularly opens for Jerry Seinfeld, who calls him “one of the funniest, the brightest, and best stage comics.” Feb. 20 > Norman Rothstein Theatre

FOLK LORDZ CANADA > world-renowned Rapid Fire Theatre high-speed, hilarious theatre improv “One of the most interesting, compelling and viscerally thrilling pieces of theatre you’ll see this season” Feb. 22 > Norman Rothstein Theatre

MARBIN with MNGWA opening jazz, rock & global music < ISRAEL/USA/CANADA “Eclectic band with a fascinating sound.” March 3 > Biltmore Cabaret, 19+

SPELLBOUND CONTEMPORARY BALLET ITALY > extraordinary dancing North American Premiere of Carmina Burana March 4 -6 > Norman Rothstein Theatre

MAYA AVRAHAM BAND singer from Idan Raichel Project < ISRAEL “Avraham...left the audience blown away.” March 7 > Norman Rothstein Theatre

KYLE ABRAHAM/ABRAHAM.IN.MOTION USA > sensual and dynamic fusion of jazz, African forms & modern dance March 11 – 13 > Norman Rothstein Theatre

Chutzpah!PLUS

LANDON BRAVERMAN < CANADA contemporary musical theatre April 2 > Norman Rothstein Theatre

Chutzpah!PLUS

BIRDS SING A PRETTY SONG. CANADA/ISRAEL/USA/ARGENTINA > exhilarating performance Canadian Premiere seamlessly fuses dance, live music and interactive media May 13 & 14 > Norman Rothstein Theatre 20 THE GEORGIA STRAIGHT FEBRUARY 9 – 16 / 2017

LYLA CANTÉ incredible world fusion < USA/ARGENTINA/JAPAN/ISRAEL “Music that is sensuous, passionate & infectious!” March 9 > Norman Rothstein Theatre

tickets: chutzpahfestival.com 604.257.5145 INFLECTION Alternative Assets

CANADA/USA > hilarious comedy double-bill (Hassan) Bitingly-funny solo show Muslim, Interrupted and (Gold) “ﬁercely funny, honest and moving” stand-up comedy Feb. 24 > York Theatre

WRESTLING JERUSALEM

EXIT - SHALOM HANOCH with Moshe Levi “The King of Israeli Rock” < ISRAEL “... a bona ﬁde rock ‘n’ roll star” March 8 > Norman Rothstein Theatre

ALI HASSAN & JUDY GOLD

COMEDY & THEATRE

CANADA/ITALY > a fun, fascinating journey World Premiere of empty.swimming.pool Feb. 16 – 18 > Scotiabank Dance Centre

2017

FESTIVAL

CANADA > explosive dance World Premiere of full-length version of Telemetry Feb. 18 - 21 > Norman Rothstein Theatre

DANCE

SHAY KUEBLER/ RADICAL SYSTEM ART

MUSIC

17 th

USA > brilliant and provocative theatre written and performed by Aaron Davidman “Remarkable solo performance… yearning beauty…” March 1 & 2 > Norman Rothstein Theatre

The ChutziPack

See 4 DIFFERENT SHOWS of your choice for ONLY $94 excluding Ali Hassan and Judy Gold, The Klezmatics, Shalom Hanoch with Moshe Levi, David Broza and Mira Awad

NEW: 5 SHOW DancePack! See 5 different dance shows

for ONLY $115 excluding Scotiabank Dance Centre show To order : www.chutzpahfestival.com or 604-257-5145

Jewish Community Centre of Greater Vancouver

FEBRUARY 9 – 16 / 2017 THE GEORGIA STRAIGHT 21

TARA CHEYENNE FRIEDENBERG & SILVIA GRIBAUDI

FEBRUARY 16 to MARCH 13

YOSSI BERG & ODED GRAF DANCE THEATRE ISRAEL > provocative & poignant dance Canadian Premiere of 4Men, Alice, Bach, and the Deer Feb. 25 – 27 > Norman Rothstein Theatre

USA > stand-up comedy Regularly opens for Jerry Seinfeld, who calls him “one of the funniest, the brightest, and best stage comics.” Feb. 20 > Norman Rothstein Theatre

MARBIN with MNGWA opening jazz, rock & global music < ISRAEL/USA/CANADA “Eclectic band with a fascinating sound.” March 3 > Biltmore Cabaret, 19+

SPELLBOUND CONTEMPORARY BALLET ITALY > extraordinary dancing North American Premiere of Carmina Burana March 4 -6 > Norman Rothstein Theatre

MAYA AVRAHAM BAND singer from Idan Raichel Project < ISRAEL “Avraham...left the audience blown away.” March 7 > Norman Rothstein Theatre

KYLE ABRAHAM/ABRAHAM.IN.MOTION USA > sensual and dynamic fusion of jazz, African forms & modern dance March 11 – 13 > Norman Rothstein Theatre

Chutzpah!PLUS

LANDON BRAVERMAN < CANADA contemporary musical theatre April 2 > Norman Rothstein Theatre

Chutzpah!PLUS

LYLA CANTÉ incredible world fusion < USA/ARGENTINA/JAPAN/ISRAEL “Music that is sensuous, passionate & infectious!” March 9 > Norman Rothstein Theatre

tickets: chutzpahfestival.com 604.257.5145 INFLECTION Alternative Assets

CANADA/USA > hilarious comedy double-bill (Hassan) Bitingly-funny solo show Muslim, Interrupted and (Gold) “ﬁercely funny, honest and moving” stand-up comedy Feb. 24 > York Theatre

WRESTLING JERUSALEM

EXIT - SHALOM HANOCH with Moshe Levi “The King of Israeli Rock” < ISRAEL “... a bona ﬁde rock ‘n’ roll star” March 8 > Norman Rothstein Theatre

ALI HASSAN & JUDY GOLD

COMEDY & THEATRE

CANADA/ITALY > a fun, fascinating journey World Premiere of empty.swimming.pool Feb. 16 – 18 > Scotiabank Dance Centre

2017

FESTIVAL

CANADA > explosive dance World Premiere of full-length version of Telemetry Feb. 18 - 21 > Norman Rothstein Theatre

DANCE

SHAY KUEBLER/ RADICAL SYSTEM ART

MUSIC

17 th

USA > brilliant and provocative theatre written and performed by Aaron Davidman “Remarkable solo performance… yearning beauty…” March 1 & 2 > Norman Rothstein Theatre

The ChutziPack

See 4 DIFFERENT SHOWS of your choice for ONLY $94 excluding Ali Hassan and Judy Gold, The Klezmatics, Shalom Hanoch with Moshe Levi, David Broza and Mira Awad

NEW: 5 SHOW DancePack! See 5 different dance shows

for ONLY $115 excluding Scotiabank Dance Centre show To order : www.chutzpahfestival.com or 604-257-5145

Jewish Community Centre of Greater Vancouver

FEBRUARY 9 – 16 / 2017 THE GEORGIA STRAIGHT 21

ARTS

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Hear the “young American quartet of the moment” in concert with mandolinist, Avi Avital in a mixture of works for string quartet, solo mandolin and mandolin and string quartet.

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Paula-Jean Prudat says the one-woman show still speaks strongly to a new generation of indigenous artists—and audiences.

Prudat moves into Moonlodge > B Y JA NE T S M ITH

aula-Jean Prudat is too young to have ever seen Margo Kane perform the iconic one-woman show Moonlodge live. But the play still had an enormous effect on her as an actor. She was at the University of Alberta, taking a class on solo theatrical works, when the instructor played a recording of the trailblazing piece about an aboriginal woman’s search for her identity. “I was young and I really didn’t know any other indigenous artists at that time,” Prudat explains, sitting in a rehearsal space tucked a floor above the Arts Club’s Granville Island Stage lounge. “That was one of the first experiences I had of someone telling a story in a theatrical medium that I could look up to.…It stands as a key piece that showed me what indigenous theatre means.” Kane, and Moonlodge, would continue to circle back to find Prudat throughout her early career. After graduating, Prudat came here to work on the Vancouver theatre icon’s Talking Stick Festival, appearing in the show Copper Thunderbird. “Margo’s festival was the first place where I had experienced other indigenous artists—it was my first experience seeing other artists like me,” says Prudat, who is now deeply entrenched in the indigenous-theatre community, working extensively with Toronto’s Native Earth Performing Arts. “Margo and I both have similar ancestry,” adds Prudat, who, like Kane, identifies as Métis-Cree-Saulteaux. “I bet if we looked hard enough we could find neighbouring families.” It seems fitting, then, that Kane, the

only person who has ever performed Moonlodge until now, would pass it on to Prudat. At this year’s Talking Stick, the multigenre celebration of aboriginal arts, Prudat will play Agnes and multiple other characters the woman comes into contact with, under the guidance of a new director, Corey Payette. In the play, which Kane debuted at the long-gone Women in View Festival here in 1990, Agnes is taken away from her family by child-welfare workers and raised in a series of foster homes. It’s not until a decade later, in the 1960s, when she hitchhikes across America, that she finds herself and attends her first powwow. Kane has called it a “solo-voice” drama, one that derives in part from First Nations storytelling and often finds the performer shift ing from one character to another. IT’S CLEAR THE PLAY still reson-

ates with a new generation of artists. Kane wrote the work before Truth and Reconciliation and before curriculum changes in Canadian schools, illuminating an issue that was rarely spoken about. We talk now about residential schools and the “scoops” of indigenous children, but the effects are still deeply felt. “There’s historical relevance, but this is something that is still a reality. Children are still being taken, ‘scooped’ up, and taken out of their homes for adoption. We’re still trying to make sense of things. And these are all reasons why we need to share these stories,” Prudat says thoughtfully. “I think, unfortunately, that the effects of the loss of language and the loss of culture and the loss of pride through colonization

MORE GREAT PICKS FROM

GREED/RESOLVE (At the Roundhouse Community Arts and Recreation Centre on February 24 and 25) Vancouver’s multitalented Byron Chief-Moon and Ottawa-based JP Longboat (of Circadia Indigena) collaborate on a night of dance that looks at corporate capitalism, decolonization, and self-realization. Expect startling imagery and powerful physicality with an undercurrent of political activism.

22 THE GEORGIA STRAIGHT FEBRUARY 9 – 16 / 2017

has impacted us on a massive scale.” Prudat’s own background differs from that of Kane, who was adopted by a white family. But she can relate to many of the issues of identity and prejudice raised in the play. “I come from northern Saskatchewan, where there’s a huge population of First Nations and Métis, and I think it’s a difficult place to live,” she says. Prudat’s family likes to tell the story about how the road had to be plowed out 20 kilometres for her mother to get to the hospital to give birth to her one stormy night. But sadly, that’s not the kind of hardship she’s referring to. “There’s a real racism in that region, pockets there where racism is rife,” she reveals. “There was so much breakage,” she continues. “I think we are still feeling the impact of those things. It’s really how we got here. I know my parents, so I’m not Agnes in that sense. But that’s why I do indigenous theatre: these stories are deeply impacting for us.… It’s about ‘How did we get here, all of us together?’ And the beauty of the piece is that it looks at that and it comes from a place of hope. Because I wouldn’t be able to do this without hope.” Moonlodge, it should be noted, is full of laughter, too. And in the end, Prudat adds with a smile, comedy may be the best way to build bridges and face hard histories. “There’ll be a real clown moment where something catches you and you’re laughing about something, and then you realize the pain of it,” she explains. “I call it the ‘laugh-cry’ moment: that’s what makes it real.” Urban Ink presents Moonlodge from February 17 to 22 at the BMO Theatre Centre in association with Arts Club Theatre and the Talking Stick Festival.

TALKING STICK

REZURRECTING THE GODDESSES (At the Hindenburg on February 21) Virago Nation, named for a word for “female warrior”, presents a burlesque night from a new group of women bent on “rematriating indigenous sexuality”. These ferocious females have fun while exploding stereotypes and putting their own culturally clever twist on striptease. DJ Kookum spins tunes, and Suzette Amaya hosts.

REEL RESERVATIONS (At the Vancity Theatre on February 23 and at SFU Woodward’s in the Goldcorp Centre for the Arts on February 25) The first installment of this film series, Angry Inuk (shown here), finds young Inuit director Alethea Arnaquq-Baril questioning seal-hunt activism. The second features Colonization Road, comedian Ryan McMahon’s return to his hometown, and The Fast, Doreen Manuel’s journey to a four-day fasting ceremony.

ARTS

Wanna Yuk?

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Chutzpah! Festival

TOP TALENT SHOWCASE EVERY TUES AT 8:00

PRO-AM NIGHT

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Elle (with Severn Thompson and Jonathan Fisher) is based on a 500-year-old story of a woman banished to an East Coast island. Michael Cooper photo.

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Elle’s true sur vival tale tracks a woman scorned

THIS WEEKEND FEATURING (FEB 9-11)

nature, which led her to search beyond the standard fare offered to a woman of her social standing at that time. She also loves how, even with Marguerite’s many imperfections and relative lack of practical skills, she’s a survivor—literally. Unable to manage the wilderness, inclement weather, and lack of food, almost everybody around her died (both in real life and in the book/ play), but she lived to tell her story. “I imagine if I was out there I would feel very similar in having very few skills that would see me through to survive in the wild, so I really loved that,” Thompson says. “I also felt a kinship with her sense of humour when things went wrong. And they do go wrong a lot for her; it is just this sense of the humour, the bitter irony of it, that kind of keeps her going, and I certainly have used that at times to keep me going.” It keeps Marguerite going even though the punishment was so out of proportion to the alleged crime. The “get thee to a nunnery”–style slut-shaming was to leave this young woman stranded on an island. For years. Simply because she engaged in consensual sex and was seemingly unapologetic about it. “And we’re still going through that,” Thompson says, reflecting briefly on how the puritanical values of the 1500s echo through to the present day. “What I love about her is she can’t help herself. She does have some sense of guilt for religious reasons, but she has such a strong drive to live and to explore her sexuality and everything. She’s very impulsive and it’s interesting to see somebody like that. That’s kind of coded as a headstrong girl, which is still the case, right? Well, ‘headstrong’ is the nicest label, but still, there’s all these labels that women get, you know. ‘She’s so opinionated, she’s so…’ People are very quick to label, dismiss, and destroy if they can.” But, like Marguerite, headstrong women will survive. -

t’s been almost 500 years since Marguerite de la Rocque de Roberval, a French noblewoman, was abandoned by her colonizer uncle, Jean-François de la Rocque de Roberval, off the coast of Newfoundland. Her crime? Being a wild woman—the kind of wanton lady who dared take a lover on a transatlantic journey in 1542. Her story of survival became the stuff of legend, and has inspired numerous artists over the years, including Canadian writer Douglas Glover. His book, Elle, a fictionalized account of de la Rocque de Roberval’s time marooned on the so-called Isle of Demons, won a Governor General’s Award, and it’s also the basis of Severn Thompson’s Dora Award–winning stage adaptation of the same name. “I’d never heard that any European women came over in the first few journeys with the colonists and explorers,” Thompson tells the Straight over the phone from Toronto. The story blew her mind, and she was drawn to Glover’s reimagining of de la Rocque de Roberval’s experiences. “His exploration of this story was so inventive and the character itself that he created—there was something about her and her humour, and the fact that she was written as quite a misfit….She’s not perfect by any means, but her imperfection makes her quite human and relatable.” In addition to adapting Elle for the stage, Thompson stars as Marguerite. She says she’s mindful that the role never falls into the troubling category of colonizer heroine; rather, Thompson sees Marguerite as simply having a thirst for adventure. “Certainly, this version of her character, anyway, really came over without any expectations of settling in,” Thompson says. “I think she came for the exploration, just for the experience of it.” Marguerite’s desire for excitement Elle runs from Wednesday (Febraury is something to which Thompson 8) to February 18 at the Firehall Arts relates—along with her questioning Centre.

TARA CHEYENNE PERFORMANCE | SILVIA GRIBAUDI

MIKE HARRISON www.yukyuks.com 2837 Cambie (at 12 ) th

empty.swimming.pool A Canadian-Italian Cultural Collision

February 16-18, 2017 | 8pm Photo: Wendy D Photography

> B Y A NDR EA WA R NE R

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The howlingly funny show about getting over getting dumped

LAILA BIALI WITH NITECAP FRI. FEB. 24 @ 8 PM

JUNO-nominated vocalist, pianist and songwriting wonder with Capilano U’s own NiteCap

Featuring dance artists from Canada, Japan, the United States, and Denmark at the Vancouver Playhouse, Roundhouse, Scotiabank Dance Centre, Studio 1398, Woodward’s Atrium and KW Studios.

INFO & BOX OFFICE: 604.662.4966 · VIDF.CA

VILLALOBOS BROTHERS FRI. MAR. 3 @ 8 PM

Mexican virtuoso violinists blend folk music with classical and jazz

Tickets: 604.990.7810 • Online: capilanou.ca/centre Capilano University • 2055 Purcell Way • North Vancouver

Alonzo King LINES Ballet photo of Michael Montgomery by RJ Muna

FEBRUARY 9 – 16 / 2017 THE GEORGIA STRAIGHT 23

ARTS

Show taps 42nd Street ’s real razzle-dazzle Odysseo trots out crowd-pleasing human and equine feats; all-female Corleone subverts stereotypes; Dying’s wild actions beat words

TH E AT RE

a sense of duty, but Indelicato’s delivery is often f lat, as if confusing a monotonous voice with an intense one. Among Corleone’s standouts are Corina Akeson, also the sound designer, who shines as both Sonny Corleone and Johnny Fontane, and Christina Wells Campbell, Classic Chic’s artistic director, who earns every laugh she gets for her turn as Luca Brasi, the don’s well-meaning but dim, malapropism-inclined muscle. Kaitlin Williams is lively and vibrant in her small role as Kay, Michael’s put-upon love interest. Classic Chic deserves better material than Corleone, but it’s an alltoo-rare joy to see so many different women, from so many different demographics, occupying the stage together. Though it has its flaws, it’s still an offer I simply can’t refuse.

42ND STREET Music by Harry Warren. Lyrics by Al Dubin. Book by Michael Stewart and Mark Bramble. Directed by Barbara Tomasic. Musical direction by Christopher King. Choreography by Julie Tomaino. At Studio 58 on Saturday, February 4. Continues until February 26

42nd Street is a big show—a really big show. And it’s a terrific showcase for the ample talent in Studio 58’s current crop of students. The 1980 stage musical, based on the 1933 Busby Berkeley movie (itself based on a novel by Bradford Ropes), tells the Depression-era story of an ingénue actress, Peggy Sawyer, stumbling into stardom in a theatrical extravaganza. The storytelling is a bit wonky: Peggy’s ambition isn’t defined enough to be a central narrative, and she has three potential love interests, all murkily explored (and we won’t even get into their questionable sexual politics). But that’s not the point of this singing, dancing machine of a show, whose plot points are merely connective tissue between big group numbers. Those numbers give the 23-person cast plenty of opportunities to strut their stuff. This is very much an ensemble piece, and director Barbara Tomasic emphasizes the camaraderie in this fictional theatre troupe, while choreographer Julie Tomaino capitalizes on the cast’s seemingly boundless energy. From the pure joy of “Young and Healthy”, one of many instances of exuberant tapdancing, to the shadow-projection play of “Shadow Waltz” and the witty train-car antics of “Shuff le Off to Buffalo”, 42nd Street is a

2 really,

> ANDREA WARNER

AS I LAY DYING

Krista Skwarok and Matthias Falvai hoof it in 42nd Street, staged with the boundless energy it demands. David Cooper photo.

visual and rhythmic feast. Tomasic effectively roots her actors’ accents and gestures in the period, as do Carmen Alatorre’s prolifically splendid costumes. (Check out the dollar-bill lapels and skirts for “We’re in the Money”.) Standouts in the cast include Elizabeth Barrett as the savvy, cynical playwright Maggie and Emily Doreen Wilson as a feisty chorus girl, Annie. Krista Skwarok’s wide-eyed, good-natured Peggy sings beautifully, as does Stephanie Wong, who imparts a convincing hauteur to diva Dorothy Brock.

The singers aren’t miked, and some of them struggle a bit with volume in the solo numbers, but when the whole cast sings together, it’s divine. The production elements are flawless. Pam Johnson’s set affectionately deploys the classic textures of a Broadway theatre: brick walls, rough wooden floors, and big barn doors at the rear. Meanwhile, Alan Brodie’s lighting celebrates the razzle-dazzle of pure entertainment. Christopher King’s six-piece orchestra brings the musical magic without ever missing a beat. It’s show biz, folks! Enjoy. > KATHLEEN OLIVER

ODYSSEO

MOONLODGE by Margo Kane

AN INDIGENOUS CANADIAN CLASSIC

Feb 16 - Feb 25 2017 Goldcorp Stage at the BMO Theatre Centre

“Powerful...rich, captivating” - Ottawa Citizen

Presented at THE TALKING STICK FESTIVAL

24 THE GEORGIA STRAIGHT FEBRUARY 9 – 16 / 2017

Created with artistic direction by Normand Latourelle. Directed and choreographed by Wayne Fowkes. Music composed by Michel Cusson. A Cavalia production. Under the Big Top at Olympic Village on Tuesday, January 31. Continues until March 5

Audacity is the star of Odys-

2 seo, a show that fully lives up to

its claims of being unlike anything you’ve ever seen before. The numbers tell the story: 65 horses, 48 human performers, a crew of dozens more, 10,000 tons of rock, earth, and sand for the set, housed in an enormous tent. The whole thing really is larger than life. With virtually no narrative, Odysseo asks its audience to do nothing but sit back and be dazzled. And man, does it dazzle, with the beauty and power of bodies both equine and human set against massive CGI backdrops that take us from one jaw-dropping landscape to another: the savannah, the plains, even Stonehenge. The imagery is cinematic and otherworldly throughout. Some highlights: in a piece called “The Faeries”, white-gowned women stand astride two horses each as they parade around the stage. In “Liberty”, Elise Verdoncq single-handedly guides nine purebred Arabians through an elaborate choreography without reins; later in the show, she performs an unforgettable dance on a single horse. Humans wearing bouncing stilts compete with horses in a bar-jumping sequence, and stunt riders perform death-defying feats at a full gallop. There’s a stunning segment in which four riders canter in a circle, each holding one strand of the silk on which an aerial performer is suspended. The horses don’t entirely upstage the humans, though: a troupe of Guinean acrobats impresses not only with its high-speed tumbling, but with a song that’s an

impassioned plea for peace. Michel Cusson’s earthy and evocative music is performed live, and singer Valentina Spreca’s occasional vocals add a gorgeous sensuality. This is the last time Odysseo will be in Vancouver, and its run has already been extended twice. If you love horses, if you love spectacle, or if you just want to be blown away, be sure to catch it. > KATHLEEN OLIVER

CORLEONE: THE SHAKESPEAREAN GODFATHER By David Mann. Directed by Mindy Parfitt. A Classic Chic production. At Pacific Theatre on Friday, February 3. Continues until February 25

“I made him an offer he couldn’t

2 refuse.”

It’s a line oft-repeated in David Mann’s Corleone: The Shakespearean Godfather, lifted from The Godfather, and the promise and premise of Classic Chic’s all-women staging of Mann’s play seemed like an offer I couldn’t refuse either. A script that plays with language and perceptions of highbrow and lowbrow art, skirting the line between parody and homage as a form of commentary? Intrigued. A theatre company challenging gendered “norms”, exploring power and toxic masculinity, and having fun subverting stereotypes? Sold! What made it to the stage on opening night of Corleone was slightly different in ways both good and disappointing. Mann’s script is a tightly condensed adaptation of the much-worshipped tale of a Mafia family, machismo, betrayal, and vengeance. Vito Corleone’s status as the don is threatened when he’s almost killed in a power grab by another crime family. His youngest son, Michael, who had eschewed the family business, decides to avenge his father, which escalates to an all-out bloodbath as “baby don” ascends the very throne he’d sworn off years earlier. Mann’s script has some wellcrafted characters and some truly laugh-out-loud lines, but ultimately never quite rises to meet its own challenges. Classic Chic does a good job with what it has to work with, save for a few small missteps. At first, Nicola Lipman’s Vito Corleone isn’t sinister enough to be truly formidable, but as the don chastises Johnny Fontane for his whining, Lipman finds her groove. As Michael Corleone, Stefania Indelicato faces the biggest task, but her approach doesn’t always work. Michael’s journey is rooted in volatility and familial obligation,

By William Faulkner. A Theatre Smith-Gilmour production. An Arts Club Theatre and PuSh International Performing Arts Festival presentation. At the Goldcorp Stage at the BMO Theatre Centre on Thursday, January 26. Continues until February 12

Based on William Faulkner’s

2 novel of the same name, As I

Lay Dying centres on Addie Bundren’s final wish: to be buried in her hometown of Jefferson, Mississippi. As last demands go, it’s simple enough, but everything veers wildly out of control thanks to her deeply dysfunctional family and an escalating series of misadventures. Think of it as a kind of southerngothic precursor to Weekend at Bernie’s, but with fewer indignities to a corpse. Mostly. The book is meant to be a black comedy, but only some of that makes it to the stage. The physical humour is well-executed, but the actors’ line deliveries often fall f lat. As I Lay Dying’s best moments are the innovative bursts of extraordinary physicality. As Jewel Bundren, the young, hothead son, Benjamin Muir is tasked with playing both a man taming a horse and the wild horse itself—and he’s brilliant. He bounces and reels, gallops and snorts, and transforms his body from man to beast in seconds. The Toronto-based company’s cofounders, Dean Gilmour and Michele Smith, met at Jacques Lecoq’s movement-and-mime school in 1978, so physical precision and believability are key foundations of their company. In As I Lay Dying, this translates into minimal staging, no sets, and only a few props. Everything else is manifested bodily, which works when it comes to specifics—Muir’s horse-and-man sequences, and a gorgeous underwater scene wherein several people are fighting for their lives against the undertow of a river. But bodies can only convey so much, and the most basic and integral elements of Faulkner’s story are lost, like his wry, macabre wit and a sense of the poverty and isolation of the Bundrens’ home. We also can’t fully appreciate the escalation of the indignities and absurdities the Bundrens face and bring upon themselves in the ensuing days because it’s hard to get a sense of how much time is passing. Even though the play itself feels long, it’s hard to know if the Bundrens have been carting around their mother’s corpse for two days or 30. But As I Lay Dying’s biggest sin—uneven southern accents notwithstanding—is that it drags rather than zips because of a script that relies heavily on narration. Too often we’re being told, not shown, which saps the company of its biggest strength: the artistry of action and making every movement count. > ANDREA WARNER

ARTS

Bull still defies categorization Vancouver interdisciplinary artist was a model of counterculture collaboration VISUAL AR TS HANK BULL: CONNEXION At the Burnaby Art Gallery until April 6

The exhibition titled Hank Connexion provokes questions about itself—about how best to represent the accomplishments of this interdisciplinary Vancouver artist and arts organizer. Long associated with the Western Front, Bull has embraced a range of collaborative and networking practices, including performance, video, mail art, and telecommunications art. As demonstrated at the Burnaby Art Gallery, he has been more a connecting figure, locally and internationally, than an outstanding individual creator. After undertaking curatorial and administrative work for the Front, and following extensive travels in Asia, he also became a cofounder of Centre A (the Vancouver International Centre for Contemporary Asian Art) and was its director from 1999 to 2010. Drawn into the Front’s orbit in the early 1970s through his interest in experimental music, Bull made a commitment to being and doing rather than making and exhibiting. He was part of an alternative, anti-institutional art movement that swept across the western world in the 1960s and ’70s, rejecting the vaunted art object and embracing instead Fluxus-like “happenings”; Dada-like absurdity, playfulness, and parody; and ephemeral expressions such as performance. How, then, to make Bull’s decades of cultural activities clear and coherent to a contemporary audience? In addition to the obvious—his collaborative videos—the answer takes the form of, well, leftovers. These include props, costumes, and backdrops from performances, films, and videos;

2 Bull:

Remnants, like the Transmission Table tapes, make up a big part of the show.

posters from performance tours; file boxes of archival materials (correspondence, scripts, grant applications, travel arrangements); tabletops and baskets loaded with artifacts of obsolete technologies (typewriters, rotary telephones, old video monitors, film reels, cassette tapes, remnants of “videophone” experiments); and grainy black-and-white photographs. Much of this material evidence is mounted on the walls or organized into sculptural installations, together with paintings, drawings, assemblages, and puppets by Bull’s teachers, colleagues, friends, and collaborators, including Nobuo Kubota, Heri Dono, Shen Yuan, Kate Craig, Eric Metcalfe, Rick Ross, Patrick Ready, and Charmian Johnson. A soundtrack by pioneering electronic musician Martin Bartlett adds interesting audio texture to the displays in the upstairs gallery. Curated by Joni Low and Pan Wendt, the show was organized by the Confederation Centre Art Gallery in Charlottetown and toured to a couple of other public galleries before landing in Burnaby. A few installation shots in the exhibition

catalogue reveal how things were originally installed in Charlottetown, in a homey arrangement that suggests a productive live-work space. (Perhaps the attraction of this installation has to do with the soft ambient lighting and the golden glow of the Confederation Centre Art Gallery’s f loors.) At the BAG, the installation of objects and archival materials is broken up over two f loors, which somewhat cools the effect and diminishes the possibilities of immersion in the Hank Bull experience. Still, an attempt at hominess is made by a wooden table and chairs set next to a stack of file boxes, shelves of knick knackish props, and a hooked rug placed on the f loor in front of a video monitor. It’s interesting to encounter, in 2017, the Dada-esque silliness and absurdity abounding in the earlier works on view, especially in the films and videos. Some of the silliness, such as that seen in The HP Sedan Bottle, a short, palindromic, blackand-white film shot in 1975, makes for oddly compelling viewing. Other manifestations of it, along with deliberately crude animation, acting, and directing, as in 1984’s Sax Island, do not wear as well. The show’s organizers tell us that one of Bull’s most important contributions was his role in developing the possibilities of communication as art, including his involvement in mail-art networks and his early experiments in telecommunications. What I find most striking—and poignant—in this and other recent retrospectives of alternative-art practitioners from the 1960s and ’70s is their reminder of a lost world of collectivity, collaboration, and counterculture idealism. Deep sigh.

Viva Brazil with Axé Capoeira Sunday, February 12 – 1 pm Join us and celebrate Family Day weekend with live Afro-Brazilian music and gravity-defying acrobatics. Free with admission. Become a member and enjoy a free, interactive capoeira workshop at 11 am! moa.ubc.ca/familyday

> ROBIN LAURENCE

are you

The Firehall Arts Centre presents a Theatre Passe Muraille production

on the LIST?

ELLE

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Firehall Arts Centre 280 E. Cordova St. Vancouver

March 3 to 11, 2017 | Tue-Sun @ 7:30pm 2 x 1 preview March 2

Project Funders:

Adapted by Severn Thompson from the novel by Douglas Glover

“…a performance that weaves feminism, survival instincts, colonialism and magic realism together.”

“Theatre for Living creates theatre that reaches out and connects… fascinating and profoundly theatrical.” –David C. Jones

Operating Funders:

CELEBRATE FAMILY DAY WEEKEND

FEB 8-18

604.689.0926

firehallartscentre.ca

280 E Cordova St Severn Thompson

Michael Cooper Photography

Media Sponsors:

FEBRUARY 9 – 16 / 2017 THE GEORGIA STRAIGHT 25

musical about a mermaid who dreams of the world above the sea and risks everything to find love. To Feb 18, Michael J. Fox Theatre (7373 MacPherson Ave., Burnaby). Info www.alignentertainment.ca/.

UPCOMING CONCERTS KIDS’ KONCERTS: PLATYPUS

THEATRE: HOW THE GIMQUAT FOUND HER SONG SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 12, 2PM Orpheum William Rowson conductor Platypus Theatre Embark on a musical expedition across continents and through centuries to help a discouraged bird discover her unique voice. How the Gimquat Found Her Song is a heart-warming tale about the search for identity and a celebration of music in all of its forms. VSO INSTRUMENT FAIR in the lobby at 1pm. Your child can try real orchestral instruments under the guidance of student and professional musicians. Instruments provided by Tom Lee Music KIDS’ KONCERTS SERIES SPONSOR

PREMIER EDUCATION PARTNER

THE STORY OF

PELLÉAS UND MELISANDE SATURDAY & MONDAY, FEBRUARY 18 & 20, 8PM Orpheum BRAHMS Piano Concerto No. 1 in D minor* SCHÖENBERG Pelléas und Melisande Lahav Shani conductor

LAHAV SHANI

Kirill Gerstein piano*

One of the most respected pianists of his generation, Kirill Gerstein performs Brahms’s sprawling Piano Concerto No. 1. Schoenberg’s complex and darkly dramatic symphonic poem Pelleas und Melisande is hailed as both helping to pave the way for a new kind of composition and one of the last great works of Romanticism. PRE-CONCERT TALK 7:05PM, FREE TO TICKETHOLDERS. MASTERWORKS DIAMOND SERIES SPONSOR

FEBRUARY 18 CONCERT SPONSOR

KIRILL GERSTEIN

THE MUSIC OF BRAHMS WITH

BRAMWELL TOVEY & GARRICK OHLSSON FRIDAY & SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 24 & 25, 8PM Chan Centre for the Performing Arts, UBC BRAHMS Hungarian Dance No. 4 in F-sharp minor BRAHMS 3LDQR &RQFHUWR 1R LQ % ȵDW 0DMRU BRAHMS 6\PSKRQ\ 1R LQ ' 0DMRU Bramwell Tovey conductor

Garrick Ohlsson piano*

Maestro Bramwell Tovey conducts the music of one of the greatest of composers, Johannes Brahms, both the last great Classicist and a Romantic at heart. You will hear his powerful Second Piano Concerto performed by one of the world’s most commanding pianists, Garrick Ohlsson, a famous Hungarian Dance, and the extraordinary Second Symphony.

BRAMWELL TOVEY

GARRICK OHLSSON

SYMPHONY AT THE ANNEX:

FUGITIVE VOICES

SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 26, 7:30PM Annex BRAMWELL TOVEY Fugitive Voices*° ANNA HÖSTMAN 1X\DPĄ LĄ .XOKXOP[ȃ6LQJLQJ WKH (DUWK + Bramwell Tovey conductor Robyn Driedger-Klassen soprano° Eve-Lyn de la Haye soprano° Marion Newman mezzo-soprano* Jelena Milojevic accordion+ Mezzo-soprano Marion Newman is featured in two compelling works: Bramwell Tovey's Fugitive Voices and Anna Höstman’s 1X\DPĄ LĄ .XOKXOP[ Ȃ 6LQJLQJ WKH (DUWK

BRAMWELL TOVEY WITH THE VSO

PRE-CONCERT SHOWING of Banchi Hanuse’s documentary Cry Rock at 6:45pm. FREE TO TICKETHOLDERS

SYMPHONY AT THE ANNEX SERIES SPONSOR

MEDIA SPONSOR

@VSOrchestra

TICKETS:

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604.876.3434

26 THE GEORGIA STRAIGHT FEBRUARY 9 – 16 / 2017

CORLEONE: THE SHAKESPEAREAN GODFATHER Classic Chic presents a tale of power, destiny, betrayal, and honour that combines Shakespearean drama and Coppola’s movie masterpiece. To Feb 25, 8-10 pm, Pacific Theatre (1440 W. 12th). Tix $34.95, info www.pacifictheatre.org/.

ar ts/ timeout THEATRE DANCE MUSIC COMEDY ET CETERA GALLERIES MUSEUMS

< < < < < < <

THEATRE 2ONGOING AS I LAY DYING The Arts Club Theatre Company presents Theatre SmithGilmour’s production of William Faulkner’s southern Gothic masterpiece as part of the PuSh International Performing Arts Festival. To Feb 12, Goldcorp Stage at the BMO Theatre Centre (162 W. 1st). Tix from $29, info www.artsclub.com/. SUNDAY IN THE PARK WITH GEORGE United Players present a musical by Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine about an artist and his lover and model. To Feb 12, 8 am, Jericho Arts Centre (1675 Discovery). Tix $30-35, info www.united players.com/. THE AUDIENCE The Arts Club Theatre Company presents Peter Morgan’s play that explores imaginary glimpses into the audiences between Great Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II and her prime ministers. To Feb 26, Stanley Industrial Alliance Stage (2750 Granville). Tix from $29, info www. artsclub.com/. 42ND STREET Studio 58 presents the song-and-dance fable of Broadway that features songs like “We’re in the Money”, “Lullaby of Broadway”, “Shuffle Off to Buffalo”, “Dames”, “I Only Have Eyes for You” and, of course, “42nd Street”. To Feb 26, Studio 58 (Langara College, 100 W. 49th). Tix from $10, info www.studio58.ca/. THE LITTLE MERMAID Align Entertainment presents the large-scale

straight choices

FOREIGN RADICAL Theatre Conspiracy presents an interactive theatrical game that explores security, profiling, freedom of expression, and privacy in the age of cybersurveillance. To Feb 11, Studio 1398 (1398 Cartwright, Granville Island). Tix $1430, info www.conspiracy.ca/. KINKY BOOTS The hit Broadway musical takes audiences from a gentlemen’s shoe factory in Northampton to the glamorous catwalks of Milan. Featuring songs by Cyndi Lauper. Feb 7-12, Queen Elizabeth Theatre (650 Hamilton). Tix from $30 (plus service charges and fees) at www.ticketmaster.ca/, info www.broadwayacrosscanada.ca/. CRAWLSPACE As part of Boca del Lupo’s Micro Performance Series, creatorperformer Karen Hines presents a darkly comedic, cautionary tale about the brutal battleground of real estate. Feb 8-18, The Fishbowl on Granville Island (100-1398 Cartwright). Tix $40/25, info www.bocadellupo.com/. ELLE Theatre Passe Muraille presents the story of a young French noblewoman who is abandoned on a deserted island off the coast of Newfoundland in 1542. Based on the book by Douglas Glover. Feb 8-18, Firehall Arts Centre (280 E. Cordova). Tix from $23, info www.firehallartscentre.ca/.

DANCE 2THIS WEEK DISCOVER DANCE! GRUPO AMERICA The Dance Centre’s noon-hour series presents vibrant Latin dances such as salsa, tango, cha cha, and samba. Feb 9, 12-1 pm, Scotiabank Dance Centre (677 Davie). Tix $14/12, info www.thedancecentre.ca/. SMALL STAGE: 35—THE VALENTINE’S EDITION Evening co-curated by Vancouver choreographer Heather Dotto showcases a mashup of genres from hiphop to jazz and urban street to contemporary. Feb 9-12, 7 pm, ANZA Club (3 W. 8th Ave). Tix $25, info www.smallstage.ca/.

RETHINK REAL ESTATE When Karen Hines decided to purchase a home back in 2006, she never imagined the countless problems that would arise as a result of shoddy building practices and lackadaisical real-estate agents. The ink had barely dried on her mortgage before Hines discovered how plagued with issues the tiny dwelling, initially described as a coach house, truly was. In less than three months, her dreams of living in a cozy home in one of Toronto’s hip neighbourhoods were dashed. From that point on, she dubbed it her “house of horrors”. In Hines’s solo show Crawlspace, she turns her life-altering experience into a dark, theatrical comedy, detailing the unimaginable struggles that persisted until the house was sold two years later. The Fishbowl, at 1398 Cartwright Street on Granville Island, is transformed into the aforementioned home, where renters in the audience are relegated to benches, while homeowners sit in cushy chairs. Catch this latest installment of the Micro Performance Series from Wednesday (February 8) to February 18. MOMENTUM: SFU DANCE STUDENT SHOWCASE Evening of dances choreographed and performed by students in the School for the Contemporary Arts. Feb 9-11, 8 pm, SFU Goldcorp Centre for the Arts (149 W. Hastings). Tix $15/10/7, info www.sfu. ca/sca/events/category/sca-event/.

see page 30

MOVIES

Jarmusch puts poetic Paterson in motion RE VIEW S PATERSON Starring Adam Driver. Rated PG

Turning poetry into film is a tricky prop-

2 osition. The self-directed contemplation

of words on paper is intrinsically opposed to the real-time momentum of motion pictures. Over a period of four decades, though, writerdirector Jim Jarmusch has made clear his disdain for cinematic norms while asserting his sly love of language. In films like Dead Man, there was minimal verbiage attached to nearly static imagery. But other movies, like Down by Law, were built on the nearly musical jousting of urban raconteurs. All the director’s impulses came crashing together in 2013’s Only Lovers Left Alive, which combined vampires, pop-culture and social commentary, and delirious map-and-time-hopping. In Paterson, Jarmusch changes direction again and limits himself to just a few people and places. The seemingly straightforward new film is in colour, but only just. Frederick Elmes, who previously shot things as stylistically varied as Blue Velvet and The Ice Storm, sticks to muted, warmer tones, recalling faded family snapshots from the 1970s. That approach fits the scrapbook life of a young couple in titular Paterson, New Jersey— home, at various times, to Allen Ginsberg, Lou Costello, and William Carlos Williams. The insularity of their happily bungalowed, almost childlike existence is underlined by the fact that this is also the family name of the main character, a hesitant, self-contained fellow played by Adam Driver. In fact, Paterson (no first name given) is a driver—of buses, circling through the city core and industrial outskirts on the same route every day. He’s also a secret poet. Paterson doesn’t talk much, but he listens a lot, to passengers and to the patrons who frequent the bar he visits most nights, while walking the French bulldog he silently detests. The dog doesn’t like him, either, as Paterson is his rival for the affections of wife Laura (Iranian rising star Golshifteh Farahani), who stays home, working on new creations—most of which involve painting geometric shapes in black and white. Paterson has a little nook in the basement where he fills a notebook with sweet, calculatedly naive lines of nonrhyming verse—itself shaping the flow of the story. That maybe sounds a little plain and smallscale, but Paterson is the anti–Manchester by the Sea, full of regard for the little things that warm its people’s lives, and real respect for the ways they attempt to reach beyond their limitations, through creativity and humour. Their dreams are small, and so are their setbacks. When Paterson loses some of his recent work, he declares that poetry is “just words, written on water”. And sometimes on film.

Adam Driver gets busy as the poet “Paterson” in the film (and town) of the same name.

screen “Timecode” centres on a female security guard (Lali Ayguadé) who works the day shift, relieving the guy who works at night (Nicolas Ricchini), whose hidden talents are revealed after a parking-lot mishap makes her review the CCTV footage. If you know that the leads have won multiple awards in another field, it might give the game away. But this certainly helps explain how writer-director Juanjo Giménez Peña has already received 15 other nominations and prizes for this delightful gem. The next-best item is Kristóf Deák’s “Sing”, which follows a young Hungarian girl’s adventures when transferred to a new school. After joining the renowned choir there, she’s shocked to find that the seemingly popular teacher is manipulating the students in frighteningly subtle ways. The movie has sharp things to say about the softer side of fascism, and its big finish is a bracing rebuttal to trends that are awfully familiar to central Europeans. And us. Denmark’s “Silent Nights” and France’s “Ennemis Intérieurs” are slightly more hamhanded but still worthwhile, especially for the engaging actors. In the former, a Ghanaian refugee finds sanctuary with a gentle Copenhagen shelter volunteer, and the latter is a game of wits between an Algerian-born Frenchman and the government worker charged with vetting his belated request for citizenship. The weakest film is also the program’s surest draw. Certainly, people will want to see Jane Birkin as a Swiss woman who waves to a passing bullet train everyday in “La Femme et le TGV”. But director Timo von Gunten has studied Amélie-maker Jean-Pierre Jeunet too > KEN EISNER well, inserting an array of cutesy-poo tricks into his colour-saturated fable, making BirTHE OSCAR SHORTS: LIVE ACTION kin’s character look more foolish than wise. As an antidote, do try to watch “Timecode” again. In Hungarian, Danish, Spanish, French, and

> KEN EISNER

Swiss, with English subtitles. Rating unavailable

This year’s Oscar-nominated live-action THE OSCAR SHORTS: ANIMATION

2 shorts are an unusually timely bunch,

Rating unavailable

with context in some cases trumping execuThis fast-moving, 90-minute ride features tion. Let’s hope that this two-hour-plus profive nominations and three additional, gram ends with by far its shortest entry. That’s because Spain’s 15-minute effort is so strong on “Highly Commended” titles, averaging seven every level, you really don’t want to see it before minutes each. Most conventionally satisfying is Pixar’s the others, which run about a half-hour each. Beautifully composed and shot, the wide- beautifully rendered “Piper”, originally paired

with Finding Dory, in which director Alan Barillaro depicts the trials and triumphs of a baby shorebird. In “Pearl”, American filmmaker Patrick Osborne—an animator for Tangled and Big Hero 6—appears to be focusing on an impoverished young father and his small daughter (voiced by singer Nicki Bluhm), but the tale is really about the car they practically live in. The latter film’s lovely flat fields of colour are complex when compared with “Once Upon a Line”, a two-toned USC student film (from newcomer Alicja Jasina) that gets carried away to delightfully noodly effect. Its linear tale of a man’s humdrum existence contrasts well with the woodblock-print style of Bulgarian-born Theodore Ushev’s “Blind Vaysha”, an NFB effort about the limits of our social vision, featuring the voice of Quebec’s Caroline Dhavernas. Also from French Canada comes Franck Dion’s “The Head Vanishes”, a sweetly old-fashioned look at an elderly woman whose presumably advancing dementia makes her think she literally can’t remember where she put her noggin. Viewers’ minds may also drift during its somewhat belaboured run. The zippiest use of CGI belongs to “Asteria”, an acceptably silly French look at a manned space mission that goes wrong. Also a student film, it involves Americans, so weapons are quickly (and well) drawn. That’s even more true for “Borrowed Time”, from Andrew Coats and Lou HamouLhadj, who previously worked on Brave, Toy Story Toons, and others. Here, an Old West sheriff returns to the scene of an early trauma. Gosh, I wonder if it might involve guns! Finally, any 10 minutes of “Pear Cider and Cigarettes” deploys brilliant graphic-novel-style design and crash-bang sound and music. But Vancouver animator Robert Valley’s hardboiled narration, given in tribute to a self-destructive pal called Techno, remains superficial and soon grows wearying, as do the film’s repetitive rhythms. At 35 minutes, that proves nearly fatal, but since it shows last in the program, viewers can decide how much Techno they can take. > KEN EISNER

BELOW HER MOUTH Starring Erika Linder. Rated 18A

Let’s say you’re just minding your

2 own business at a downtown-Toronto

bar and a stranger sidles up all seductivelike and, almost unbidden, confides that “I don’t have the emotional stamina for intimacy.” Do you A) run for the hills, or B) yell “Script!” to see if that ridiculous goose egg is really sitting there on the page? The correct answer is C) it doesn’t matter. Below Her Mouth is breathtakingly bad, although its aggressive ad campaign makes a convincing case that quality be damned, given the generous amounts of nudity and frank sex on display here. The politics of strap-ons notwithstanding, the movie certainly isn’t stingy with the woman-on-woman action one could say is missing from mainstream fare. The implication is that this amateurish Canadian effort is a few notches above male-centred “adult entertainment”. But, hell, the characters even have porn names. Natalie Krill plays “Jasmine”, a fashion-magazine editor whose relationship with hunky fiancé “Rile” (Sebastian Pigott) is upended when she meets “Dallas” (Erika Linder), a stylishly androgynous roofer infamous for loving and leaving. (It’s her emotional-stamina deficiency, of course.) Jazzy’s relationship with Rile seems notably cool in the

bedroom department, so it’s not a huge surprise when she’s mildly responsive to Dallas’s mixed message in the bar. But it is kind of weird when she throws 12 hissy fits before finally giving in to that sweet, sweet girl love—again and again. Veteran TV director April Mullen, working from first-timer Stephanie Fabrizi’s clunk-studded script, sticks to the shaky-cam aesthetics of those Girl He Met Online–type cable movies, as underlined by homemade synthesizer music and shapeless editing. Krill isn’t good, but her background in dance helps her sell the demanding physicality of the role. Linder, who has a Kristen Stewart– meets–James Dean vibe, is picture-perfect but gives line readings so flat she makes Mad Men’s January Jones look like Meryl Streep. To be fair, Linder is a groundbreaking Swedish model, here saddled with a phonetically engineered American accent. In any case, the story makes no sense. Good golly, how will Jasmine explain her reorientation to that already uninterested boyfriend? And will this big news ever be accepted in the ultraconservative world of international fashion? > KEN EISNER

RINGS Starring Matilda Lutz. Rated 14A

Rings is the first horror flick I’ve seen since Mussolini and his treacherous gang of fear-mongering scuzzballs got access to the nuclear codes, so, relatively speaking, how fucking scary could it be? Not very. You may recall director Gore Verbinski’s original The Ring of 2002—which wasn’t all that original, I guess, being an Americanized redo of Hideo Nakata’s 1998 J-horror classic Ringu. But thanks mainly to a gutsy performance by Naomi Watts—before she started settling for lame psycho-thrillers like last year’s Shut In— The Ring hit home, even with its iffy premise of a cursed VHS tape bringing death, one week later, to all who view it. Those grainy black-and-white video images of a twitchy ghoul in a filthy white dress, face hidden by a curtain of black hair, crawling crablike from a stone well and then right through the TV screen were hard to shake. A 2005 sequel couldn’t match it, but that didn’t stop the franchise from pluralizing its title and taking another kick at the can. In director F. Javier Gutiérrez’s weak and utterly uncalled-for Rings, Jessica Alba–lookin’ Matilda Lutz stars as Julia, whom we meet as she’s seeing boyfriend Holt (the wooden Alex Roe) off to college. But the dude runs into trouble when he falls under the spell of a professor named Gabriel, played by the woefully miscast Johnny Galecki. After 10 years as happy nerd Leonard on The Big Bang Theory, Galecki just doesn’t cut it as a shifty prof using students as guinea pigs in death-defying experiments with a haunted tape. Before long the heroic Julia gets caught up in them, though, and after she saves Holt’s life by risking hers, the two head off to the creepy small town of Sacrament Valley to search for clues to the meaning of the tape and, tragically, unearth plot points for future sequels. See Julia get trapped and terrified in a crypt. See her get strangled by a murderous blind man. See her cough up the world’s longest hairball. Better yet, just stay home and stream The Ring. Or Ringu, if you can swing it.

2 Cheeto

T RU TH IS THE WARMEST C O L O UR I N M UL L E N FL I C K >>> According to director April

2 Mullen, LGBT indie flick Below

Her Mouth represents a changing of the guard. Raw and explicit, the movie, which opens Friday (February 10), chronicles an explosive fling between two Toronto women: Dallas (Erika Linder), a promiscuous roofer, and Jasmine (Natalie Krill), the faithful but frustrated fiancée of the briefly featured Rile (Sebastian Pigott). Over the course of a weekend, while Rile is away on business, the pair embark on a passionate relationship that forces Jasmine to confront the truth of her sexual identity. Viscerally re-imagining the lesbian-seduces-supposedly-straightgirl narrative, Mullen chose to film the piece with a nearly all-female cast and crew. By adopting a womencentric approach, she believes, Below Her Mouth offers a fresh take on the

classic lesbian love story. “As a director, you just want to be truthful,” she tells the Straight on the line from shooting Wynonna Earp in Calgary. “I’ve watched films since I was really young, and every movie is either written by a man or directed by a man, and all the sex I’ve seen onscreen has been depicted through a male perspective. I have to force those ideas out of me. I have to constantly say, ‘No, that’s not actually what happens when I get turned on. That’s not what happens when I’m intimate with another person.’ “Instead, I realized that I had to look inside myself and truthfully show what the female gaze is,” she continues. “Even as I was doing my blocking early on, I found that I was doing it in a way that would be provocatively male. And I thought, ‘No, I want more eye contact, I want

Director April Mullen adjusts for the male gaze in Below Her Mouth.

more subtlety, I want the scenes to be about breathing or removing an eyelash from a cheek.’ Those are the things that make an impact and make me want to be intimate with

another human being.” Although predicated on a collection of tender moments, the pair’s relationship remains insistently explicit. Asking Krill and Linder to commit to graphic sex scenes involving strap-ons, bathtubs, and various beds, Mullen attributes the leads’ dedicated performance to the natural chemistry between the actresses and the camaraderie inspired by the crew. “The sex scenes were challenging for everyone,” she recalls, “because we wanted to do a service to women’s perspective. And that involved every single person on set being vulnerable. Natalie was required to do that, Erika was required to do that, the camera operators were required to do that—even the boom op. We had to have a huge amount of trust in each other. It’s a scary feeling, but we

> STEVE NEWTON

> BY KATE WILSON

☞

also felt very honoured, like we were part of something bigger that we were all creating together. We were proud to be able to say, ‘Hey guys, this is what it’s like for women.’ ” Hoping that her film will inspire others to cast queer-for-queer and explore the authenticity of what happens behind the camera, Mullen is vocal about the importance of offering multiple perspectives on-screen. “I feel like women bring a transparency to their work—whether it’s in writing or directing or in the portrayal of character. People are looking for something different now, but it’s not about the male versus the female viewpoint. It’s about all people having the freedom to tell their own story, as they themselves perceive it, in the most truthful way possible.” -

FEBRUARY 9 – 16 / 2017 THE GEORGIA STRAIGHT 27

MOVIES

Mountain film fest gets real > B Y A D R IA N M A C K

ryan Smith would like us to know that everything we see in his movies is real, thank you very much. “We’ve been told too many times that we shot something too well,” he says. “It’s a little gut-wrenching to hear people say, ‘Oh, that wasn’t true,’ although less so for me and more so for the guys who achieved what they did.” With two of the strongest titles in the program arriving courtesy of the Squamish-based adventure filmmaker, attendees of this year’s Vancouver International Mountain Film Festival will want to take note. Screening at the Cinematheque on Tuesday (February 14), “Locked In” (directed with David Pearson) captures in eyepopping detail the very first descent by kayak into Papua New Guinea’s ferocious Beriman River gorge. Closing the festival four days later at the Centennial Theatre, the dizzying “North of Known” marries Smith’s craft to an even more insane project: the traversing of the 650-kilometre Alaska Range by paragliders Gavin McClurg and Dave Turner. “Honestly, the odds at which we could see Gavin succeeding on Alaska were so low that we were like, ‘We don’t know how we can pitch this,’ ” Smith admits during a call to the Georgia Straight from Houston, Texas. He adds that an unknown outcome is also

Paragliders Gavin McClurg and Dave Turner in “North of Known”.

essential to what he does. “It’s about generating an idea that’s authentic. When [white-water kayaker] Ben Stookesberry said ‘Papua New Guinea’, we said, ‘Now you’re talking. Now we’re in the middle of nowhere.’ ” While nothing in either “Locked In” or “North of Known” has been “faked or set up”, a charge Smith says has been levelled at both films, he’s more than ready to discuss the grey area that comes with documentary filmmaking. In both movies, we’re asked to believe that Smith’s subjects are alone in a dangerously inhospitable place. “But they’re not,” he says, with a chuckle. “We’re there the whole time. But we’re also trying to never slow down the adventure, and I think that’s what people don’t get. There was never a moment on either of those two films

where we said, ‘Hey, guys, hold up for a couple days here; we need to set up a bunch of things.’ ” On the contrary, his four-person crew was trudging across the barren plains of Alaska behind McClurg and Turner, often ending up with no more than a few minutes of footage per day, “and just trying to keep up with the guys the rest of the time.” Perseverance, luck, and an intuition for timing are what eventually coincided to produce something like the phenomenal aerial vistas of “North of Known” or the butt-clenching perils captured in “Locked In”. That and a filmmaker’s own unique gifts for survival. Smith recalls that while Stookesberry and his crew were navigating the various deathtraps along the Beriman Gorge, he was negotiating with two machete-wielding tribes to let them proceed at all. “And they were pissed,” he says. “The kayakers themselves were in a situation that was life-or-death on a regular basis on the river, and we were in a situation with human politics.” The most dangerous adventure of all! “Absolutely,” Smith answers with a laugh. The Vancouver International Mountain Film Festival takes place at various venues from Friday (February 10) to February 18. More information is at vimff.org/.

Not your regular movie mogul

With 96 films screening across six different categories—adventure, climbing, environmental, mountain culture, mountain sports, and ski—any one of the Vancouver International Mountain Film Festival’s eight days will prove to be an adventure. Here are some of our picks:

TUPENDEO (Switzerland) Robert Steiner’s artful 26-minute film bridges the extremes of climbing through two separate stories about the same mountain. A Swiss team derives near-holy inspiration from the unascended peak of the title; an earlier attempt is blown apart by Touching the Void–like horrors. Screening with two other shorts, it’s a perfect opener to the fest. Centennial Theatre, February 10 (7:30 p.m.) TO THE ENDS OF THE EARTH (Canada) “It’s not your grandfather’s oil industry anymore,” says peak-oil prophet

Richard Heinberg, one of the many experts reminding us here that “extreme” energy extraction (fracking, tarsands) can only end in environmental and economic holocaust. David Lavalee’s film doesn’t shy away from the politics (“While Baghdad burns, Calgary booms,” says narrator Emma Thompson), and the doc is clear and pointed enough that it might penetrate a few of the more stubborn reality bubbles out there—maybe. Cinematheque, February 11 (7:30 p.m.)

FULL MOON (Canada) Director Leanne Pelosi focuses on a phenomenally skilled, multigenerational cadre of women snowboarders who can easily compete with and maybe even outjock the boys. There are nuclear wedgies, nude backcountry dares, and the kind of cathartically tasteless humour that naturally follows when you leap directly from a helicopter into an avalanche and still come up breathing. Need we add that the footage is beyond spectacular? Rio Theatre, February 12 (2 p.m.) PURA VIDA (Austria) He doesn’t encounter any Vancouver drivers, mercifully, but Hervé Neukomm does run into pirates, drug smugglers, anacondas, and an apocalyptic Atlantic tidal wave as he cycles—yes, cycles—the length of the Amazon in a converted boat. An ayahuasca trip and some helpful (and possibly supernatural) pink dolphins help to relieve the insane stress of his years-long journey, all of it captured to breathtaking effect by filmmaker Thomas Miklautsch. Rio Theatre, February 17 (7:30 p.m.)

> ADRIAN MACK

K WA N T L E N P O LY T E C H N I C U N I V E R S I T Y

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Arts time out

from page 26

DANCE ALLSORTS: CAUSE AND EFFECT CIRCUS Three West Coast jugglers present a show that’s a theatrical social commentary packed with high-level circus skills. Feb 12, 2-3 pm, Roundhouse Community Arts & Recreation Centre (181 Roundhouse Mews). Tix $20/5, info www.newworks.ca/.

MUSIC 2THIS WEEK UBC SYMPHONIC WIND ENSEMBLE: NEW YORK STORIES The local classical ensemble performs music by Bernstein, Milhaud, Gershwin, and Tower. Feb 10, 8 pm, Chan Shun Concert Hall (6265

don’t miss out! For up-to-the-minute, searchable Arts Time Out listings, visit

www.straight.com

Crescent Rd., Chan Centre at UBC). Tix $8, info www.music.ubc.ca/bands/.

SOUNDS OF SIMON AND GARFUNKEL Michael Krajewski conducts the VSO and vocalists Jonathan Beedle and A.J. Swearingen in a tribute concert to the legendary folk-rock artists. Feb 10-11, 8 pm, Orpheum Theatre (601 Smithe). Info www.vancouversymphony.ca/. BREATH & HAMMER Klezmer musician David Krakauer and pianist Kathleen Tagg reimagine the traditional clarinet and piano recital and integrate folk and improvisationbased music with classical masterworks. Presented by Music in the Morning. Feb 15-17, 10:30-11:30 am, Vancouver Academy of Music (1270 Chestnut). Tix $38/35/17, info www.musicinthemorning.org/.

COMEDY 2ONGOING THE COMEDY MIX 1015 Burrard, Century Plaza Hotel & Spa, 604-684-5050, www. thecomedymix.com/. Comedy club with pro-am night Tue at 8:30 pm, showcase Wed at 8:30 pm, and featured headliners Thu at 8:30 pm and Fri-Sat at 8 and 10:30 pm. Cover $8 Tue, $10 Wed, $15 Thu, $18 Fri, $20 Sat. 2GINA BRILLON Feb 9-11 2BRIAN POSEHN Feb 16-18 2JON DORE Feb 24-25 YUK YUK’S COMEDY CLUB 2837 Cambie, 604-696-9857, www.yukyuks.com/ vancouver. Comedy club with Top Talent Tue at 8 pm, amateur night Wed at 8 pm, and professional headliners Thu-Fri at 8 pm

and Sat at 7 and 9:30 pm. Cover Tue $10, Wed $7, Thu $10, and Fri-Sat $20.

2THIS WEEK THROWDOWN INTERNATIONAL THEATRESPORTS FESTIVAL Theatresports teams from around the world compete for your laughs in a contest judged by the audience. Includes teams from Canada, the U.S., Norway, and India. To Feb 14, The Improv Centre (1502 Duranleau, Granville Island). Tix from $10, info www.vtsl.com/. HASAN MINHAJ: HOMECOMING KING Comedy and stories from Daily Show correspondent Hasan Minhaj’s first-generation Indian-American experience. Feb 10, 7 pm, 9:30 pm, Vancouver Playhouse (600 Hamilton). Tix $26-36, info dunya.ca/live. THE BRETT MARTIN SHOW Live talk show featuring Martin and his trusty sidekick Sam Tonning. Feb 10, 10:30-11:50 pm, Yuk Yuk’s Comedy Club (2837 Cambie). Tix $15, info brettmartinshow.com/. SNOWED IN COMEDY TOUR Evening of Canadian standup comedians Dan Quinn, Pete Zedlacher, Craig Campbell, and Paul Myrehaug. Feb 11, 8 pm, York Theatre (639 Commercial). Tix $35, info www.snowed incomedytour.com/.

ET CETERA 2THIS WEEK JAPAN UNLAYERED Exhibition curated by master Japanese architect Kengo Kuma presents Japanese traditions alongside contemporary design to illustrate that the defining principles of Japanese design remain the same despite the evolution of technology. To Feb 28, Fairmont Pacific Rim (1038 Canada Place). Free admission, info www.japanunlayered.com/. ODYSSEO Cavalia presents a multimedia performance that uses equestrian arts, stage arts, and high-tech theatrical effects to examine the centuries-old relationship between human and horse. To Mar 5, Under the white big top at Olympic Village. Tix $29.50-204.50 (plus service charges and fees), info www.cavalia.net/. I LOVE CIRCUS CABARET VOL.1 HUMAN NATURE Western Canada’s circus talent showcases their artistry in a show featuring acrobatics, juggling, aerials, dance, and inspired circus short films. Feb 12, 7 pm, Orpheum Annex (823 Seymour). Tix $28, info www.circuswest.com/.

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straight choices

HOORAY FOR HASAN Daily Show senior correspondent Hasan Minhaj is really finding his groove in the face of a Donald Trump America. It started right after the election, when he frantically told host Trevor Noah, “I’m panicking because melanin doesn’t rub off.” Now, you could argue he’s one of the most important comedic voices in America—not just because he’s Muslim, but because he’s as smart and biting as he is likable and funny. When he’s not taking on racism, he’s tackling the Muslim ban. On the show, he compared it to watching the first episode of Breaking Bad and thinking, “Oh, this is just a science teacher cooking meth, it can’t get any crazier. But it does!” Check out his live show when he hits Vancouver this week: his Homecoming King tour centres around Minhaj’s firstgeneration Indian-American experience on Friday (February 10), at the Vancouver Playhouse. PLEASURES (exhibition encompasses a range of approaches and reinvigorated explorations of surrealism, abstraction, atemporality, and conceptual practices) to Apr 17 2WE COME TO WITNESS: SONNY ASSU IN DIALOGUE WITH EMILY CARR (Sonny Assu creates a new series of digital tags on a body of Emily Carr paintings) to Apr 23

MUSEUMS THE MUSEUM OF ANTHROPOLOGY AT UBC 6393 NW Marine Drive, 604-8225087, www.moa.ubc.ca/. 2LAYERS OF INFLUENCE: UNFOLDING CLOTH ACROSS CULTURES (exhibition features more than 130 diverse cultural garments, from Japanese kimonos, to Indian saris, to elaborate feather cloaks of the Maori people of Aotearoa/New Zealand) to Apr 9

TIME OUT ARTS LISTINGS are a public service provided free of charge, based on available space and editorial discretion. Submit listings online using the event-submission form at straight.com/AddEvent. Events that don’t make it into the paper due to space constraints will appear on the website.

MUSIC

For Ashley Buchholz of eccentric Toronto

BY KATE WI LSON

duo USS, today is a good day. “I get up in the morning, and it’s a choice between living out my wildest dreams or my worst nightmare,” the singer and guitarist tells the Straight on the line from a Calgary tour stop. “So I’ve just left the YMCA, which I visit in every city I go to. That’s the backbone of radiant living for me—getting my heart rate up, and getting my blood pumping. Statistically, when I go to the YMCA as soon as I wake up, chances are that the day will favour my wildest dreams.” To the casual USS listener, however, Buchholz’s struggles with anxiety remain invisible. Famed for its high-energy live shows and back catalogue of infectiously upbeat hits, USS—or Ubiquitous Synergy Seeker, to the initiated—is indicative of Buchholz’s choice to challenge his demons by spreading joy and laughter, a philosophy he’s held since the group’s inception. Keen to start a band ideal for winter predrinks and summer keggers, the USS frontman first ran into his bandmate, Jason Parsons, in a location that was particularly appropriate. “A beer fridge brought us together,” Buchholz recalls. “I had just dropped out of college, Jason had graduated from university, and we both needed jobs. We found work at the local golf course,

Escaping their comfort zone

Ashley Buchholz and Jason Parsons of USS pick out each other’s outfits, and they have an agreement that neither party can refuse what the other chooses.

Toronto’s eccentric USS is on a mission to create music that the world has never heard before

that we’ve nailed it either, but I’m still trying to do it. Every album is just me and kept hearing through the grapevine that our trying to hear this music that I can’t listen to unmatch made in weirdo heaven was on the other less I make it.” side of the green. My sister was getting married, Five LPs later, Buchholz and Parsons are closer and she needed someone to play music at her wed- than ever to achieving their goal. Releasing New ding. I’d already heard that Jason was a good DJ. World Alphabet in January, the pair have pushed When we rub the genie lamp of life, we tend to get their sound in new directions after exploring what we ask for—so the next day, they told me to fresh recording locations. unload the beer fridge, and lo and behold, he was “The number one difference on this album the guy standing there when I walked in. I asked was that we decided to go to California,” Buchhim if he’d DJ at my sister’s event, and here we are.” holz says. “We put our comfort zones in a hockey Combining Parsons’s sunny optimism and Buch- bag, loaded them onto the plane with us, and said, holz’s faculty for writing music based on intuition— ‘We’re gonna take you so far outside of yourself.’ a talent that stems, apparently, from his grand- Personally, I’m not very impressed with the narramother’s psychic abilities—the pair embarked on an tor of the story of my life. So I figured, ‘How about experimental journey to amalgamate diverse genres. I hire a new narrator, and let’s see what happens?’ “When we got to California,” he continues, “we “In my imagination, I just wanted to hear music that I’d never heard before,” Buchholz says were in the mountains, and we were by the ocean, with a laugh. “I wanted to listen to Nirvana Un- and we were in the desert, and that spaciousness just plugged at a rave, with drum ’n’ bass and jungle really informed the music. It let the story be told, the and progressive house, and no one was making tale of this new world alphabet. It’s 12 years into mine it. Those types of music all happened at the same and Jason’s working relationship, and it was like our time, and while a couple of acts sort of hinted at honeymoon. We applied an Olympic discipline it, I don’t think anyone really got it. I don’t think and willpower in the process of this recording, and

I think you can really hear the liberation that it brought—that freedom and lightness in the music.” Buchholz is right—in part. Although tracks like “Work Shoes”, “Who’s With Me”, and “Domino” sound like vintage Smash Mouth buoyed by jungle and big-room EDM, the album is not without sadness in both its lyrics and chords. Balancing darkness with energy and humour, New World Alphabet seems to appeal to the singer’s idea that searching for happiness is the most important part of life. “I like to refer to this place as Earth School,” Buchholz says. “That’s where we live right now. And at Earth School, the fastest way to trust someone is to laugh. Your heart opens up when you laugh. And the most important way to transform yourself is through joyfulness. You can’t change anything without an open heart and an open mind. Your heart opens first, and then your mind opens up, because you have to trust something before you’ll believe it. This album is about examining the anger and sadness in the depths of my own personal ocean, and taking a submarine to go down and take a look in there. And also remembering to laugh.” USS plays the Commodore Ballroom on Friday (February 10).

☞

STINT HUMBLED BY GRAMMY NO MINATIO N >>> Up-and-coming

Politically charged Priests branch out beyond punk

Vancouver

2 musician Ajay Bhattacharyya’s

motto is, fittingly, “Fake it till you make it.” First exposed to manipulating noises through a sound-design course at Vancouver Film School, the young artist began his career by editing dialogue and the crunch of footsteps. After deciding that he would rather pursue music than spend a life perfecting sound effects, however, Bhattacharyya soon switched paths. Paying the bills by ghostwriting for EDM DJs, the producer released tracks across a number of styles, including big-room trance and dubstep, simply by studying and emulating the sounds of each genre. Now writing under the name Stint, Bhattacharyya has used that technique to secure a Grammy nomination after delving into R&B for the first time with smooth vocalist Gallant. The musician’s ability to appropriate new genres has landed him a nod for best urban-contemporary album—up against Beyoncé and Rihanna. “It’s important to keep things eclectic,” Bhattacharyya tells the Straight on the line from Los Angeles. “Understanding lots of different types of music is what brings innovation. If you only listen to one style, and you only write in that style too, it’s probably going to sound like everyone else. If you take the intro to our record Ology, for example, there’s a pulsing sound. That’s because I was really into this DJ called Jon Hopkins, who writes these atmospheric

The temptation is to dive right

2 into politics when Priests call

Ajay Bhattacharyya, aka Stint, is constantly dodging lasers, because that’s what happens when you produce EDM.

techno bass songs. I would never have brought that to an R&B record if I hadn’t been listening to techno at the same time.” Meeting Gallant was a lucky break for the producer. In L.A. to expand his contacts, Bhattacharyya hired a publicist who found herself at a party with Gallant’s new manager. After hitting it off, the pair suggested that their artists should connect—and, despite much bigger names being in the running for the sessions, Bhattacharyya and the rising vocalist found their complement in each other.

“I hadn’t actually run into too much R&B, coming from Vancouver,” the musician admits. “Not by virtue of not liking it or anything—there’s just not too much R&B going on. Gallant taught me a lot in terms of chords and tropes. It’s funny—when I grew up in high school, there was this boom of Destiny’s Child. All those references were in my lexicon because of the stuff I’d heard as a kid, but I’d never paid attention to them on a technical level. Gallant really drew my ears to that. “Being nominated for a Grammy, especially because this is my first time writing R&B, feels really

humbling,” he continues. “For me, the most important thing is having something that I can tell my parents. They don’t really understand what I do. When I tell them I made a song, they ask where my name is, and why it doesn’t sound like my voice. And then they ask whether I played any of the instruments, and I have to tell them that I just programmed them into the computer. But, luckily, they do know what a Grammy is.” > KATE WILSON

The Grammys take place on Sunday (February 12).

the Straight to discuss their monumental new album, Nothing Feels Natural. After all, the four-piece not only plays socially aware DIY punk, but also calls Washington, D.C., home. Thanks to the recent inauguration of Donald Trump and resulting mass protests across the U.S. capital, there’s no shortage of things to talk about when it comes to the state of the union. But the brilliance of Priests is that the band’s members—singer Katie Alice Greer, bassist Taylor Mulitz, drummer Daniele Daniele, and guitarist G.L. Jaguar—have more on their minds than how Steve Bannon is pulling the puppet strings of the Mango Mussolini in the Oval Office. Over a wide-ranging conversation, they speak passionately and openly about everything from the gentrification of Washington to their place in the lineage of the city’s fabled hardcore scene. “If artists are the ones that make these neighbourhoods safe for gentrifiers, then you are implicated in that system, and that means you have a responsibility to call out the developers who are benefiting,” Daniele says on a conference call. (Along with Mulitz and Daniele—who join her on the call—she’s taking a break from hand-shipping copies of Priests’ debut LP across North America.) see next page

FEBRUARY 9 – 16 / 2017 THE GEORGIA STRAIGHT 31

Washington, D.C.’s touchy-feely Priests enjoy group hugs. In fact, it’s hard to convince them to stop hugging.

Priests

from previous page

“Ultimately, it’s artists who make a neighbourhood seem trendy and safe. And at the end of the day you’re often a white person with privilege, and the communities that you are displacing are largely communities of colour.” This bouncing from subject to subject makes it difficult to come up with an easy summation of what Priests are about. And that doesn’t bother the band in the slightest. “I’m sorry that it becomes more work for people writing about us, but I’m not sorry that we don’t fit easily into a pre-existing box,” Greer says over a cellphone. While one could easily talk about big issues with Priests all day, that would mean forgetting that with Nothing Feels Natural they’ve not only made one of the great early records of 2017, but also taken their place in the pantheon of D.C. punk legends like Minor Threat, Government Issue, and Rites of Spring. In the spirit of the late, great Minutemen, the tightly wound “Appropriate” finds Greer hollering lines like “It feels good to buy something you can’t afford” over an epic bass line and skronktastic

32 THE GEORGIA STRAIGHT FEBRUARY 9 – 16 / 2017

sax squelches. “No Big Bang” plays out like a spoken-word outtake from Sonic Youth’s massively underrated EVOL, “Interlude” rolls out classical strings that are more Deutsche Grammophon than Dischord Records, and “Suck” serves up postpunk as its most tribally dancetastic. Even before beginning work on Nothing Feels Natural, Priests were tagged as a band to watch everywhere from indie webzines to Spin. The brilliantly titled EP Bodies and Control and Money and Power from 2014 was all slash-and-burn guitar and pissed-at-everything vocals. The goal this time was to be as adventurous as possible, the band taking a couple of stabs at the recording of Nothing Feels Natural to get things right. An initial session was scrapped, the group eventually reteaming with Hugh McElroy and Kevin Erickson, who recorded Bodies and Control. “With other people, if we’d said, ‘We want strings and horns on our record,’ they probably would have blasted us and said, ‘Why don’t you take that idea elsewhere—you’re a punk band,’ ” Greer says. Part of the struggle was getting what they heard in their heads down on tape—literally.

“Both sessions were recorded to tape,” Mulitz says, “but the second batch was done to 24-track two-inch tape, whereas the first batch was done on four-track to half-inch tape. There was literally less space to do everything that we wanted. The first recordings were cool, but we had a lot of big, grand ideas, so raw and oldschool analogue wasn’t the right fit.” And stepping back from the record for a second and looking at the mess that is currently their country, Priests also have ideas on how to go about getting through the next four years of Donald Trump’s America, steering the conversation back to the political. “The one pervasive problem in this country right now is not trusting each other enough, and that goes for interpersonal relationships both big and small,” Greer offers. “The next four years are going to be incredibly difficult, so we’re all going to have to have more confidence in each other. It’s going to be a matter of learning to collaborate and communicate to learn how to resist the creeping authoritarianism in American culture.” > MIKE USINGER

Priests play 333 Clark Drive on Wednesday (February 15).

MUSIC

Jack aims for the heavens on Never Get Back TERENCE JACK Never Get Back (Independent)

Impeccably crafted and expert-

2 ly recorded as it is, Never Get

Back isn’t for everyone. Those who live on pop’s outer edges will find tracks like the hook-studded “Errors” just a little too calculated for mainstream-radio airplay. But as anyone who has ever sung along to Sam Roberts’s note-perfect “Brother Down” will testify, there’s nothing wrong with taking aim at the shiny, happy masses, something that Terence Jack does with winning results here. “Eastern Rise” is a mammoth electro-blues stomper just waiting to be placed in a Hollywood blockbuster, while “She Flies Down South” soars on a refreshing willingness to shoot for no less than the heavens. Proving some folks are better at everything than most of us, the Sunday comedown “Lay It on the Line” finds Jack displaying his mastery of the lap steel, while the ghostly closer, “Never Get Back”, shows he does lush and dramatic just as effectively as bold and radio-ready. Someone has arrived more than ready for his close-up. > MIKE USINGER

DUMB $5 or Free (Independent)

With new releases popping up Bandcamp by the dozens each day, the online music hub’s oftused pay-what-you-want business model can be a bit of a gamble. Ideally, it’d be great to slide a couple of bucks into every independent act’s digital coffers, but the site’s unending logjam of material inevitably means some bands are going to have cheapskates simply streaming their songs for free. Vancouver quartet Dumb is feeling pretty Zen about it all, addressing the

2 on

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sliding-scale scenario with the title of its latest EP, $5 or Free. Going by this latest batch of songs, it already possesses an embarrassment of riches. While the group is still working within the same postpunk wheelhouse, the six-song mini-set comes off with a bit more urgency than last year’s Mustang Law effort. “Break Right” is the briefest slam of the bunch, a potent subminute of javajolted power chords and choppy rhythms. Earlier, the pain of farewells is underscored by tom-tom–heavy propulsion and a distant blur of guitar noise on “Sink”, which brings to mind early Pavement. Likewise slanted and enchanting are “Borrow”, which mixes sweet yelps with allusions to car crashes and roadside effigies, and “Good News”, a distortion-dusted but otherwise delicate finale. Whether you cough up the full five bucks or go Grinch on Dumb by just nabbing the tracks for free is entirely up to you, but you’d have to be some kind of moron to pass it up altogether.

manages to be both folkishly openhearted and harmonically sophisticated—a pleasing duality that also animates Wherrett’s recursive but essentially optimistic solo. That play between the beautiful and the bittersweet is ElkHorn’s central characteristic, and reaches its apogee in final track “War Path”, which sets Meredith Bates’s fluttering violin and Sam Davidson’s bass clarinet against Mike Magnusson’s rolling drums and a sturdy bass line from Russell Scholberg. In “Debris”, however, Wherrett blends pointillistic postrock with elements of Third Stream jazz, while the ballad “Beneath My Brain” unveils the guitarist’s introspective side. “Dark Clouds”, unsurprisingly, explores more psychologically fraught terrain, but even that is shot through with beams of big-sky sunlight, and eventually rises to almost ecstatic heights. Impeccable musicianship, cleverly layered compositions, and a lot of > GREGORY ADAMS heart make Wherrett’s music both adventurous and accessible—never ELKHORN the easiest thing to accomplish, but it’s done with aplomb in ElkHorn’s ElkHorn (Independent) impressive first offering. Despite butting up against the > ALEXANDER VARTY snowy barrier of the Coast Range, Vancouver has developed HIGH PLAINS a kind of distant-horizons improv Cinderland (Kranky) sound, likely godfathered by Hornby Knowing that High Plains is a Island guitarist Tony Wilson and project of Scott Morgan (Loscil) enlarged upon by cellist Peggy Lee’s sextet and the Juno winners in Pugs and seeing its topographic cover art, & Crows, among others. There’s an anticipated sounds may begin to form oceanic swell to much of this music, in your subconscious. After all, Morand that continues on in Tom Wher- gan is a master of sprawling, glacial rett’s band, ElkHorn—except that ambient soundscapes that capture the rolling seas this guitarist en- the majesty of supernatural British visions in his mind’s eye are the Columbia. Then you listen to it, and grassy plains and wooded foothills the work of Wisconsin cellist Mark Bridges drifts to the foreground. of his native Nebraska. Here, on the quintet’s undeniably There is something sublimely hauntgorgeous debut, a gentle twang in- ing about Bridges’s work, a broodfuses opener “One for E.S.”, which ing yet elegant quality that inspires

fantastic, unprecedented depth in Morgan’s orchestrations. It was good fortune for us that Morgan and Bridges happened to meet when the Banff Centre for the Arts booked them for simultaneous residencies back in 2014. Two years later, they settled down in an old schoolhouse in the small town of Saratoga, Wyoming, for a couple of weeks, the results of which can be heard on Cinderland. With Franz Schubert’s song cycle Winterreise running around in their heads and high-valley terrain all around them, their collaboration channels cello, piano, and subtly manipulated field recordings into an emotionally resonant nexus of neoclassical and experimental ambient sounds. > ALAN RANTA

THE COURTNEYS The Courtneys II (Flying Nun)

Making a sequel can be tricky,

2 something the Courtneys know

all too well. The trio’s chipper 2013 self-titled LP was Keanu Reeves– referencing indie pop that jumped the band from local squats to opening up for Tegan and Sara in theatres. The follow-up, fittingly titled The Courtneys II, has been four years in the making, with an earlier recording session having been abandoned. Despite this dragged-out incubation period, the sophomore collection doesn’t change the template too much. The Courtneys still pack a sugarcoated punch. The opener, “Silver Velvet”, finds guitarist Courtney Loove busting out her patented, fuzz-covered high notes while vocalist-drummer Jen Twynn Payne’s one-two wallop underscores personal pining (“Nothing you say, and nothing you do could stop me from thinking about you”). While still hummable, there’s a bit more relationship drama grafted onto The

Courtneys II. “Country Song” refers to a long-distance situation more than the C&W charts. On “Frankie”, the record’s emotional zenith, Payne is driven mad by the gulf between her and the song’s namesake (“You came into my heart, I don’t want to be apart”). The minorkey piece closes with an uncertain, longing squeal of feedback. Though long overdue, The Courtneys II is an emotionally charged encore that was worth the wait.

> GREGORY ADAMS

TEEN DAZE Themes for Dying Earth (Flora)

As for so many of us, the anxiety

2 and depression inherent in mod-

ern life were starting to get to Jamison Isaak (a.k.a. Teen Daze), but he wasn’t going to let them take him down. Instead, Isaak filtered his experiences and observations through an optimistic lens in an attempt to constructively rewire his neural pathways. Written, recorded, and mixed in British Columbia so as to imbue it with the natural beauty right outside his window, Themes for Dying Earth is an intimate reflection on mental health and social responsibility. And while Isaak mourns that future generations won’t enjoy the same relationship with their environment that we do, he’s also resolved that we can do better. While 2015’s Morning World saw Teen Daze delve into indie-pop forms, Themes goes farther, musically and thematically, hinting at the ambient electronic core of his earlier works but with an invigorated live energy, marked by impressive collaborations with the likes of Sean Carey, Dustin Wong, and Sound of Ceres. We may still be doomed, but you won’t feel that way after listening to Themes for Dying Earth. > ALAN RANTA

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music/ timeout CONCERTS < CLUBS & VENUES < OUT OF TOWN <

CONCERTS 2JUST ANNOUNCED FROM NEW YORK: EMMET COHEN TRIO American jazz pianist and composer Emmet Cohen is one of his generation’s pivotal figures in music and the related arts. A powerful and charismatic performer. Presented by Coastal Jazz. Feb 16-17, 8 pm, Frankie’s Jazz Club (765 Beatty). Tix $15, info www.coastaljazz.ca/. ART D’ECCO Neo-glam artist, with guests Mu, Sex With Strangers, and Jason Corbett. Feb 16, doors 9 pm, Fortune Sound Club (147 E. Pender). Tix $10 (plus service charges and fees) at www.bplive.ca/. UGLY GOD American hip-hop artist, with guests Wintertime and resident DJs Rico Uno and LeChance. Feb 17, doors 10 pm, Fortune Sound Club (147 E. Pender). Tix $20 (plus service charges and fees) at www.bplive.ca/. TENNYSON Canadian electronica duo. Feb 18, doors 7 pm, Fortune Sound Club (147 E. Pender). Tix $12 (plus service charges and fees) at www.bplive.ca/. THE BIG SOUND VANCOUVER Celebration of the glory days of classic soul and the Motown sound features a 25-piece band performing hits and deep cuts of the era. Feb 18, 8 pm, WISE Hall (1882 Adanac). Tix $20 in advance, $25 at the door , info https://www.facebook. com/events/1620712754905231/. ROSSI GANG Local New Orleans-style jazz band. Presented by Coastal Jazz as part of Winterruption. Feb 19, 3:45 pm, 4:55 pm, Performance Works (1218 Cartwright, Granville Island). Free admission, info www.coastaljazz.ca/.

FESTIVAL DU BOIS Celebrate the francophone culture of B.C. with a contra dance and live music by the Sybaritic String Band, Suroît, Mélisande, Nicolas Pellerin et les Grands Hurleurs, Podorythmie, Zal Sissokho and Buntalo, Jeremiah McLane, and Jocelyn Pettit. Other highlights include roving performances, workshops, kids’ activities, and exhibits. Mar 3-5, Mackin Park (1046 Brunette, Coquitlam). Tix $15, info www.festivaldubois.ca/. P.O.S Minneapolis-bred rapper and producer, with guests Sims and Dwynell Roland. Mar 3, doors 8 pm, Fortune Sound Club (147 E. Pender). Tix $14 (plus service charges and fees) at www.bplive.ca/. KATIE THIROUX Bandleader and recording artist has garnered considerable attention for her bravura bass playing, assured singing, and compelling compositions. Presented by Coastal Jazz. Mar 3-4, 8 pm, Frankie’s Jazz Club (765 Beatty). Tix $15, info www.coastaljazz.ca/. BLACK MOUNTAIN Canadian psychedelic-rock band, with guest Destroyer. Mar 10, doors 8 pm, Vogue Theatre (918 Granville). Tix $26 (plus service charges and fees) at www.bplive.ca/. SHARON SHANNON Irish folk musician incorporates reggae, Cajun, Portuguese, and French Canadian stylings. Mar 12, 8 pm, St. James Hall (3214 W. 10th). $40, info www.roguefolk.bc.ca/concerts/ev17031220. THE DREADNOUGHTS Ten-year punkstravaganza with guests Los Furios, Space Chimp, K Man and the 45s, and Devil in the Wood Shack (Fri); and Ninja Spy, ATO, the Staggers & Jaggs, Brass, and HEDKS (Sat.). Mar 17-18, 7:30 pm, Rickshaw Theatre (254 E. Hastings). Tix at www.ticketfly.com/. MARTYN JOSEPH Versatile U.K. folk singer-songwriter performs material from latest album Sanctuary. Mar 17, 8 pm, St. James Hall (3214 W. 10th). Tix $28, info www.roguefolk.bc.ca/. THE COATHANGERS Atlanta-based punk rockers, with guests the Birth Defects. Mar 18, doors 7 pm, Fortune Sound Club (147 E. Pender). Tix $12 (plus service charges and fees) at www.bplive.ca/. ALLAN RAYMAN American R&B artist tours in support of upcoming album Roadhouse 01. Mar 22, doors 7 pm, show 8 pm, Rio Theatre (1660 E. Broadway). Tix $23 (plus service charges and fees) at www.livenation.com/. DAVE GUNNING Folk singer-songwriter from Nova Scotia. Mar 25, 8 pm, St. James Hall (3214 W. 10th). Tix $22, info www. roguefolk.bc.ca/concerts/ev17032520.

JONATHAN ROY Canadian singersongwriter, son of hockey legend Patrick Roy. Feb 20, doors 7 pm, show 8 pm, Fox Cabaret (2321 Main). Tix $15 (plus service charges and fees) at www.livenation.com/.

SHRED KELLY B.C. folk-rock band, with guest Sam Weber. Mar 25, doors 7 pm, show 8:30 pm, Fox Cabaret (2321 Main). Tix $13 (plus service charges and fees) at Red Cat, Zulu Records, and www.ticketweb.ca/.

ACTORS Vancouver post-punk band, with guests Douse, Frankie, Tulip, and Lucia. Feb 24, doors 8 pm, Rickshaw Theatre (254 E. Hastings). Tix $15/10, info www.rickshawtheatre.com/.

DELICATE STEVE American prog-rock singer-songwriter tours in support of new record This Is Steve. Mar 26, doors 8 pm, Fortune Sound Club (147 E. Pender). Tix $12 (plus service charges and fees) at www.bplive.ca/.

MEATBODIES American garage-rock band. Feb 25, doors 7 pm, Fortune Sound Club (147 E. Pender). Tix $12 (plus service charges and fees) at www.bplive.ca/. QUANNUM MCS TOUR Music by Blackalicious, Lyrics Born, and Lateef the Truthspeaker. Feb 25, doors 7 pm, Venue (881 Granville). Tix $25 (plus service charges and fees) at www.bplive.ca/. THE OCTOPUS PROJECT Austin-based experimental indie-pop band, with guests Sound of Ceres from Colorado. Feb 27, 8 pm,

KATATONIA Swedish metal band performs with Caspian and Uncured. Apr 5, doors 8 pm, Venue (881 Granville). Tix $26 (plus service charges and fees) at www.bplive.ca/. BLACK JOE LEWIS AND THE HONEYBEARS American blues-funk band tours in support of new album Backlash, with guests Dams of the West. Apr 7, doors 7 pm, Fortune Sound Club (147 E. Pender). Tix $25 (plus service charges and fees) at www.bplive.ca/.

HINDS AND TWIN PEAKS Coheadlining show featuring rock bands from Spain and the United States, with guests White Mystery. Apr 9, doors 7 pm, show 8 pm, Rickshaw Theatre (254 E. Hastings). Tix on sale Feb 10, 10 am, $18 (plus service charge) at www.ticketweb.ca/. JIMMY EAT WORLD Alt-rock quartet from Mesa, Arizona, with guests Beach Slang. Apr 26, doors 7 pm, show 8 pm, Commodore Ballroom (868 Granville). Tix on sale Feb 10, 10 am, $39.50 (plus service charges and fees) at www.livenation.com/. DANIEL WESLEY Vancouver reggae-pop singer-songwriter and guitarist. Apr 29, doors 8 pm, show 9:30 pm, Commodore Ballroom (868 Granville). Tix on sale Feb 10, 10 am, $25/four-packs $80 (plus service charges and fees) at www.livenation.com/. ME FIRST AND THE GIMME GIMMES Punk-rock cover band from California, led by singer Spike Slawson of the Swinging Utters, with guests Together Pangea. May 3, doors 7 pm, show 8:30 pm, Commodore Ballroom (868 Granville). Tix on sale Feb 10, 10 am, $30 (plus service charges and fees) at www.livenation.com/. JASON BONHAM’S LED ZEPPELIN EXPERIENCE Tribute to Led Zeppelin featuring drummer Jason Bonham, son of John Bonham. May 16, doors 8 pm, show 9 pm, Commodore Ballroom (868 Granville). Tix on sale Feb 10, 10 am, $59.75/four-packs $220 (plus service charges and fees) at www.livenation.com/. ART BERGMANN Canadian punk- and alt-rock legend, formerly of the Young Canadians, Los Popularos, and Poisoned. May 19, doors 8 pm, Rickshaw Theatre (254 E. Hastings). Tix on sale Feb 8, $20 (plus service charge) at www.ticketfly.com/. FIVE ALARM FUNK Eight-piece Vancouver funk-fusion band performs tunes from new album Sweat. May 27, doors 8 pm, show 9:30 pm, Commodore Ballroom (868 Granville). Tix on sale Feb 10, 10 am, $25 (plus service charges and fees) at www.livenation.com/. JOHN LEGEND Grammy-winning R&B and soul-pop singer-songwriter and actor from the States, with guest Gallant. Jun 1, doors 7 pm, show 8 pm, Rogers Arena (800 Griffiths Way). Tix on sale Feb 10, 10 am, $125/99/75/49/35 (plus service charges and fees) at www.livenation.com/. VALERIE JUNE Singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist from Memphis performs tunes from latest album The Order of Time. Jun 1, doors 8 pm, show 9 pm, Fox Cabaret (2321 Main). Tix on sale Feb 10, 10 am, $20 (plus service charge) at www.ticketweb.ca/. LADY GAGA Grammy-winning pop superstar from the States (“Born This Way”, “Bad Romance”) performs on her Lady Gaga Joanne World Tour. Aug 1, 7:30 pm, Rogers Arena (800 Griffiths Way). Tix from $45 to $250 (plus service charges and fees) at www.ticketmaster.ca/. TOM PETTY AND THE HEARTBREAKERS American rockers perform on their 40th anniversary tour, with guests the Lumineers. Aug 17, doors 6:30 pm, show 7:30 pm, Rogers Arena (800 Griffiths Way). Tix on sale Feb 14, 10 am, from $49.50 to $175 (plus service charges and fees) at www.livenation.com/. NICKELBACK Multiplatinum hard-rockers play tunes from new album Feed the Machine, with guests Cheap Trick and Shaman’s Harvest. Oct 1, 6:15 pm, Rogers Arena (800 Griffiths Way). Tix on sale Feb 11, 10 am, from $25 to $125 (plus service charges and fees) at www.livenation.com/.

2THIS WEEK DIERKS BENTLEY American country singer-songwriter tours in support of latest album Black, with guests Cole Swindell and Jon Pardi. Feb 9, 7:30 pm, Rogers Arena (800 Griffiths Way). Tix from $30.50 to $80.50 (plus service charges and fees) at www.livenation.com/. REEL BIG FISH AND ANTI-FLAG Southern California ska-punk band coheadlines with Pittsburgh punk-rock group, with guests Ballyhoo! and Pkew Pkew Pkew. Feb 9, doors 7 pm, show 8 pm, Commodore Ballroom (868 Granville). Tix $27.50 (plus service charges and fees) at www.livenation.com/. TOKIMONSTA Los Angeles electronica, with CRi and MYNXY. Feb 9, doors 9 pm, Fortune Sound Club (147 E. Pender). Tix $15 (plus service charges and fees) at www.bplive.ca/.

34 THE GEORGIA STRAIGHT FEBRUARY 9 – 16 / 2017

THE WHAMMY AWARDS Annual local, independent music awards ceremony. Feb 10, 7 pm, Rickshaw Theatre (254 E. Hastings). Info www.rickshawtheatre.com/. LOUISE BURNS Vancouver singer-songwriter Louise Burns performs a selection of songs inspired by the love of star gazing. Feb 10, 7-10 pm, H.R. MacMillan Space Centre (1100 Chestnut). $20, info www.spacecentre.ca/feature-series/. EAST VAN VALENTINE’S CONCERT Vancouver roots, rock, and R&B music by Brickhouse, Roots Roundup, and the Grames Bros. Feb 10, 7-11:30 pm, Rio Theatre (1660 E. Broadway). Tix $25/20, info www.riotheatretickets.ca/. MARIANAS TRENCH Vancouverbased progressive-pop band tours in support of latest studio album Astoria, with guest Shawn Hook. Feb 10, doors 6:30 pm, show 7:30 pm, Abbotsford Centre (33800 King Rd., Abbotsford). Tix $65/49.50/35/25 (plus service charges and fees) at www.livenation.com/. FROM NEW YORK: DAVE STRYKER QUARTET WITH JARED GOLD AND STEVE SLAGLE Guitarist Dave Stryker, alto saxophonist Steve Slagle, Downbeat Rising Star winner Jared Gold on organ, and drummer Jesse Cahill bring New York sound to the Frankie’s stage. Presented by Coastal Jazz. Feb 10, 8 pm, Frankie’s Jazz Club (765 Beatty). Tix $20, info www.coastaljazz.ca/. CAJUN COUNTRY REVIVAL The Rogue Folk Club presents the Americana-roots supergroup composed of Jesse Lége, Joel Savoy, and the Foghorn Stringband. Feb 10, 8 pm, St. James Hall (3214 W. 10th). Tix $26, info www.roguefolk.bc.ca/ concerts/ev17021020/. USS Canadian alt-dance duo tours in support of new album New World Alphabet, with guests Repartee. Feb 10, doors 8 pm, show 9:30 pm, Commodore Ballroom (868 Granville). Tix $25 (plus service charges and fees) at www.livenation.com/. PROF American hip-hop artist tours in support of latest release Time Bomb. Feb 11, doors 7 pm, show 8 pm, Fortune Sound Club (147 E. Pender). Tix $15 (plus service charges and fees) at www.livenation.com/. WHITE LIES London rock band performs tunes from latest album Friends. Feb 11, doors 8 pm, show 9 pm, Rickshaw Theatre (254 E. Hastings). Tix $27.50 (plus service charges and fees) at Red Cat, Zulu Records, and www.ticktweb.ca/. BLUE PRELUDE CD RELEASE CONCERT Saxophonist Dylan Cramer and pianist Ron Johnston perform in support of new CD Blue Prelude. Guest pianist Henri-Paul Sicsic performs music by Chopin. Feb 12, doors 2 pm, show 3 pm, Dunbar Heights United Church (3525 24th Ave. West). Tix $20 at the door.

COLDPLAY British rock band led by Chris Martin performs on its A Head Full of Dreams Tour 2017. Sep 29, doors 5 pm, show 7 pm, BC Place Stadium (777 Pacific Boulevard). Tix $199.50/139.50/89.50/59.50 /29.50 (plus service charges and fees) at www.livenation.com/.

CLUBS & VENUES BACKSTAGE LOUNGE Arts Club Theatre, 1585 Johnston, Granville Island, 604-6871354. Vancouver’s only live-music venue on the water, with music nightly. Hot Jazz Jam night on Tue. 2RUNNIN’ DOWN A DREAM Feb 10 2JAPANESE COWBOY Feb 11 BILTMORE CABARET 2755 Prince Edward, 604-676-0541. 2KATE BUSH: LIVE BAND BURLESQUE TRIBUTE Feb 12 2LEON Feb 14 2CLOUD NOTHINGS Feb 16 2FORTUNE FEIMSTER Feb 17 2NATE BARGATZE Feb 18 2MICHELLE WOLF Feb 19 2CLIPPING. Feb 22 2BARRY CRIMMINS Feb 23 2STOP PODCASTING YOURSELF Feb 23 2PALMISTRY Feb 24 2APARNA NANCHERLA Feb 25 2KEVIN ABSTRACT Feb 26 2THE OCTOPUS PROJECT Feb 27 2THE RADIO DEPT. Feb 28 2TENNIS Mar 1 2COMMON KINGS Mar 4 2SPRING BURLESQUE SHOWCASE Mar 12 2JOSEPH Mar 18 2BLACK ATLASS Mar 20 2JAIN Mar 27 2COLONY HOUSE Apr 1 2MITSKI Apr 7 2JENN GRANT Apr 8 2WHITNEY Apr 10 2SAN FERMIN Apr 20 2THE WEDDING PRESENT Apr 26 2SONDRE LERCHE Apr 28 2POND Apr 29 2BARNS COURTNEY May 5 2SAM OUTLAW May 20 BLUE MARTINI JAZZ CAFE 1516 Yew, 604-428-2691. Live jazz, soul, and blues. COBALT 917 Main, 778-918-3671. 2HIPPO CAMPUS Feb 23 2MOON DUO Mar 4 2FUCKED UP Mar 19 2THE COURTNEYS AND JAY SOM Apr 11 2ALL THEM WITCHES May 6 COMMODORE BALLROOM 868 Granville, 604-739-4550. 2REEL BIG FISH AND ANTIFLAG Feb 9 2USS Feb 10 2BOOTS N’ BABES BALL Feb 11 2MATTHEW GOOD Feb 16 2THE CADILLAC THREE Mar 8 2BLACKIE AND THE RODEO KINGS Mar 10 2CHRONIXX Mar 18 2JAPANDROIDS Mar 20 2THE AGE OF ELECTRIC Mar 24 2MOTHER MOTHER Mar 25 2THE TEA PARTY Mar 31 2PROZZAK Apr 14 2THE DAMNED Apr 15 2THE ZOMBIES Apr 21 2THE HARPOONIST & THE AXE MURDERER Apr 22 2DWEEZIL ZAPPA Apr 25 2JIMMY EAT WORLD Apr 26 2DANIEL WESLEY Apr 29 2ME FIRST AND THE GIMME GIMMES May 3 2TESTAMENT May 10 2JASON BONHAM’S LED ZEPPELIN EXPERIENCE May 16 2MICHAEL KIWANUKA May 23 2BONOBO May 25 2FIVE ALARM FUNK May 27 DOOLIN’S IRISH PUB 654 Nelson, 604605-4343. Live music Sun-Thu, with acoustic soloist or duo Sun-Wed, blues artist Matt Hoyles Thu, DJ Fri-Sat.

ALASDAIR FRASER AND NATALIE FORTUNE SOUND CLUB 147 E. Pender, HAAS The Rogue Folk Club presents 604-569-1758. 2TOKIMONSTA Feb 9 the Scottish folk fiddler coheadlining with the Canadian folk cellist. Feb 12, 8 pm, 2PROF Feb 11 2ART D’ECCO Feb 16 St. James Hall (3214 W. 10th). Tix $34, info 2THE STAVES Feb 17 2UGLY GOD Feb www.roguefolk.bc.ca/concerts/ev17021220/. 17 2TENNYSON Feb 18 2MEATBODIES Feb 25 2P.O.S Mar 3 2P.O.S Mar 3 AIR SUPPLY Australian soft-rock duo 2THE COATHANGERS Mar 18 2ISAIAH plays hits like “I’m All Out of Love”, RASHAD Mar 22 2DELICATE STEVE Mar “Here I Am”, and “Lost in Love”. Feb 13, 26 2KATE TEMPEST Mar 29 2BLACK JOE doors 7 pm, show 8 pm, Stadium Club LEWIS AND THE HONEYBEARS Apr 7 (Edgewater Casino, 760 Pacific Blvd. S.). 2WINDHAND Apr 22 Tix from $49.50 (plus service charges and fees) at edgewatercasino.showare.com/. FOX CABARET 2321 Main. 2HENRY WAGONS Feb 10 2THE MOJO STARS THE GONZALO BERGARA QUARTET Feb 17 2JONATHAN ROY Feb 20 2THE The Rogue Folk Club presents the ORCHID CLUB—HEARTBREAKERS Gypsy-jazz band led by the guitarist from EDITION Feb 21 2PARSONSFIELD Feb Argentina. Feb 13, 8-11 pm, St. James Hall (3214 W. 10th). Tix $26, info www.roguefolk. 23 2TINDER TALES Feb 24 2THE RURAL ALBERTA ADVANTAGE Feb 25 2ALEX bc.ca/concerts/ev17021320/. MAHER Feb 27 2JOEY LANDRETH Mar 3 LEON Swedish hip-hop/soul singer2TEEN ANGST NIGHT Mar 11 2ECLECTIC songwriter tours in support of her AND ELECTRIC Mar 16 2SHRED KELLY upcoming full-length album, with guest Mar 25 2BLOSSOMS Apr 10 2LYDIA Jacob Banks. Feb 14, doors 7 pm, show AINSWORTH May 4 2MATTHEW LOGAN 8 pm, Biltmore Cabaret (2755 Prince VASQUEZ May 22 2VALERIE JUNE Jun 1 Edward). Tix $15 (plus service charges and fees) at www.livenation.com/. FRANKIE’S JAZZ CLUB 765 Beatty, 778727-0337. 2DAVE STRYKER QUARTET WITH 2UPCOMING HIGHLIGHTS JARED GOLD AND STEVE SLAGLE Feb 10 U2 Irish rock quartet kicks off its Joshua Tree 2EMMET COHEN TRIO Feb 16 2SIOBHAN Tour 2017 by performing the 1987 album in its WALSH GROUP Feb 18 2MAYA RAE Feb 23 2KATIE THIROUX Mar 3 entirety, with guests Mumford & Sons. May 12, BC Place Stadium (777 Pacific Boulevard). FUNKY WINKER BEANS 37 W. Hastings. Tix from $35 to $280 (plus service charges Evil Bastard Karaoke Experience Sun-Thurs. and fees) at www.livenation.com/. THE IMPERIAL 319 Main, 604-868-0494. GUNS N’ ROSES Los Angeles hard-rock band (“Sweet Child o’ Mine”, “November 2LOS CAMPESINOS Feb 21 2WOLF PARADE Feb 22 2BANNERS Feb 25 2THE Rain”) performs on its Not in This Lifetime WOOD BROTHERS Mar 12 2THE INTERNET Tour. Sep 1, doors 6 pm, show 7:30 pm, BC Mar 16 2CLAP YOUR HANDS SAY YEAH Place Stadium (777 Pacific Boulevard). Tix Mar 18 2STRFKR Mar 22 2AGNES $275/150/115/35 (plus service charges and fees),at www.livenation.com/. see next page

OBEL Mar 25 2ALINA BARAZ Mar 28 2MARTHA WAINWRIGHT Apr 24 2BETTY WHO Apr 27 2METACOSM Apr 29 2GRANDDADDY May 7 2HURRAY FOR THE RIFF RAFF Jun 15 2TASH SULTANA Oct 25 IVANHOE PUB 1038 Main, 604-608-1444. No cover. 2BEAVER T Feb 10 2WOODY JAMES Feb 11 2SONS OF THE HOE Feb 12 2RHYTHM ST. Feb 17 2FULL MOON Feb 18 LAMPLIGHTER PUBLIC HOUSE 92 Water, 604-687-4424. Pub trivia with Nice Guys Inc. Tue; bourbon and bingo Wed; Rocksteady with DJs Arems, Hoppa & Rexx Thu; FKYA DJs Fri; DJ Antonia & Friends Sat. ORPHEUM THEATRE 601 Smithe, 604665-3050. 2SOUNDS OF SIMON AND GARFUNKEL Feb 10 2COLIN JAMES Mar 8 2CHRIS BOTTI IN CONCERT WITH THE VSO Mar 15 2PASSENGER Mar 25 2KALEO Apr 4 2TWO DOOR CINEMA CLUB Apr 18 QUEEN ELIZABETH THEATRE 650 Hamilton, 604-665-3050. 2LYLE LOVETT AND JOHN HIATT Mar 6 2FISH LEONG Mar 20 2THE LAST WALTZ REMEMBERED Apr 4 2CITY AND COLOUR Apr 6 2BRIAN WILSON Apr 8 2THE FLAMING LIPS May 15 2BONNIE RAITT Jun 19 REPUBLIC 958 Granville, 604-669-3214. House, hip-hop, EDM, chart, and reggae. Open nightly from 10 pm to 3 am.

RICKSHAW THEATRE 254 E. Hastings, 604-681-8915. 2THE WHAMMY AWARDS Feb 10 2WHITE LIES Feb 11 2THE BITTER END WITH SIMON KING: LIVE TAPING Feb 15 2THUNDERCAT Feb 17 2JUST CAUSE Feb 18 2ACTORS Feb 24 2POLYRHYTHMICS Feb 25 2DESERT DAZE TOUR Feb 26 2GHOSTFACE KILLAH Feb 27 2ANDY BLACK Feb 28 2THE REAL MCKENZIES Mar 4 2BLACK MOON OVER ROSS BAY Mar 12 2DIRTWIRE Mar 15 2DREADNOUGHTS Mar 17-18 2TRUCKFIGHTERS Mar 21 2TEENAGE FANCLUB Mar 25 2KREATOR Mar 29 2D.O.A.: ROCK THE VOTE Apr 1 2AMORPHIS Apr 3 2ELECTRIC SIX Apr 5 2SOHN Apr 8 2HINDS AND TWIN PEAKS Apr 9 2REAL ESTATE Apr 18 2MYKE BOGAN Apr 20 2D.R.I. Apr 26 2ASPHYX Apr 30 2DELAIN AND HAMMERFALL May 5 2SABATON May 7 2ART BERGMANN May 19 2EVERGREY May 21 2FOXYGEN May 25 2MODIFIED GHOST FESTIVAL, NIGHT 2 May 26 2MODIFIED GHOST FESTIVAL, NIGHT 3 May 27 2MODIFIED GHOST FESTIVAL, NIGHT 4 May 28

ROGERS ARENA 800 Griffiths Way, 604899-7400. 2DIERKS BENTLEY Feb 9 2RED HOT CHILI PEPPERS Mar 18 2ARIANA GRANDE Mar 24 2CHRIS STAPLETON Mar 27 2JOHN MAYER Apr 19 2THE WEEKND Apr 25 2LIONEL RICHIE Apr 27 2JOHN LEGEND Jun 1 2DEF LEPPARD Jun 6 2QUEEN + ADAM LAMBERT Jul 2 2NEIL DIAMOND Jul 24 2BRUNO MARS Jul 26 2LADY GAGA Aug 1 2TOM PETTY AND THE HEARTBREAKERS Aug 17 2NICKELBACK Oct 1 2ROGER WATERS Oct 28

RIVER ROCK SHOW THEATRE River Rock Casino Resort, 8811 River Rd., 604247-8900. 2THE ROBERT CRAY BAND Mar 3 2ENGELBERT HUMPERDINCK Mar 10 2ABBAMANIA Mar 18

ST. JAMES HALL 3214 W. 10th, 604-7363022. 2UNDER THE BAOBAB TREE Feb 9 2CAJUN COUNTRY REVIVAL Feb 10 2ALASDAIR FRASER AND NATALIE HAAS Feb 12 2THE GONZALO BERGARA

don’t miss out! For up-to-the-minute, searchable Music Time Out listings, visit

www.straight.com

THE ROXY 932 Granville, 604-331-7999. House band Tattoo Alibi Sat & Mon; country band Locked & Loaded Sun; the Bulge and DJ Joe Pound Tue; Troys ‘R Us Wed-Thu. 2THE COUNTY LINE, ROLLIN’ TRAINWRECK Feb 19 2FAITH NUMADA, KRISTIN BUNYAN Feb 26

QUARTET Feb 13 2OLD MAN LUEDECKE Feb 17 2KIÉRAH Mar 3 2CHRISTINE TASSAN ET LES IMPOSTEURES Mar 9 2SHARON SHANNON Mar 12 2MARTYN JOSEPH Mar 17 2DAVE GUNNING Mar 25 2KAREN SAVOCA AND PETE HEINTZMAN Apr 8 2THE SMALL GLORIES Apr 14 2A MIGHTY STRING THING Apr 22

WISE HALL 1882 Adanac, 604-254-5858. 2REAL PONCHOS Feb 10 2BEN ROGERS AND THE BLOODRED YONDER Feb 11 2PETUNIA AND THE VIPERS Feb 13, 20 & 27 2DROP IN ROCK CHOIR Feb 14 2ROSE COUSINS Mar 19 2DANIEL CHAMPAGNE Apr 6 2BLUE LODGE SOCIETY Apr 14 2JAMES MCCARTNEY May 13

VENUE 881 Granville, 604-646-0064. 2QUANNUM MCS TOUR Feb 25 2TRENTEMOLLER Mar 10 2SAVE FERRIS Mar 18 2WHY? Mar 25 2KATATONIA Apr 5

OUT OF TOWN

VOGUE THEATRE 918 Granville, 604-5691144. 2ILIZA Feb 17 2PIFF THE MAGIC DRAGON Feb 18 2MY FAVORITE MURDER Feb 18 2PIERCE THE VEIL Feb 20 2WILLIAM SINGE Feb 22 2VINCE STAPLES Feb 28 2BLACK MOUNTAIN Mar 10 2SEBASTIAN MANISCALCO Mar 11 2MØ Mar 17 2ZUCCHERO Mar 22 2CLUB ESKIMO IN VANCOUVER Mar 23 2DAN + SHAY Mar 25 2BIFFY CLYRO Mar 31 2BILL AND JOEL PLASKETT Apr 1 2THE ZOLAS Apr 6 2NF Apr 8 2KING GIZZARD AND THE LIZARD WIZARD Apr 10 2MAYDAY PARADE Apr 13 2THE VISIONARY ART AND LIFE OF ALEX GREY AND ALLYSON GREY Apr 28 2SAID THE WHALE Apr 29 2KEHLANI May 1 2BIANCA DEL RIO May 19 2THE MOTH May 20 2NEEDTOBREATHE May 22 2ALI WONG May 25 2CATFISH AND THE BOTTLEMEN May 30

2UPCOMING HIGHLIGHTS SASQUATCH! MUSIC FESTIVAL Featuring performances by Twenty One Pilots, Frank Ocean, Chance the Rapper, the Head and the Heart, the Shins, MGMT, Phantogram, Mac Miller, Bonobo, Rüfüs Du Soul, Kaytranada, Aesop Rock, Charles Bradley, Catfish and the Bottlemen, Mount Kimbie, Thee Oh Sees, Foxygen, the Strumbellas, White Lung, and Arkells. May 26-28, Gorge Amphitheatre (754 Silica Road NW, George, Wash.). Tix US$295 (plus service charges and fees) at www.livenation.com/.

TIME OUT MUSIC LISTINGS are a public service provided free of charge, based on available space. Submit listings online using the event-submission form at straight. com/AddEvent. Events that don’t make it into the paper due to space constraints will appear on the website.

604.730.7060

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RICHMOND

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NORTH VANCOUVER

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Palace on the River Historic 80 x 30 barge with 1460 sf one level home... with renovation and updating this could be your “Palace on the river”

Chalet on the Inlet Robust 2 bdr home filled with character and charm. Perfect AirBnB opportunity.

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Sutton West Coast Realty I 301-1508 W Broadway

at the Creek

Built to order 1 bedroom + loft float homes ...concrete floats ...steel construction. Only 4 left.

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Panabode on the Water Rustic “Panabode” style home on steel catamaran hull... room to increase size and value.

STONEHOUSE

“Seastars”

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1011 KEEFER STREET I $979,000

Brand new, 2 bedroom, 2 bathroom modern Coach House with heated double garage below

Brand new, 3 bedroom, 3 bathroom back half duplex with 1,089 SF of living space

Bright, open living & dining on main floor with a sliding wall of windows that opens onto a large 200 SF deck

2 bedrooms up, open living and dining with a porch off the living room and a large master with en suite below

OPEN HOUSE: SAT Feb 11th - 12 - 1:30 pm OPEN HOUSE: SUN Feb 12th - 12 - 1:30 pm

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2 bed, 2 bath, 1,478 Sq. Ft. two level penthouse

Unique 1 bedroom, 2 bathroom, 860 Sq. Ft. modern loft in the heart of East Vancouver

Suite features open plan Kitchen, dining & living, exposed brick & beams, hardwood floor throughout & a wood burning fireplace Large private 410 Sq. Ft deck with panoramic ocean & mountain views

SNEAK PEEK: THURS Feb 9th - 5 - 7 pm REALTOR OPEN: FRI Feb 10th - 10am - 12pm OPEN HOUSE: SAT Feb 11th - 2 - 4 pm OPEN HOUSE: SUN Feb 12th - 2 - 4 pm

Renovated, well laid-out, open plan living space with 20ft ceilings, S/S appliances, polished concrete floors on main & fir above Large private roof deck with views of east vancouver and the city

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Sutton West Coast Realty I 301-1508 W Broadway

FEBRUARY FEBRUARY99––16 16//2017 2017 THE THEGEORGIA GEORGIASTRAIGHT STRAIGHT 35

straight stars February 9 to 15, 2017

riday’s lunar eclipse in Leo finishes off the workweek on a high note. While a fullmoon eclipse can often set a backdrop for an emotionally jarring episode, this one could bring cause for celebration. Eclipses produce amplified new or full moons. They prompt chapter endings, beginnings, and major transitions. Often, they’ll take us by surprise. Often, there’s a noticeable karmic implication. You will feel impact if the eclipse makes a direct contact to your natal chart, otherwise it’s just another day. Friday’s penumbral eclipse is hosted by several fortuitous astrology contacts. A special event, a special someone, or something out of the blue could make your day. Thursday through Saturday can be fun, rewarding, lucrative, confidencebuilding, romance- or luck-generating, perhaps even auspicious. The eclipse moon in trine to anythinggoes Uranus in Aries strikes flint on here, now, and destiny. Let impulse, intuition, creativity, and spontaneity run the show. Take a risk on reinventing the wheel. A fresh start, a breakthrough moment, an independence initiative, or an out-of-the-box solution could be your “it ticket”. The eclipse sun in Aquarius in favour to Jupiter in Libra makes for great socializing, connecting, pleasure-seeking, and same-page accord. Aquarius and Libra will keep matters to do with social justice and inclusion on the front burner, so watch for significant newsmaking regarding Trump’s Muslim ban or

other social causes and movements. The eclipse will also influence financial markets and the technology and science sectors. Thursday through Saturday, the stars are at their gift ing best. Why wait for Valentine’s Day when the weekend is prime?

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ARIES

March 20–April 20

Keep palms wide-open! Thursday through Saturday, the gifting lunar eclipse can bring the exceptional into being. A special event, a special connection, news, an announcement, a contract (karmic or actual), or a flash of genius sets the momentous into play. There’s a bonus for all, but this eclipse is especially generating and fortuitous if your birthday falls on or near April 11.

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TAURUS

April 20–May 21

Friday’s lunar eclipse is opportune, timely, and liberating, perhaps in some twist-of-fate way. If you have been toying with the idea of making a radical change, don’t waste another minute. Take your best shot; go for it wholeheartedly. Thursday through Saturday, the stars set a prime backdrop for a significant personal breakthrough or major undertaking. Sunday onward, don’t look back; carry on!

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GEMINI

May 21–June 21

Make sure to show up for it, especially Thursday, Friday! You stand to gain something wonderful. It’s fun; it’s liberating; it’s happy-making. The lunar eclipse can prompt news, a special event, a

> BY ROSE MARCUS

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CAPRICORN surprise contact, an impulsive mo- work or health. Things can work out December 21–January 20 ment, a big-ticket purchase, or an ex- surprisingly well. Monday to WedLook to Friday’s lunar cellent time to play it up. Stand apart nesday puts more people in your path. eclipse to gift you with something from the crowd and show off what’s LIBRA lucrative and pleasing, perhaps so special about you. September 23–October 23 even life-altering. Perhaps it’s alCANCER Indulge; play it up; make ready in the works or it could be June 21–July 22 it fun; free yourself up. Business and something new. Thursday to SunReinvention is where it’s pleasure mix well through the week- day, it comes easily, readily, and at. Speeding up the process, Fri- end. Friday’s lunar eclipse can spark well. They are your best days to go day’s lunar eclipse sets you up for a something social, entertaining, lu- for it. Monday through Wednesday, significant personal, relationship, or crative, informing, or unexpected. aim to meet in the middle. financial breakthrough. Even if the Someone or something can make AQUARIUS unexpected drives the bus, see it as quite an impression on you. A new January 20–February 18 opportunity. You are headed toward romance, passion, or moneymaker Feeling more confident? something more lucrative and/or holds great promise. Monday evenfulfi lling. Thursday through Sunday, ing and Valentine’s morning are opti- Something special in the works? it falls into place readily, easily, and mum for showing your appreciation. Mercury in Aquarius and Friday’s lunar eclipse in Leo are wonderfulwell. Monday onward requires more SCORPIO ly reenergizing for body, mind, and action or input from you. October 23–November 22 social life. It’s an auspicious eclipse LEO Even if you know what you for a breakthrough, a fresh start, a July 22–August 23 are getting into, Friday’s lunar eclipse new relationship, and/or financial Friday’s lunar eclipse has can hold an element of surprise. gain, especially if your birthday your name on the gift card, espe- You can gain singled-out attention, happens now through Saturday. cially if your birthday falls on or praise, or reward for a job well done Monday and Tuesday are yours for near August 14. Remain available, or for just being you. This break- the taking too. keep your charge card handy, try through eclipse holds great promise PISCES your luck, buy an instant-win ticket, for all new initiatives and personal February 18–March 20 have fun. An introduction, first date, upgrades. A new job, project, title, Thursday/Friday wraps up or fresh start could be the start of address, or status is well-timed. on a pleased-with-yourself note. Persomething great. The spontaneous or SAGITTARIUS haps there’s something special to do out-of-the-blue can delight, surprise, November 22–December 21 or celebrate. The lunar eclipse can and/or excite you. Thursday/Friday, enjoy it be a moneymaker or place you at a VIRGO socially out on your own or play up personal cash-in moment. A fresh August 23–September 23 the romance. It’s your moment to insight, clever idea, conversation, or Thursday to Sunday, the shine, enjoy, and/or thrive. The lunar unique solution delivers the gold. lunar eclipse could clue you in to eclipse can bring good news, good Saturday/Sunday, the stars also do something you missed seeing previ- luck, an event, a victory, special atten- right by you. Valentine’s morning ously. Watch for a better solution, tion, a flash of genius. It’s an excellent offers the day’s best. method, avenue, or option. Watch time to relocate, take a vacation, give also for a saving grace, an opportun- your heart away, or create something Book a reading or sign up for Rose’s ity to update or catch up. You could new. Monday/Tuesday requires more free monthly newsletter at www.rose marcus.com/astrolink/. have a major turnaround regarding give and take.

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CAREERS & EMPLOYMENT MBS

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WORKSHOPS & EVENTS A Soldier's Guide To Survival Post Trauma Stress Recovery solutions4stress@shaw.ca

SUPPORT GROUPS Healing Our Spirit B.C. First Nations AIDS Society has volunteer opportunities for hospital visitation, information booths, office assistance & preparation of pamphlets & condoms for distribution. We offer volunteer orientation, training & recognition & bus tickets. If interested, please call 983-8774 Ext. 13. We are dedicated to preventing and reducing the spread of HIV in the aboriginal communities of B.C. Healthy & loving relationships alluding you? CODA: Co-dependency Anonymous 12 step Recovery: 604- 515-5585 Infertility Awareness Assoc. of Canada (IAAC) provides educational material & support to individuals or couples experiencing infertility. Meetings: 7 pm the 2nd Wed of the month. Richmond Library & Cultural Centre, 7700 Minoru Gate. Info 523-0074 or www.iaac.ca

MOOD DISORDERS SUPPORT GROUPS We have peer-led support groups all over the Lower Mainland for people with depression, bipolar disorder and anxiety led by well-trained facilitators. Group sessions during days, evenings, or Saturdays. For location and times of groups:

www.mdabc.net 604-873-0103 Parkinson Society BC offers over 50 volunteer-led support groups throughout BC. These provide people with Parkinson's, their carepartners & families an opportunity to meet in a friendly, supportive setting with others who are experiencing similar difficulties. Some groups may offer exercise support. For information on locating a support group near you, please contact PSBC at 604 662 3240 or toll free 1 800 668 3330. Fertility Support Group Discover new perspectives make positive changes and learn simple tools to take charge of your reproductive wellness while connecting with other women. The meetings provide a space for open discussion. 2nd Tuesday of each month 7:45 - 8:45pm (Sign up required) Reg & Info call: 604-266-6470 or www.familypassages.ca

36 THE GEORGIA STRAIGHT FEBRUARY 9 – 16 / 2017

WLIVING THROUGH LOSS COUNSELLING facilitated support group for people who are grieving the death of a significant person. Monthly drop-in- last Wed of every month YLTLC #201 – 1847 W. Broadway Van. 604-873-5013 www.ltlc.bc.ca

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704 – 333 Terminal Ave. Van 604 684 8171 An inclusive centre for older adults, 55+ on low income, and those with disabilities, offering year-round educational, health-related, recreational activities. Information & Referral to assist seniors with resources & services in the community ie seniors benefits, income tax preparation & government services. Hours: Monday to Friday, 9:00am to 4:00pm

DELUXE SUITE. 3RD FLOOR. SECURED. NEAR 8th ST. SKYTRAIN STN. NEW WEST. Call 604-524-5494

M R & D Studios Vancouver's most comfortable 2"-24 track, ADAT & ProTools HD. Mastering $55/hr eng, prod. & arranger incl. 604-421-2988

AFTER SUICIDE SUPPORT GROUP Meetings every other Wednesday 7pm Call Sylvia Cust, RCC, Counsellor at CHIMO Crisis Service in Richmond 604-279-7077 Richmond Caring Place, 7000 Minoru AL-ANON FAMILY GROUPS Does someone else's drinking bother you? Al-Anon can help. We are a support group for those who have been affected by another's drinking problem. For more information please call: 604-688-1716 Battered Women's Support Services provides free daytime & evening support groups (Drop-ins & 10 week groups) for women abused by their intimate partner. Groups provide emotional support, legal information & advocacy, safety planning, and referrals. For more information please call: 604-687-1867 Genital Herpes Support Group for Women Are you living with Genital Herpes in Vancouver? We are a group of women that draws upon each others knowledge and strength to grapple with this sometimes trying condition. Through mutual support and honest conversation we aim to address the physical and emotional health implications of this virus and how it affects romantic relationships, sex, dating & life in general. Contact: ghsupportgroup@gmail.com Heart of Richmond - AIDS Society operates a confidential support group for persons with HIV/AIDS, or persons affected (family, friends or care givers) by the disease. For info - 604-277-5137 www.heartofrichmond.com Support, Education & Action Group for Women that have experienced male violence. Call Vancouver Rape Relief 604-872-8212 Anorexics & Bulimics Anonymous 12 Step based peer support program which addresses the mental, emotional, & spiritual aspects of disordered eating Tuesdays @ 7 pm @ Avalon Women's Centre 5957 West Blvd - 604-263-7177 Women Survivors of Incest Anonymous A 12 Step based peer support program. Wed @ 7pm @ Avalon Women's Centre 5957 West Blvd 604-263-7177 also www.siawso.org

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REPAIRS ANNOUNCEMENTS

SERVICES

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savage love

ast week, I spoke at the Wilbur Theater in Boston and the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York. Audience members submitted their questions on tiny cards before the show, allowing them to remain anonymous while forcing them to be succinct. Here are some of the questions I didn’t have time to get to at both events…

My girlfriend wants to explore

her sexuality with another woman but be “heterosexually exclusive” with me. She wants me to have equal freedom but doesn’t think it’s fair for me to be with another woman. I am a heterosexual man. How can we achieve sexual equality? An open relationship for her but a closed-on-a-technicality relationship for you? Yeah, no. Want to achieve sexual equality? Explore your sexuality with other women—as a single man.

I am a 50-year-old queer man who never really came out—except to people I’m cruising or fucking. Oh, and to my wife. Is there any social or political value to coming out now, in the shadow of a Trump presidency? There’s tremendous social and political value to being out, whoever the president is. There’s also social and political risk, whoever the president is. If you’re in a position to come out—and you must be, otherwise you wouldn’t be asking—not coming out is a moral failing.

When I’ve tried to do the fuckbuddy thing, I’ve gotten attached. Any way to avoid that?

> BY DAN SAVAGE

Only do the fuck-buddy thing with Before the shops open, get in the face Republicans. of your elected officials to make sure licences are made available to pot I’m a 31-year-old straight fe- entrepreneurs of colour. Once legal male. I have an intermittent sexual weed shops are open, go out of your relationship with a married poly- way to patronize pot shops owned by amorous friend. Each time we hook people of colour and insist all legal up, he says he regrets it. But several weed shops employ people of colour months later, he will contact me and and pay a living wage. And once the we will hook up again. Should I say profits start rolling in, demand that no? What do you think is up? pot activists and shop owners stay in the fight to demand that people conYour friend’s head is what’s up—up victed of possessing or selling pot in his own ass. Stop letting him stick his the past—primarily POC—get full dick up yours. (P.S. His regret has me pardons and restitution. wondering if his marriage is actually open or if he’s cheating on his wife. Please elaborate on your sugIf you’ve never discussed their poly- gestion that an open relationship amorous arrangement with her, that’s could save a marriage. probably what’s up.) Here’s an example: married couple, Why are liberals okay with together a long time, low-conflict people self-identifying their gender relationship, good partners. Spouse but not their race? Aren’t both con- #1 is done with sex—libido gone, sidered social constructs? no interest in taking steps to restore it—but Spouse 2 isn’t done with sex. “If race and gender are both social This can play out two ways: 1) Spouse constructs,” Evan Urquhart writes #1 insists on keeping the marriage at Slate, “and if both have been built closed, and Spouse #2 opts for diaround observable biological traits, vorce over celibacy. 2) Spouse #1 althen what is the crucial difference lows for outside contact—they open that makes a felt gender identity a the marriage up—and monogamy is true one, but a felt racial identity sacrificed but the marriage is saved. fraudulent? The short answer is that most trans people and their allies How do you get over the guilt suspect that transgender people are of being a straight guy? I used to feel born that way.” (Google Evan Ur- a lot of sexual shame from hearing quhart, trans, and race to read the that men are pigs all the time. I got over most of it, but I still have leftrest of his essay.) over shame. I want to be respectful We just legalized weed here in of women without having to take reMassachusetts! Yay! How can I, as a sponsibility for the actions of every consumer but industry outsider, help asshole straight man out there. to ensure more diversity in the legal selling business? As a gay man, I’m not responsible

The Georgia Straight Confessions, an outlet for submitting revelations about your private lives—or for the voyeurs among us who want to read what other people have disclosed.

for the actions of Roy Cohn, Jeffrey Dahmer, and Peter Thiel. Likewise, I deserve no credit for the accomplishments of Michelangelo, Alan Turing, and Stephen Sondheim. When you feel the shame and guilt welling up, all you can do is remind yourself that you’re not responsible for the piggishness of Donald Trump or the awesomeness of Chris Kluwe. (And just to complicate things: while most straight women hate straight-male pigs, most straight women want their men to be pigs—but only now and then, and only for them. A dash of controlled/vestigial piggishness is a desirable trait, not a disqualifying one.)

What’s the healthiest way to

address jealousy in a relationship with a jealous and confrontational partner? The healthiest thing would be for your jealous and confrontational partner to address their issues with a therapist after you’ve dumped them.

Fuck, marry, kill: Donald DEAR READERS: Valentine’s Day Trump, Rick Santorum, Mike Pence. is coming up. Th is is your annual reminder to #FuckFirst—have sex and Fuck everything, call off the wed- then go out to dinner. Don’t have a ding, kill myself. heavy meal, drink, eat some chocolate gut bomb of a dessert, and then I see you’ve resurrected write to me on the 15th whining your ITMFA campaign. (Bragging about how you didn’t get laid on the rights: I got the Mass. licence plate 14th. Fuck first! Or, better yet, stay ITMFA. The DMV tried to take it home and fuck all night on the 14th back when someone complained, and go out to dinner on the 15th. and the ACLU won the case for You’re welcome. me! I removed the plate, of course, after Obama won.) My question: if On the Lovecast, Dan chats with Trump is removed from office—if polyamory luminary Cunning Minx: we “impeach the motherfucker al- savagelovecast.com/. Email: mail@ ready”—we’ll have Mike Pence. Do savagelove.net . Follow Dan on you really think he’d be any better? Twitter @fakedansavage.

> Go on-line to read hundreds of I Saw You posts or to respond to a message < FERRY GIRL

I SAW A: I AM A: WHEN: FEBRUARY 3, 2017 WHERE: Nanaimo to Horseshoe Bay

Scan to confess Library users - have some respect!! The public library system is one of the great benefits we have as a society. A collection of free knowledge and entertainment available to anyone. As a regular user of the library it is really disheartening how badly people handle the material they borrow. The vast majority of cd’s and dvd’s that I borrow are in terrible shape. Scratched horribly and have skipping problems. People, you borrowing these items for FREE!!! Treat them well and show some respect.

Brand names

You are a beautiful blonde woman. We were on the Nanaimo to Horseshoe Bay Ferry. We were just docking and everyone was heading to their cars. I was sitting behind you talking with my friends about how I thought it was colder here and warmer on the Island. You got up, looked at me, smiled and said something... I was so captured by your smile so I didn’t catch it but I think you said "yes, it was". You walked away with your carry on and although I really wanted to talk to you, all I could do was look at you in awe. You have an amazing smile and great energy. I had a black jacket with the fauxfur around the neck and a black hat on. I would like to have a coffee or drink with you and hang out. Hope you look at these.

I’ve never understood the appeal of brand names. To me a $1200 purse doesn’t look any more interesting than a $50 one. I honestly think people with low self esteem need these props to make them feel better about themselves, that they’re “worth” more as people. I especially don’t understand why people making $35,000-50,000/year tell others they shop at Holt Renfrew. You’re not fooling anyone about your socio-economic class.

WHITE SNEAKERS, WHITE SNOW, I OFFERED TO PIGGY BACK YOU

Difference in Opinion

We talked about your great snow foot-gear and then chatted briefly in Terra Breads. I meant to ask you if you had time to get together but then turned shy. Looking for you! Next Saturday at Terra at 11:00 or?

My roommates hate it when I listen to anything that is not far-left propaganda, vegan, and gluten-free with the door open.

Snow. Fuck it sucks all this shitty snow, can’t bike gotta take transit (which is hell). I guess the only positive thing the snow brings is Quiet. My apartment building has been very quiet. I guess all the crazy loud mother fuckers who scream at the top of their lungs at 3 am have somewhere else to be when the snow is out. Sometimes quiet is nice. That is my confession.

Last Minute cancellers I hate it when people cancel last minute via text! I’m not somebody who checks their phone every five minutes to see if anyone has messaged me. If you can’t make it, fricking CALL.

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We already have Mike Pence. And Pence, as awful as he is, oscillates within a predictable band of Republican awfulness. With a President Pence, we’ll get shitty Supreme Court nominees, attacks on queers and people of colour, and fiscal mismanagement. With President Trump, we get all that plus war with Mexico and Australia. And you don’t have to remove your ITMFA buttons once Trump is removed from office—keep ’em on until Pence is impeached too. Speaking of impeachment: four in 10 Americans support impeaching Trump. Nixon didn’t hit that number until 18 months into the Watergate scandal. And speaking of my ITMFA campaign: we’ve already raised $100,000 at ITMFA.org, with all proceeds going to the ACLU, Planned Parenthood, and the International Refugee Assistance Project. Get your ITMFA hats, buttons, and T-shirts at ITMFA.org! (Coming soon: coffee mugs and stickers!)

I SAW A: I AM A: WHEN: FEBRUARY 4, 2017 WHERE: Terra Breads Kitsilano

SAMPLE SERVER AT VIJ’S RESTAURANT (CAMBIE)

I SAW A: I AM A: WHEN: FEBRUARY 3, 2017 WHERE: Vij’s Restaurant You were a sample server at the Vij’s restaurant in the lounge area. Around 5',8", black curly hair, olive skin and a beautiful accent. I was in a white sweater, 5',7", blond curly hair and blue eyes. We exchanged glances many times and you came to my table more often then others. We both went home in the same direction but I never got the courage to talk to you. Would love to see you again some time and maybe go out for a coffee.

CATCHING EYES ON #14

BEAUTIFUL EYES OVER COFFEE CUP

I SAW A: I AM A: WHEN: FEBRUARY 6, 2017 WHERE: #14 Bus Cordova/ Granville

I SAW A: I AM A: WHEN: FEBRUARY 5, 2017 WHERE: Granville @ W Georgia

You got on the #14. I noticed you right away. You were standing in front of me, and then sat beside me. You’re so gorgeous. You had a hair band or bandanna and were moving to the music you were listening to on your headphones. Wish I said hi!

I was standing at the bus stop at Granville & Georgia when I looked back... and saw your gorgeous eyes staring into mine quite intensely, holding my gaze, which was full of fire as I was having quite the day :). You did so as you were taking a sip of your to-go coffee, and you had a London Drugs shopping bag as well as being dressed impeccably and very beautiful! Coffee?

WHEELCHAIR ON A SNOWY NIGHT BUS.

I SAW A: I AM A: WHEN: FEBRUARY 5, 2017 WHERE: N20 Night Bus When we finally arrived at the door, he asked if I remembered your name. I did. We had both been dancing, you at Calabash, me at Astoria. You and two transit staff hefted the wheelchair to the roadway while I helped him navigate the snow and slush. You were reluctant to get back on the bus, showing genuine concern for two strangers. Not something that happens every day in Vancouver. We had a bit of an adventure getting Harold and his electric wheelchair safely home through the snowy streets. I’d love to tell you about it. Coffee?

BUS BABE

I SAW A: I AM A: WHEN: FEBRUARY 5, 2017 WHERE: Knight Street Bus #22 You got on somewhere between 19th and Venables. I was standing by the back doors and watched you through the glass pane. You passed and stood somewhere behind me. I was subtly thrilled at the thought of you, wish I said hi.

SPANISH BEAUTY

I SAW A: I AM A: WHEN: FEBRUARY 4, 2017 WHERE: Chipotle Having Burritos with my dad on Saturday at Chipotle. You were having Burritos with a friend, speaking Spanish only, at our table. Dark hair, black hoodie, you looked amazing. I couldn’t stop glancing over.

JOGGING IN THE SNOW

I SAW A: I AM A: WHEN: FEBRUARY 4, 2017 WHERE: Coopers Park Seawall I saw you Feb 4th, you were jogging with your friend, it was snowing. You gave me a huge smile, then smiled and clapped your hands at my dog. Would love to see that smile again....

130 METROTOWN TO BRENTWOOD STATION

I SAW A: I AM A: WHEN: FEBRUARY 24, 2017 WHERE: Hastings and Boundary Stop I got on the bus and you were having a great convo with your friend. You have the softest eyes ever. We exchanged smiles and got off at Brentwood. We stood across from each other until we both departed. My head was deep elsewhere and I regret not saying hello. I was wearing a black Under Armor shirt and a black Arctic Goose Jacket. You had cool boots and a New York Jets shirt on. Let me know what the saying about the pig was and i'll know it's you.

MEETING AT ZARA STORE

I SAW A: I AM A: WHEN: JANUARY 26, 2017 WHERE: ZARA’S STORE Hi, I am searching a person whom I met in Zara’s store. You were looking for some jackets for your family members. You saw me asked about my size. I helped you in selecting the jackets by wearing jackets myself. If you read this search please contact me....

#9 GUY WITH NICE SMILE

I SAW A: I AM A: WHEN: JANUARY 31, 2017 WHERE: #9 Bus I was the redhead in glasses and ripped jeans who got on the 9 at Glen. I noticed you sitting by the back door and I immediately thought you were cute. Think you got off near Kingsway. We locked eyes and you smiled at me. I would’ve gotten off and said hi but I had to meet someone. Meet for coffee?

URBAN LUMBERJACK ON #4 UBC

I SAW A: I AM A: WHEN: JANUARY 27, 2017 WHERE: #4 UBC Bus We were on the bus Friday morning, you got on around Hawks Ave. You were wearing red plaid, black jeans and Blundstones and had a leather briefcase. I was wearing workout clothes, a grey sweater and black jacket. You got up to change seats and sat next to me but I was too nervous to say hi. I’d love to grab a beer with you.

VINYL WIELDING BEARDED BABE AT JJ BEAN ON THE DRIVE

I SAW A: I AM A: WHEN: JANUARY 21, 2017 WHERE: JJ Bean Commercial Me: Tall, blonde with Penny Lane jacket sitting in the corner window at JJ Bean. You: Tall, bearded, wearing red plaid and holding vinyl. The vinyl caught my attention first but the person holding it sealed the deal. Show me yours I’ll show you mine? Vinyl collection I mean.

ANOTHER GEEK AT THE GENIUS BAR?

I SAW A: I AM A: WHEN: JANUARY 25, 2017 WHERE: Pacific Centre Apple Store You were solo, taking a class from the pony-tailed, microphoned Apple guy. I was sitting at the next table with my husband waiting for our turn with an Apple Genius. I couldn’t take my eyes off of your face, eyes, hair. You’re probably str8, but I’d sure like to be friends anyway with a handsome, geeky (?), Apple customer like you.

Visit straight.com to post your FREE I Saw You _ FEBRUARY 9 – 16 / 2017 THE GEORGIA STRAIGHT 39

40 THE GEORGIA STRAIGHT FEBRUARY 9 â&#x20AC;&#x201C; 16 / 2017