The Georgia Straight - Light Bearer - July 1, 2021

FREE | JULY 1 – 8 / 2021

Volume 55 | Number 2785

KILLER HEAT Poor areas hit hardest

JAZZ FESTIVAL

Singer channels Billie Holiday

At Dancing on the Edge, Billy Marchenski’s character surrenders his power and control on Iona Beach; plus, interviews with choreographers Shay Kuebler, Ziyian Kwan, and Shion Skye Carter

light-bearer PAMELA ANDERSON

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ZOLA

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JUNK

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ROLLER SKATING

NEWS

Heat waves linked to higher death counts in many cities

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CONTENTS 8

By Charlie Smith Cover photo by Israel Seoane

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SPORTS

Who knew that roller skating would take off around Metro Vancouver after the World Health Organization described COVID-19 as a pandemic?

By Breanne Doyle

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JAZZ FESTIVAL

Dalannah Gail Bowen has been a fixture on the local blues scene for nearly 40 years. She brings her tribute to Billie Holiday to the jazz fest.

By Steve Newton

The Downtown Eastside is a local hot spot due to a lack of tree cover. Photo by Travis Lupick.

the Downtown Eastside but also in parts of Abbotsford, Surrey, New Westminster, and other areas. Sarah Henderson, one of the authors and a UBC School of Population associate professor pointed out in a 2017 UBC news release that in one week in 2009, “110 people died simply because it was hot outside”.

In the recent heat wave, temperatures have shot up well above 34.4 C in Vancouver, exceeding those recorded in 2009.

“Although these temperatures are not hot by international standards, the 40% increase in mortality indicated that greater Vancouver was adversely affected by ambient temperatures that were high relative to seasonal norms,” Henderson and the other researchers wrote, citing a 2012 paper.

Meanwhile, the Museum of Vancouver’s current exhibit, That Which Sustains Us, features a heat-island map of the city, which shows that two of the hottest areas are in the Downtown Eastside and along the Fraser River, where the tree canopy was removed many years ago.

“The hottest parts of the city are places where the death rate goes up in the summer because it’s so hot,” curator Sharon Fortney told the Straight in an interview. g

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EDITOR Charlie Smith GENERAL MANAGER (ACTING) Sandra Oswald SECTION EDITORS Mike Usinger (ESports/Liquor/Music) Steve Newton SENIOR EDITOR Martin Dunphy STAFF WRITERS Carlito Pablo (Real Estate) Craig Takeuchi SOLUTIONS ARCHITECT Jeff Li ART DEPARTMENT MANAGER Janet McDonald

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COVER

Butoh artist Billy Marchenski decided to look at the world through Lucifer’s eyes in his new show, light-bearer, which is premiering at Dancing on the Edge.

by Charlie Smith

ot weather can kill a lot of people. That was the conclusion in a 2020 study led by a UBC environmental epidemiologist, Kate Weinberger, who studies the links between climate change and human health.

She and four other researchers looked at 297 U.S. counties representing 61.9 percent of the American population in 2000.

They estimated that an average of 5,608 deaths each year from 1997 to 2006 could be attributed to heat.

“Our results suggest that the number of deaths related to heat in the United States is substantially larger than previously reported,” the researchers wrote in the journal Environmental Epidemiology.

Now it appears that researchers will have an opportunity to put Vancouver’s heat wave under similar scrutiny. According to Vancouver police, there have been more than 65 sudden deaths since the heat wave began on June 25.

“Vancouver has never experienced heat like this, and, sadly, dozens of people are dying because of it,” Sgt. Steve Addison said in a VPD news release.

Back in 2017, Environmental Health Perspectives published a study by four researchers who examined heat-related mortality risk in Vancouver. They relied on maps of “urban heat islands” in the city where the humidex index exceeded 34.4 C. From the Vital Statistics Agency database, they examined records of all deaths with an extremely hot day compared to a control day from 1998 to 2014.

They paid attention to neighbourhoods that tend to get hotter and where people tend to be poorer, such as the Downtown Eastside.

The researchers concluded that the risk of death was higher in neighbourhoods lacking trees and with more concrete, and where there were higher numbers of people who were unemployed or retired.

These “pockets of risk” were not only in

July 1-8 / 2021

JULY 1 – 8 / 2021

e Online TOP 5

Here’s what people are reading this week on Straight.com.

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Ten ways to keep cool without air conditioning during a heat wave.

Lytton shatters record for all-time high temperature in Canada.

B.C. recipes: How to make Caesar salad from Hy’s Steakhouse.

Fifth church found on fire in First Nations community in B.C. Five light and bright cider, soda, and beer offerings to help you through summer. @GeorgiaStraight

GRAPHIC DESIGNER Miguel Hernandez PRODUCTION SUPERVISOR Mike Correia ADVERTISING REPRESENTATIVES Glenn Cohen, Catherine Tickle, Robyn Marsh (On-Leave), David Pearlman (On-Leave) MANAGER, BRANDED CONTENT AND MARKETING LEAD Rachel Moore CONTENT AND MARKETING SPECIALIST Alina Blackett CREDIT MANAGER Shannon Li ACCOUNTING SUPERVISOR Tamara Robinson

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REAL ESTATE

B.C.’s Pamela Anderson will Report spells out a possible launch home-reno TV series future for the Jericho lands

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by Carlito Pablo

by Craig Takeuchi

Ladysmith’s Pamela Anderson became an international celebrity when she played C.J. Parker on Baywatch; now she’s hoping that her new TV series will put her hometown in the spotlight.

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B.C. celebrity is furthering her marital bliss by documenting how she is transforming her home on Vancouver Island in a new TV series.

Corus Studios announced on June 28 that it has greenlit the new original series Pamela Anderson’s Home Reno Project.

The series, which is set to premiere on HGTV in 2022, will follow Anderson as she reconnects with her familial roots in Ladysmith on Vancouver Island, where she was born.

Anderson bought her late grandmother’s abandoned legacy property on the shores of Ladysmith more than 25 years ago.

Anderson will oversee the project, including the architectural design, functionality, interior décor, and more, as she

pursues her lifelong dream of turning the oceanview property into her own home.

Her husband and carpenter, Dan Hayhurst; her mother, Carol Anderson; designers, craftspeople, and local crews will help her achieve her vision.

Anderson has been active as an animalrights activist and an honorary director of the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA). In December, she asked the B.C. government to end fur farming in the province in the wake of COVID-19 outbreaks at local mink farms.

After marrying Hayhurst in December at the property (which is also where her parents married), she expressed having achieved contentment by stating on social media that she is “settled into the life” that she is “genuinely inspired by”, and that she felt “free”. g

ousing will form a major component in the development of the Jericho Lands in Vancouver.

A variety of housing types is being eyed for the 36-hectare property on the west side of the city. Based on a City of Vancouver staff report, the mix will be about 70 percent for private ownership or market homes and 30 percent for mixed rentals.

The former military base with ocean views is jointly owned by the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh Partnership and the federal Canada Lands Company.

Council recently endorsed recommendations in a Vancouver city staff report with a set of draft “guiding principles” and “emerging ideas”. One of the seven draft guiding principles talks about creating “a place to call home”.

According to this principle, these lands “will provide new housing, with a range of options for households of different incomes, ages and mobility needs, from students to families to seniors, while creating opportunities for intergenerational living and learning”.

Moreover, the new neighbourhood will be “designed to incorporate a variety of building types suitable for a diversity of households”. “Affordable housing options, including both social and secured rental housing will be provided,” the principle also states.

An idea about the mix of housing is provided in a separate set of 24 “emerging site planning ideas” grouped into four themes.

One of the themes is “inclusive neighbourhoods”. Ideas under inclusive neighbourhoods include “diverse housing

The site may have a 70-30 split between market and rental homes. Photo by City of Vancouver.

choices” for residents with a mix of incomes.

“At least 30% of the units will be comprised of social housing, market and below-market rental housing,” the document states.

It also declares: “Integrate a variety of housing options throughout the districts in apartment forms that include groundoriented units.”

Overall, development in the Jericho Lands will “include a range of building types and scales that respond to the site’s unique natural features as well as proximity to a potential future Millennium Line Extension from Arbutus Street to UBC”.

As for future heights of buildings, the document states: “Explore the placement of taller buildings to distinguish districts, accentuate the ridge, optimize transit use and create a culturally distinct skyline.”

A policy statement for the property bounded on the north by West 4th Avenue is expected to be presented to council in the spring of 2022. g

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5

SPORTS

Roller skating becomes pandemic’s hottest trend

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by Breanne Doyle

he hottest fads of 2020 seemed to revolve around throwback trends and simple pleasures: going to the drive-in, taking up a new instrument, picnics in the park, baking, and walks around the neighbourhood to keep you from going insane.

But no trend was quite as cool as taking up the ultra-retro, athletically challenging pursuit of roller skating. Thousands of wobbly beginners took to their driveways and cul-de-sacs to take part in the sport, and we wanted to know why.

We spoke to various skate clubs and business owners around the province to get their take on why roller skating blew up the way it did.

Toilet paper, Lysol wipes, and baking supplies were maddeningly hard to get your hands during the pandemic. And as it turns out, so were roller skates.

Jacqui Streber, the administrator on a British Columbia-based Facebook group made to buy and sell secondhand roller skates, said the group’s numbers have increased massively in the past year. It currently has 1,700 members.

“I was usually getting two to three requests a week, and now I’m getting between five and seven requests to join the group a day,” Streber told the Straight.

“Which, you know, for our small little group is pretty impressive.”

It’s not just secondhand purchases that are through the roof. Lisa Suggitt owns RollerGirl Rollerskates, Vancouver’s only exclusive roller-skate equipment store, which has been low on stock for the past year and a half.

“Sales started to surge within weeks of COVID being declared a pandemic,” Suggitt said. “We had good stock and were ready for the skating season to come, or so we thought.”

Suggitt and her team have been working day and night to fulfill orders while constantly selling out of supplies and dealing with a national roller skate shortage.

The shop turned to sourcing and im-

Carla “bootyquake” Smith cofounded the Rolla Skate Club, which has 500 online members, some of whom pay extra on their memberships to support BIPOC skaters. Photo by Breanne Doyle.

Sales started to surge within weeks of COVID being declared a pandemic.

– retailer Lisa Suggitt

porting roller skates from the U.K., China, and Italy. But come 2021, there was an even higher demand for skates—a demand that the supply chain still wasn’t ready to handle, according to Suggitt.

“We ran out of stock in March 2021 and have been basically operating from one stock drop to another ever since,” she explained. “Stock arrives, we process it, and it sells out immediately.”

WHY IS IT SO POPULAR?

Carla Smith, cofounder of Rolla Skate Club in Vancouver, told the Straight she believes the athletic or physical benefits from skating were a huge draw for some new skaters.

Rolla Skate Club has a portable rental shop for Vancouver skaters. Photo by Breanne Doyle.

“It’s a joyful outlet for people to move their bodies, to improve or maintain their physical health by being active and doing something that challenges their body,” she said. “It also provides an incredible mental release—and that’s something that people have really needed.”

According to her, another part of the appeal is the sense of escapism. “When you’re watching people roller-skate, the thing that jumps out, I think, is you feel their sense of joy and freedom. I think that’s what has subconsciously drawn people to roller skating.”

Besides the physical and mental benefits from roller skating, it’s also just fun, noted Suggitt from RollerGirl.

“You lace up your skates and all your worries and problems disappear,” she said.

“You focus on the present, the wind in your hair, the sun on your face, the feeling of speed. It is exhilarating and so much fun!

“It also doesn’t hurt that roller skating has style,” she added. “It looks good, and it makes you look good when you do it. This cool factor helped roller skating take off on social media.”

DON’T CALL IT A COMEBACK

The sport, since its golden age dating back to the ’30s, has gone through many phases 6

THE GEORGIA STR AIGHT

JULY 1 – 8 / 2021

of mainstream popularity. In the ’40s and ’50s, Vancouver had several rinks dedicated to roller skating, such as Skateland, Trianon Roller Rink, and the Centre Gardens Roller Bowl. From the ’60s through the early 2000s, the disco-rockin’ Stardust Roller Rink was the place to go in several municipalities for roller-fanatics.

Nearly two decades later, roller skating seems to be the cool thing to do once again. Considering the huge increase in popularity now, one might even consider calling this a “comeback” for the sport. But seasoned skaters argue that’s unfair to say.

“It’s become an important conversation in roller skating within the community— to not call roller skating as having a rebirth or a resurgence,” Smith said. “Because that’s only the case for white folks.

“At the beginning of the pandemic… there were some really popular TikTok videos of some white, Barbie doll-ish looking people with a lot of followers rollerskating,” Smith continued. “And there was a lot of backlash against the idea of rollerskating culture as being reborn—just because white people ‘discovered’ it again.”

Alisa Luke, a founding member of the BIPOC roller skate club Bad Bounce agrees.

“Roller skating has always been a part of Black culture,” Luke told the Straight.

“Roller skating is representative of resilience and joy to the Black community…. Calling it a comeback diminishes the contributions Black people have made to this art form.”

To encourage diversity and accessibility in its programs, Rolla Skate Club offers 85 percent subsidies to Black and Indigenous skaters in its instructor training program. It also has a “Rollas Helping Rollas” program in which its 500 online members can contribute a few extra dollars toward their monthly memberships to support skaters of colour or those facing financial need.

Meanwhile, Bad Bounce, which is dedicated to advocating for and championing BIPOC skaters in Vancouver, was founded

by Alisa Luke, Jessie Wilson, Mariana Menendez, and Katya Isichenko. In reaction to the civil rights movements of the past year and a half, the troupe knew there needed to be a skating space specifically for Black, Indigenous, and other people of colour.

“We were originally inspired to form after we had ventured out to dance [and] rec skate together and noticed how whitewashed the existing skate scene was here,” Luke said. “Our objective is to hold that safe space for folks who may have felt discouraged to enter such a white scene. In doing so, our hope is to open people’s eyes to the problems that are obvious to us yet are somehow invisible to so many.

“After all,” Luke said. “This is a stolen pastime, from stolen people, that we all enjoy on stolen lands.” g

FOOD / WINE

Rosie’s trailer brings Texas barbecue to East Van

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by Martin Dunphy

arl Gregg knew what his next adventure in Vancouver’s food scene was going to be. The experienced local chef just had to figure out the best way to do it, so he took a few years working that one out.

The end result was Rosie’s BBQ and Smokehouse, the latest addition to Vancouver’s food-truck (actually, foodtrailer) scene, a 24-foot dispenser of traditional centralTexas barbecue specialties that will be parked at an East Vancouver brewery near you this summer and fall.

It all started a decade ago, in 2011, when Gregg travelled to Nashville to take in a Vancouver Canucks hockey game.

“That’s when it really caught me,” Gregg told the Straight in a phone interview. “We were at Jack’s Bar-B-Que in Nashville; it’s pretty famous.”

The food, though good, wasn’t the only thing that hooked the hockey lover. He had “great” barbecue-style sausages and a slice of pecan pie (“I thought that was just for Thanksgiving,” he said of the southern U.S. dessert specialty), but it was the friendly, casual atmosphere in the family eatery that really appealed to him.

“It really resonated; that’s what barbecue means to me.

The southern hospitality is quite nice.”

It’s not like Gregg wasn’t busy at the time. He had just opened a downtown Vancouver butcher/sandwich shop alongside the partner with whom he already ran a restaurant. But the tastes and traditions of southern barbecue exerted a heavy pull, and about a year and a half later, he said, he started a series of trips to the U.S. south, mostly to central Texas, to taste, learn, and experience.

Texas has at least four distinct barbecue styles: east, west, south, and central. Gregg prefers the latter. “Yeah, definitely central Texas barbecue,” he said. “More smoke, more time, less sauce. More ribs, more brisket, more saus-

Rosie’s slow-smoked pork shoulder has a cider-and-mustard baste to maintain the moisture and sweetness of the meat.

age. And they do a lot more chicken and turkey of late.”

All of those meats would make an appearance on the menu for Rosie’s BBQ, but, again, it was the people that made those trips especially memorable. “It’s always just been the people,” Gregg said. “Everybody’s pretty friendly about everything, and everyone sits together for family dinners. I quite enjoy that aspect of barbecue.”

He learned about the kinds of wood to use for the fire to smoke meats for eight to 14 hours or even more, and how to stack it.

That informal barbecue education gave him the push to purchase a trailer (“They used it for doughnuts, I believe”), but he came by his love for smoke and meats and grills honestly. “My dad caught a lot of fish and smoked a lot of fish,” Gregg said. “And I was always a fan of grilling.”

After a Salt Spring Island butcher schooled him in various

aspects of that art at the age of 16, he took a Vancouver Community College chef course when he was 18, then worked at a number of Vancouver restaurants, including Milestone’s, Romano’s Macaroni Grill, Pepino’s on Commercial Drive, and “a lot of catering for movies and music venues”, as well as a “wedding barbecue once in a while”.

When his restaurant and butcher shop venture ended after four years, in 2015, he still had a few Texas trips to get under his belt. With that resultant know-how, a Terminal Avenue–area commissary complete with commercial smoker, the former doughnut palace on wheels, and a genuine love for people and good barbecue, he was ready to get started.

But only on weekends and holidays, noon to about 8 p.m., and only at select East Vancouver breweries.

“We won’t work weekdays,” he said of his barbecue philosophy. “We feel that barbecue is best done on the weekend.

“It’s really about friends and family. You get eight to 10 people together to talk about the week and eat.”

Brisket, ribs (both baby back and St. Louis–style side cut), chicken, sausages (their own spicy smoker and a beef version sourced from Nanaimo Street’s Columbus Meat Market), pork shoulder, sandwiches, and some interesting sides (cornbread, green beans, and a cold mac-and-cheese salad with crunchy onions on top) are just part of Rosie’s barbecue menu.

One side that might draw some attention are Rosie’s pickles. “We do these Kool-Aid pickles that have gotten a ton of positive feedback so far,” Gregg said. “They are a little bit similar to bread-and-butter pickles you can get but with a cherry Kool-Aid flavour. They’re excellent.”

He said he first tried the unusual cuke in Nashville, then in Texas. “No, I did not invent it, unfortunately.” g

Pink Poodle is worth fetching when on a budget

by Mike Usinger

W

e lovingly decant wines from the West Coast to Western Samoa and beyond, then give you a highly opinionated, pocket-sized review.

SPLASH DOWN

Pink Poodle Crisp Rosé THEIR WORDS

“Refreshingly bold. Turns heads. But enough about you. Let us tell you about this rosé. Pink Poodle is refreshing, crisp, and fruity. Get ready for a new breed of rosé.”

SUGGESTED PERFECT PAIRINGS

A great go-to when you’ve whipped up a Southwestern ceviche or Spanish gazpacho, Pink Poodle is a wine you reach for when sitting by the pool on scorching summer days.

This being summer and all, the last thing anyone wants at a barbecue is a double-XL size bowl of ski-season chili or a Guinnessspiked Irish stew with extra potatoes. Pink Poodle proudly bills itself as being light and refreshing, so cue up World Party’s wildly underrated Bang!, and then start leafing through the recipe books for bright and unfussy hot-weather go-tos. Like Bobby Flay’s Southwestern ceviche with diced mango, orange, and grapefruit segments. Or Span-

ish gazpacho soup with roasted red pepper, toasted cumin, and fresh basil leaves.

DULY NOTED

Some of the greatest things ever in pop culture are pink, the short list starting with Pretty in Pink by John Hughes, Pink Flamingos by the great John Waters, and the one-woman hurricane known as P!nk. The name Pink Poodle serves as a tip off that you’re not expected to stick your nose in a glass and inhale for two or three minutes, and then make detailed tasting notes for your next wine club meeting. Clocking in at a budget-friendly $9.99, Pink Poodle is indeed crisp and dry, smelling of summer strawberries with notes of lemons and grapefruit front and centre. Want something more complex? Nothing’s stopping you from dropping a hundred bucks on a bottle of Château d’Esclans Garrus. But there’s no denying you’d feel guilty about drinking it poolside out of a plastic glass. Or cracking open a bottle or two and using it for summer sangria. Not so with Pink Poodle. Now where’s the ceviche? g

JULY 1 – 8 / 2021

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ARTS

Lucifer will come to life on the Iona Beach mudflats

In light-bearer, Billy Marchenski shows empathy for the devil in a show that explores a solitary existence

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by Charlie Smith

ancouver actor and dancer Billy Marchenski once portrayed Jesus in a short film called two X 4. But it wasn’t until the pandemic that he got serious about playing Lucifer.

The catalyst was a conversation he had with a friend, Lesley Ewen, in a parking lot on Great Northern Way in Vancouver. She had come to see a butoh performance that he had done with a local artist and some performers from Japan.

According to Marchenski, he shared a story with Ewen about a dream he’d had about the devil. Marchenski, who’s in his mid-40s, had experienced this as a much younger man but it stayed with him.

“It was kind of a nightmare dream,” Marchenski told the Straight by phone. “I remember it being really grotesque.”

He related to Ewen that he woke up really scared.

“She said, ‘We should make a piece out of that. I’ll dramaturg you.’ And I went, ‘Okay,’ ” Marchenski recalled.

This discussion, plus a whole lot of work, has led to the creation of light-bearer, which will have its B.C. premiere at the Dancing on the Edge festival. In this dance performance, which will be presented to a live audience at Richmond’s Iona Beach, Marchenski expresses his interpretation of what it’s like to have been cast out of heaven and fallen into hell.

The Latin word lucifer means “lightbringing” when used as an adjective— hence, the title light-bearer.

“In the mythology of Lucifer, he was the most beautiful angel in paradise,” Marchenski said.

But he quickly added that this angel started a mutiny—a rebellion in heaven— to try to overthrow God. “So he went from the most beautiful to the most ugly.”

Not only that, but the devil also experienced the ultimate separation from God, which Marchenski likened to the “ultimate isolation”. He could relate to this during the time he was rehearsing the show in his apartment.

“I thought it was pretty resonant to me at the time, being in quarantine, not being able to socialize, not being able to see people, having restrictions on me,” he said.

“I thought it actually resonates with the time that we’re in.”

Marchenski’s light-bearer will be performed as butoh, which is a form of Japanese theatre that commonly tackles taboo topics. Because it’s butoh, Marchenski will be covered in white makeup and wear a small garment covering his loins.

“A lot of that is so you can see the body,” he explained. “You can see the expressivity

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THE GEORGIA STR AIGHT

Actor and dancer Billy Marchenski’s conversation with a friend about a terrifying dream was the launching pad for his new solo dance work, light-bearer, in which he explores the pain felt by Lucifer after being cast out of heaven for starting a rebellion against God. Photo by Israel Seoane.

of the whole body.”

During the pandemic, he worked closely with Ewen, who’s living in London. He sent her videos of him dancing in his living room, often late at night. She would reply by forwarding images and videos that might inspire him, such as an iceberg melting.

“It just kind of accumulated into something I felt that I wanted to show,” Marchenski said.

Actors often need empathy to be able to see the world through their character’s eyes. That raises an obvious question: did Marchenski ever feel empathy for Lucifer?

“Oh, yeah,” he replied.

Then he took a long pause before adding that his character is up against God, an allpowerful and all-knowing entity.

“But he still has this desire to rebel or to fight against it even though he knows that he can’t possibly win,” Marchenski said.

“Even after he gets thrown into hell, he still has the desire to somehow get back at the authority.”

So, yes, Marchenski has a certain level of sympathy for the devil—at least his antiauthority side.

“I don’t know if heroic is the right word,” he added. “But he still has this unquenchable desire to sort of hit back at authority, hit back at control, hit back at those who have the power.”

Because it’s butoh, Marchenski’s character manifests this in movement in ways that people might not expect. Marchenski’s understanding of butoh is that a lot of it is about surrendering control and letting yourself be affected by the world around you and the people around you.

JULY 1 – 8 / 2021

That stands in contrast to western culture, in which people often exert a lot of effort trying to control their body and force it do things.

“To me, butoh is kind of the opposite of that,” Marchenski said. “It’s about surrendering control and surrendering power and letting your body be moved—being touched by things.”

You can see the expressivity of the whole body.

– Billy Marchenski

He feels like his character, Lucifer, is, indeed, surrendering because of the futility of his struggle. But Lucifer won’t entirely give up the fight.

That’s another aspect of the character that Marchenski can relate to.

“I’m getting older and I’m still wanting to perform—and still wanting to dance and act,” he said. “It takes a lot of self-discipline to keep training and to keep working your body and to keep trying to have your instrument in a state where you can be seen by an audience.

“And at the same time, it requires a lot

of surrendering of control, of letting your vulnerability be seen, letting who you are be seen by people,” he continued. “So, yeah, for me, I’m often struggling with this…putting myself through my paces and trying to keep myself active and at the same time relinquishing that motivation and just allowing myself to feel whatever it is I’m feeling at the moment.”

The show will take place at low tide, which introduces an element of unpredictability on each day. It’s conceivable that a bird or an animal could appear on Iona Beach.

“The piece is happening in response to when the tide is moving,” Marchenski noted. “It’s trying to be in response to the world, to nature. That’s an opportunity as a performer or an artist to sort of pay more attention to that.”

Last year, he had a rough cut of the show filmed on the beach. It occurred as wildfires were raging in Washington state and Oregon, smothering the Lower Mainland in a big cloud of smoke.

“It just looked like this barren, otherworldly kind of landscape,” Marchenski said.

“And it was kind of perfect for the piece.”

He conceded that light-bearer feels very personal to him.

“I’ve had a lot more time to myself and a lot more time at home, obviously, and a lot more time with my family,” Marchenski said. “I think it’s caused me to look inside and really assess where I’m at in my life.” g Dancing on the Edge will present six free performances of Billy Marchenski’s light-bearer on the mudflats at Iona Beach between 11:45 a.m. and 2:15 p.m., from July 8 to July 13.

ARTS

Impulses drive Kwan to dance in Chinese garden

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by Charlie Smith

ancouver dancer Ziyian Kwan realizes that as a choreographer, she can be remarkably impulsive.

That was on display in 2010 when she danced on four consecutive weekends outside the Gene Cafe at the intersection of Kingsway and Main Street to raise awareness about arts cutbacks.

“I had an idea and went with it,” Kwan recently told the Straight by phone. “And it happened.”

Last year, in a similar vein, she held a peaceful dance action outside the Dr. Sun Yat-Sen Classical Chinese Garden. That time, she used her free-flowing and uninhibited movements to oppose anti-Asian hatred that had arisen during the pandemic. The protest reflected her view that art is “always political”.

When Kwan’s nonprofit society, Dumb Instrument Dance, needed space last summer, she quickly decided to rent a pop-up space at 336 West Pender Street. Called Morrow, it includes a little gallery in the back, artists in residence, and a studio in the front.

“We sell things,” she said. “We have events there. So, again, this was a very impulsive initiative that was in response to the community and the circumstances. And it’s just taken off in an unexpected way.”

One of her more recent impulsive ideas

Dumb Instrument Dance artistic director Ziyian Kwan (right) and dance artist Rianne Svelnis plan to perform alongside various plant species in Dreaming of Koi. Photo by David Cooper.

was to stage a dance performance at the Dr. Sun Yat-Sen Classical Chinese Garden.

Called Dreaming of Koi, it was created by Kwan and fellow dancer Rianne Svelnis and taiko artist Kage and will premiere at this July’s Dancing on the Edge festival.

Dreaming of Koi is described as “a declaration of wonder for the flora and fauna that exists within and without”.

According to Kwan, the audience will experience an intersection between themselves, the artists, and the natural environment

in the spacious garden.

“It’s such a sanctuary and an oasis,” Kwan said. “There are so many species there alongside the performers.”

Kwan pointed out that ticket holders to the shows will also be able to see a new exhibit in the garden’s gallery, Rivers Have Mouths, which honours stories of relations between Indigenous people and Chinese pioneers.

“It’s exciting to have something that has so much gravitas and meaning and history in the same space at the same time as we’re doing our small experiment,” Kwan said with a touch of modesty.

Kwan has been dancing for 35 years and choreographing shows for the past seven.

As she has become more experienced as a choreographer, she’s striving to become more conscious about her impulses, as well as the choices that she’s making in response to what’s happening in the world.

“I’ve been realizing a lot in the last year that art is a medicine,” Kwan said. “And we’re not going to get through any of the horrors that exist—whether they’re around the pandemic or around oppressions of people—without art.” g Dancing on the Edge presents Dreaming of Koi at the Dr. Sun Yat-Sen Classical Chinese Garden at 5:30 p.m. from July 8 to 10 and from July 12 to 15.

Pandemic enables Kuebler to explore loneliness

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by Charlie Smith

ancouver dance artist Shay Kuebler took notice when former British prime minister Theresa May appointed a “minister for loneliness” in 2018. In a phone interview with the Straight, the veteran choreographer and dancer said that the title, minister of loneliness, sounded so surreal to him.

But he soon learned that social isolation and loneliness were two of the leading causes of disease in the U.K. As he studied this issue more deeply, he realized that it would be a worthwhile focus for a dance project, which he has called M.O.I. - Momentum of Isolation. It will have its B.C. premiere as a 45-minute work-in-progress at the Dancing on the Edge Festival.

“I knew that it was a really important topic to talk about,” Kuebler told the Straight by phone. “Also, I felt like it’s accessible to almost all of us in some way. There are definitely different layers. All I’m going to do is try to bring a perspective that I have and try to bring a perspective that my artists have.”

It will be presented live and online, and each performance will include eight dancers, including Kuebler. He has been working with these artists for the past two or three years with his company, Radical System Art. The pandemic offered plenty of time for online research, enabling the entire company to watch videos and read up on different aspects of loneliness.

Solos in the show will explore the experience of social isolation from various perspectives. According to Kuebler,

Radical System Art director and choreographer Shay Kuebler likes injecting some satire into his shows. Photo by Joyce Torres.

group performances act as a counterpoint.

“They framework reasons and questions of why these solos or why these ideas or why isolation and loneliness can

happen,” he said. “It’s actually quite a big ensemble piece.”

Before Kuebler became one of Vancouver’s marquee contemporary dancers, he was a martial-arts and theatre artist, as well as a tap and hip-hop dancer. He said that this explains why his work is often so imbued with so much physicality and theatricality.

He’s also a big fan of satire because he thinks it’s a “really important tool to talk about serious topics”. In addition, he believes that satire plays with the expectations of audiences.

So, is there room for satire in a work-in-progress focusing on loneliness and isolation?

“I grew up watching lots of standup comedy,” Kuebler replied. “I always felt that comedy was a great vehicle at times to bring forward things that we need to have conversations around. I think it just has to be done delicately— strategically—you know. Of course, the whole show is not a comedy show.”

He also sees connections between social isolation, the digital world, and the rise of artificial intelligence. According to Kuebler, these themes will play out in the imagery of the show, which will be presented in an episodic format.

“My character, specifically, has a very clear through line, and that’s really important,” Kuebler explained. “I think it helps bookend…these episodes in the work.” g Dancing on the Edge presents Radical System Art’s M.O.I. Momentum of Isolation at the Firehall Arts Centre at 7 p.m. on July 10.

It will be streamed on YouTube at 7 p.m. on July 11.

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ARTS

Calligraphy leaves mark on Carter’s choreography

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by Carlito Pablo

hion Skye Carter learned Japanese calligraphy before she discovered dance.

The artist was a young girl and recent transplant to Canada when she took up the ancient handwriting art form in lessons at the Nikkei National Museum and Cultural Centre in Burnaby.

Carter was about 10 years old at the time, a student at the centre’s Gladstone Japanese Language School.

Her mother is Japanese and her father is Canadian. She was born in Japan, and the family moved to Canada when she was six.

“I did it for a few years and I stopped taking those lessons when I graduated from the Japanese language school, and then I went on to connect with dance and movement and I fell in love with it,” Carter told the Straight in a phone interview.

In 2019, she resumed lessons with her former calligraphy teacher, Yoko Murakami, after she completed her fine-arts degree in dance and kinesiology at SFU. “I was transitioning from being a student in university to becoming a freelance artist, and I was really trying to find what I connected with from a very internal place with my art and what I wanted to create my projects about,” Carter said.

One thing that satisfied that yearning was her Japanese ancestry and culture.

With this, she emerged as a dance artist and choreographer whose practice is profoundly shaped by calligraphy, with other elements fused in as well, like sculpture, sound, and video.

“There’s a dance that takes place through the brush onto the paper, creating this beautiful shape of ink, and that shape is what I try to recreate in my movement when I bring my calligraphy practice into

Dance artist Shion Skye Carter and calligrapher Kisyuu collaborated for the short film “Flow Tide”, which will be screened as part of the Dancing on the Edge festival taking place in Vancouver.

my choreography,” Carter said.

She explained that in their pure essence, calligraphy and dance share a common character: clarity and peace of mind.

“With calligraphy, there’s a gestural sense with the use of your hands and your arms when you are writing the calligraphy words out on the paper,” Carter said. “You’re really taking putting all your focus and attention into your hands and the way that you’re writing, how much pressure you’re applying with your brush onto the paper, all of these minute details, and dance is really similar in that way,” she continued.

The Vancouver-based artist noted that there are some other types of dance or choreography “where you’re kind of wild and you don’t have any control”.

“But I think the way that I’ve been interpreting calligraphy in choreography,

there’s a lot of focus involved. It’s almost like I feel like I’m in a meditational mode, and I’m very particular about movements, especially what my hands and arms are doing,” she said.

In dance, Carter imagines the words she writes in kanji, or Japanese characters, and interprets them through motion.

“I create them with my body. So if I pretend that my hand is the brush, how can I write that word in the air or on the floor?

Or how can I write that word almost inside of my body, and make it more an internal movement with my torso and my chest?”

The intersection between calligraphy and dance also extends to her daily routine.

“One thing that I personally fell in love with again when I [re]started calligraphy was this ritualistic, meditative aspect of the practice,” Carter related.

In calligraphy, one goes through a number

of steps, starting from when a practitioner sits at the table, sets up the paper, prepares the sumi, or ink, and some more preparation before actually writing something with a brush.

“Thinking about those aspects,” Carter said, “with dance I feel like I have my daily routine, where I always have the movements that I use to warm up in the morning and before rehearsal or a dance class.

I have this kind of ritual that I go through, and the same steps to get ready for the day.”

This year’s 33rd annual Dancing on the Edge festival, which opens on July 8, features a fi lm package, and it includes a short feature by Carter and Vancouver-based Japanese calligraphy artist Kisyuu.

The film is titled “Flow Tide” and was done collaboratively from their respective homes, without the two meeting in person at the time because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“I had my partner, who I live with, fi lm my dancing,” Carter related, referring to Stefan Nazarevich, an interdisciplinary artist with whom she cofounded the “olive theory” duo.

“Kisyuu got her partner to fi lm her calligraphy and sent it to me. I edited the videos together, and in my dancing, I’m responding to her brushstroke as I play the video and watch it while I’m dancing.”

Calligraphy is also a part of the newyear tradition in Carter’s family.

“On January 1st, we get together as a family and we all do calligraphy together— my parents, my sister, and I—and we write our goals for the year ahead,” she said. g Dancing on the Edge will stream “Flow Tide” on demand between July 8 and 20 as part of the $25 Festival Film Package.

Bowie painting found in thrift store nets $100K

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by Martin Dunphy

David Bowie painted this canvas “acrylic and computer collage”. Photo by Cowley Abbott.

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THE GEORGIA STR AIGHT

1997 painting by famed recording artist David Bowie that was found in a donation centre for household goods in rural Ontario has sold for more than $100,000.

The artwork, a 9.75- by 8-inch portrait of an unnamed person, was purchased for $5 by someone looking through a pile of discarded goods at the thrift store outside a landfi ll near South River, Ontario, about a three-hour drive north of Toronto, according to auctioneers Cowley Abbott.

Cowley Abbott did not identify the painting’s consignor but described them in a June 11 news release as “astonished upon viewing a label which read ‘David Bowie’ and realizing it was the signature of the artist inscribed on the reverse”.

JULY 1 – 8 / 2021

The painting—described in a label on its back as an “acrylic and computer collage on canvas” and titled D Head XLVI—is part of a series of 47 portraits painted by Bowie between 1994 and 1997 and called “Dead Heads” (or “D Heads”).

On the painting’s back, next to Bowie’s signature, which the Toronto-based Cowley Abbott said it had verified with an “art and signature specialist in the United Kingdom”, is the date “97”.

The auction company said in a later June 24 release that the portrait sparked an international “bidding frenzy” during an online auction from June 14 to 24, finally selling for $108,120, about 10 times the original estimate of $9,000 to $12,000.

The final price also more than doubled a

C$39,000 2016 United Kingdom sale price of a Dead Heads series painting.

Bowie—a hugely influential English musician, songwriter, singer, and actor who sold more than 100 million records worldwide and who died of cancer in 2016 at the age of 69—studied art in high school and was well known for painting and for collecting art.

An auction after his death of two-thirds of his personal collection, which included works by Henry Moore and Jean-Michel Basquiat, realized about $41.5 million.

Bowie’s “Dead Heads” series featured unnamed subjects who have variously been described as his friends, acquaintances, band members, and even some selfportraits. g

JULY 1 – 8 / 2021

THE GEORGIA STR AIGHT

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ARTS

Cruz finds echoes of past amid maze of images

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by Carlito Pablo

atrick Cruz says he’s sort of joking when he makes a suggestion about his new work at the Vancouver Art Gallery.

He says visitors should bring along a Filipino friend to understand what’s going on with the mixed-media installation.

It’s called “si mabait at si malihim, mga agam agam sa kuro kuro”. It’s part of the gallery’s ongoing exhibit, Vancouver Special: Disorientations and Echo.

Some of his previous works carry a title in Filipino—the official language in the Philippines that is based on the Tagalog dialect—and include an English translation.

This one doesn’t have a version in English.

Cruz obviously had a lot of fun creating the concept, which explains why he was very amused with the first question asked by the Straight in a phone interview.

What’s his official translation for “si mabait at si malihim, mga agam agam sa kuro kuro”?

“Sometimes there are just things that you can’t translate,” the Philippine-born artist said gleefully.

There’s a good reason why, and it’s that a literal English translation doesn’t even begin to unravel the world informing the work.

One version could go something like, “the kind one and the secretive being: doubts about a point of view”.

However, mabait, or the “kind one”, doesn’t refer to a person or perhaps a god.

For a number of Filipino speakers, it’s slang for rodents or mice.

Cruz recalled his aunt saying, “Nandyan na yung mabait,” which means that rats are around the house.

It’s a clear indication that after centuries of Catholicism, animistic beliefs— which predated western colonization of the Asian archipelago that became the Philippines—have survived and were passed on across generations.

Before Spanish conquest and Christian conversion, natives believed, and many still do at present, that spirits dwell in creatures and natural features like trees, mountains, and rivers.

Animals were considered sacred, and so one shouldn’t say bad things about them. Hence, this may explain the friendly allusion to rats as kind beings, lest they become angry and start destroying crops and household items.

As for the whole installation, Cruz said that visitors should expect to “get lost within the images”.

“I guess the installation is disorienting.

There’s so much to see. And a lot of the elements do echo with each other,” he said.

The exhibit is a maze of paintings that Cruz hung on a clothesline. Moreover, “It’s accompanied by this radio drama through a mouse hole.”

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THE GEORGIA STR AIGHT

Vancouver artist Patrick Cruz names some of his work in Filipino to connect with his heritage.

The artist’s “si mabait at si malihim, mga agam agam sa kuro kuro” installation is included in the Vancouver Art Gallery’s exhibition titled Vancouver Special: Disorientations and Echo.

So it’s back to the subject of mice, which ties in with the other elements of “si mabait at si malihim, mga agam agam sa kuro kuro”.

To explain, Filipinos of a certain age will remember the late Fidela Mendoza Magpayo, who was considered the queen of radio dramas in the Philippines.

Popularly known as Tiya Dely (translation: Aunt Dely), Magpayo’s comforting voice would fill the airwaves, dispensing advice to those who wrote her, mostly regarding their problems about love, family, and relationships.

The “Tiya Dely” inspiration is behind the “agam agam sa kuro kuro” part of the

title. This speaks to a person’s doubts about how to deal with a particular situation, and so the need to seek advice from someone.

For the fun part, mice hiding behind the walls probably listened to the same radio dramas. In homage to this, Cruz edited an audio piece from the show, which can be heard through the mouse hole of his installation.

As for malihim, or the “secretive being”, Cruz said that it is a reference to the sphinx, a mythical creature that symbolizes mystery or the unknown.

Because art is a language common to all cultures, Cruz noted that an English

S ociety HAS NEW NAME Esther Rausenberg is now the top staff person at the Eastside Arts Society.

d THE EASTSIDE CULTURE CRAWL SOCIETY, the organization behind Vancouver’s hugely popular visual-arts event, the Eastside Culture Crawl, has changed its name to the Eastside Arts Society.

The newly named society has also announced that the Vancouver Foundation has awarded it $300,000 over three years to develop a strategic plan for the implementation of a designated Eastside Arts District.

JULY 1 – 8 / 2021

“Since 2010, hundreds of artists have suffered devastating losses to their workspaces and communities due to evictions, rent increases, and shrinking studio space,” Eastside Arts Society artistic and executive director Esther Rausenberg said in a news release. “The Vancouver Foundation grant is the first step towards the creation of policies and funding models that will offer sustainable solutions for artists.

“At the same time,” Rausenberg said, “the establishment of a designated arts district will serve to formally recognize the significant value and impact artists make on a healthy, thriving society, while simultaneously enhancing economic growth and boosting tourism.”

The society also announced the Create!

Arts Festival in August, which will feature hands-on art-making activities led by local artists and craft makers. g

by Steve Newton

translation of his work is not really necessarily for viewers to gain something from it.

Cruz said that he uses Filipino titles for some of his works from time to time as a way for him to reconnect with his heritage.

“I learned much of my art through a western lens, through western histories, so I think doing things in Tagalog or thinking in ways through a Tagalog lens allows for an alternative perspective, a different vantage point,” he said.

Cruz was 18 when his whole family moved to Canada in 2005. He was then a fine-arts student at the University of the Philippines.

The second of three siblings finished his arts degree at Emily Carr University of Art + Design. He completed his master’s at the University of Guelph. He has taught in Canadian universities, and will work as an instructor at Emily Carr starting this September.

Cruz travels to the Philippines to host the Kamias Triennial, which has grown to become an international event featuring Canadian, international, and local Filipino artists.

Cruz started the exhibit, which runs every three years, in 2014 in the neighbourhood of Kamias, a district in Quezon City in Metro Manila. He grew up in Kamias, which was named after a citrus fruit that is used to make sour soup, or sinigang.

Cruz was in the Philippines for the third Kamias Triennial around the time when the COVID-19 lockdowns started in early 2020.

“As an expatriate from the Philippines, you slowly disconnect with your culture,” Cruz noted. “You become Canadianized…

I think, for me, it’s still important to go back to the roots.” g The Vancouver Art Gallery’s Vancouver Special: Disorientations and Echo exhibit runs until January 2.

JAZZ FEST

Dalannah Gail Bowen channels Holiday’s pain

by Steve Newton

piano player,” Bowen raves. “I’ve been so very fortunate—through all of the blues, from my very first album, Mama’s Got the Blues, right on to now, he’s been playing with me. And because he’s such a strong musician, he’s adept at everything, you know. His jazz colourings are beautiful, his phrasing is beautiful—which is good, because I’m a back-phraser. Sometimes he’ll say, ‘Stay on the beat,’ and I’ll go, ‘Well, I don’t stay on the beat, I’m sorry.’ ” Bowen can’t remember the first time she heard Holiday’s voice, but she can’t forget the effect it had on her.

“When I first heard her, I just felt so much pain in her voice, you know. That’s what it makes me think of when I hear

Billie sing. Her songs are wonderful, but they’re very remorseful.

“I’m just making up the set list now,” she adds, “and it’s an interesting study with her songs, because a lot of them are in that regretful, sad stage where it’s a love lost, anger at love—you know what I mean.

So it has to be paced properly to make it work, because I try not to go to a place where everything is depressing, right. I try to take people on a journey and, hopefully, come out at the end with a resolution that makes sense of what I’ve just shared.” g Dalannah Gail Bowen performs Billie’s Blues at Frankie’s Jazz Club on July 4 at 7:30 p.m. as part of the TD Vancouver International Jazz Festival.

Dalannah Gail Bowen has been called “the matriarch of Vancouver blues” for her decades of contributions as a performer, recording artist, organizer, and activist. Photo by David Cooper.

D

alannah Gail Bowen has been a fixture on the Vancouver blues scene for going on 40 years.

Whether performing in the annual Vancouver Food Bank fundraiser she created, Blues for Christmas, or opening for the likes of Willie Dixon and BB King at the Commodore, if there was a blues gig in town, chances were Bowen was involved.

Or maybe you’d just see her in the crowd, joyfully taking it all in.

Emotion-drenched vocals have always been Bowen’s calling card, so it’s a little surprising to learn that her musical life didn’t start as a singer. When she was young, she showed real promise as a keyboardist.

“It was kind of an escape for me because my household and my upbringing was very tough,” Bowen recalls on the line from her Downtown East Side Co-op. “I didn’t fit in, so they bought a piano and I used to play for hours and hours so I wouldn’t have to deal with the family. I even got to play with the Junior Symphony Orchestra of Winnipeg as the concert soloist.

“My one big regret is that I don’t play the piano anymore,” she adds. “I’d thought about taking it up again, but it just didn’t happen. I decided to focus on my voice.”

That decision to pursue a career as a singer has led to a life full of rich musical experiences for the 75-year-old crooner.

One of the richest involved the times when Bowen, while living in Winnipeg in the sixties, performed several times at a supper club called the Town ’n’ Country with none other than jazz legend Lenny Breau.

“Lenny and I had a pretty special relationship,” Bowen says. “As you know, he was a heroin addict, and when he was trying to get clean, he would come to my house and stay for a coupla days and I’d take care

When I first heard her [Billie Holiday], I just felt so much pain in her voice…

– Dalannah Gail Bowen

of him—then off he’d go again. He did that when I moved to Edmonton, too.”

Breau is considered one of the greatest guitarists of all time—Telecaster master Danny Gatton once labelled him “The Humbler”—and Bowen has no doubts about that.

“When some people play, it feels like it’s a divine connection,” she says, “like the music is just coming through them. And no matter who you are, it touches you.

Lenny played like that.”

Bowen has been making some connections of her own with fans of the blues, the genre that she’s immersed herself in, body and soul, for so many years.

“It’s heart music,” she says. “I mean, I don’t know anybody that can’t mention a blues song that meant something to them.

It really speaks to truth and life experience—for me, anyway. And the other thing is, it’s easily accessible, because if you want to just open your ears and listen, it’ll take you on a journey.”

Speaking of blues journeys, Bowen’s latest trek will bring her to Frankie’s Jazz Club on July 4, when she’ll be performing a jazz-fest tribute to Billie Holiday titled Billie’s Blues. She’ll be accompanied at that gig by bassist Miles Hill, saxophonist Dave Say, and her musical partner of 28 years, pianist Michael Creber.

“Michael Creber is the most wonderful JULY 1 – 8 / 2021

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JAZZ FEST

Bill Coon isn’t just lazing around during jazz fest

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by Steve Newton

ancouver jazz artist Bill Coon started playing guitar in his early teens, thanks in large part to his brother David. His elder sibling— currently the leader of New Brunswick’s Green Party—had a cheap acoustic sixstring that, despite its high action, young Bill took a real shining to. Permanently.

“Pretty soon after, I stopped taking piano lessons and I picked up my brother’s guitar,” Coon says on the phone from his North Burnaby home. “And as I say—or he will tell people—I never gave it back.”

Not long after absconding with his bro’s instrument, Coon started getting good enough to perform. It wasn’t long before he discovered there was gold in them thar jazz

licks. Or a few bucks, anyway.

“When I first started getting into guitar, it didn’t really occur to me that I could make a living doing it,” Coon says. “I remember getting my first gig playing jazz at a Mexican restaurant in downtown Montreal, and I think we made $30 each. I couldn’t really imagine it, because we’d be playing in the basement [for free] anyway. So I thought, ‘Wow, I can make money doing this.’ ” That first paying gig was followed by more than three decades of musical achievements, including playing on over 50 recordings, winning awards and commissions from the B.C. Arts Council and the Canada Council for the Arts, and being chosen guitarist of the year at the 2009 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.

Scan to conffess Mud Bath

As odd a craving it may be, I feel like sleeping in temperature-controlled clay mud. I’d be keeping cool and avoiding mosquito bites (at least on the mud covered parts).

Ghosts I think I saw an ex. He certainly has a type and his new partner is a more height and age appropriate lookalike of me. I would have gone on being all schadenfreude but was more surprised by my reaction. I wasn’t heartbroken, just more curious. Happy for him that he found a new distraction and thoughtful how we both, in our own way, haven’t quite moved on like we thought.

Delete Button This site should have one because half the time I cringe at my own comments and want to delete it. Written responses read lot harsher than intended.

Three’s a crowd and two’s company Before my girlfriend and I broke up, we were going to have a ménage a Trois with her friend. I really liked that idea and things seemed to go according to plan until she put a stop to it. She didn’t even talk about it anymore. I wondered why. Looking back now, I think my ex girlfriend was jealous. She had this theory that I’d probably find her friend more attractive than she was. Well if that’s how she felt then I guess she’s right. My ex girlfriend’s friend was way better looking anyhow. Oh well, nothing ventured, nothing gained.

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THE GEORGIA STR AIGHT

to post a Confession JULY 1 – 8 / 2021

Vancouver jazz-guitar great Bill Coon loves his Mini Voyager guitar, built by local luthier Mike Kinal. He’ll no doubt be playing it at some, if not all, of his four jazz-festival performances.

I’ve managed to eke out a living playing and teaching music.

– Bill Coon

National Jazz Awards. So which of those accomplishments is he most proud of?

“I’ve managed to eke out a living playing and teaching music,” the 61-year-old replies, “and that’s not something that is the easiest path. So I’m just kinda proud of that.”

The majority of Coon’s recent musical forays have seen him making use of his favourite guitar, one that was handcrafted by local luthier Mike Kinal, a local highschool woodworking teacher who builds guitars part-time. The instrument Coon favours, which he’s been playing for about a dozen years, is called the Mini Voyager.

“I played a lotta guitars,” he says, “and this one seems to suit my body quite well. It has a nice acoustic sound, so if I’m playing with a band like Triology or if I’m doing a smaller group, I can turn my guitar amp down and you can hear the acoustic part of it too, if it’s a quiet situation. So it has a nice acoustic-electric blend to it. And the neck is great.”

As far as his own personal taste in guitar slingers go, Coon isn’t big on speedy players who blast off 10 notes a second. You won’t see him lining up at a Joe Satriani or Steve Vai gig any time soon.

“I certainly appreciate their musicianship and their guitar mastery,” he says, “but I’ve always been into guys that sort of figured a way to do more with less. For example, someone like Ed Bickert, or to a certain extent Lenny Breau. Jim Hall.

Those kind of players I’ve always been really drawn to, more the lyrical side. But I love all sorts of guitar players.”

Coon says he was influenced early on by guitarists like George Benson and Wes Montgomery; one of the records that he listened to “to death” was the 1962 Jim Hall/Bill Evans duo record Undercurrent.

Nowadays, when he’s not listening to jazz, he enjoys orchestral or chamber music. His fave classical composer is Maurice Ravel.

“He seems to really have a magical way with an orchestra and colour and combinations of instruments,” Coon says of Ravel.

“I love the way he writes.”

As far as local guitar players go, Coon points to Tony Wilson, David Blake, and Dave Sikula as among the city’s top pickers.

“We’ve got a pretty rich guitar thing going on in this city,” he asserts, “and it’s actually really grown in the last 20 years, quite amazingly. The first time I ever heard about a Vancouver jazz scene was hearing Oliver Gannon playing on a CBC program many years ago. I got to play with him, and then we actually made two records. So I consider Oliver Gannon sort of the godfather of the jazz guitar here in Vancouver.”

Local Coon fans hoping to see him perform at jazz fest shouldn’t have much trouble tracking him down—live or online—as he’s booked to play no less than four festival gigs.

“I’m not just lazing around during jazz fest,” he says. “I’m keepin’ busy.” g As part of the TD Vancouver International Jazz Festival, Bill Coon performs with Triology at Pyatt Hall on June 30 at 7 p.m.; with his 4Tet and Campbell Ryga at Pyatt Hall on July 1 at 7 p.m.; with Laura Crema at Frankie’s Jazz Club on July 2 at 7:30 p.m. (sold out, with wait list); and with the Jodi Proznick Trio as part of Jasmine Jazz at Performance Works on July 4 at 2:30 p.m.

MUSIC

What’s in Your Fridge: Vancouver rapper Junk

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by Charlie Smith

Bob Marley and the Wailers Legend I mean, I guess it’s cliché to list this, but it’s such a beautifully happy and melancholic album. How can I not? Bob will be the most timeless artist of all time in my opinion. This album will be digested in 50 to 100 years still with the same efficacy. This is the best album to put on if you’re feeling any type of way.

hat’s In Your Fridge is where the Straight asks Vancouverites about life-changing concerts, top albums, and, most importantly, what’s sitting beside the Heinz ketchup in their custom-made Big Chill Retropolitan 20.6-cubic-foot refrigerators.

ON THE GRILL

Junk

WHAT’S IN YOUR FRIDGE

WHO ARE YOU

My name is Junk, which is short for Junkie Juggler. Reason for the name? Ever since I was young, I was an addict at everything I did—whether music, sports, partying, or drawing, I would juggle everything all at the same time and be a fiend for everything I did with no end in sight. This is still true to this day and is why I am heavily invested in my craft of making words rhyme obsessively on a daily and sometimes hourly basis. Whether I am in the studio writing or the stage performing, no matter what, I am an addict. I am born in Germany, to a German mother and an Italian father. I moved between Italy and Germany a lot until my parents separated. Finally I made the leap to B.C. with my mother. In this city I have been rapping for over a decade. I am trilingual and rap in English, German and, of course, Italian.

From winning freestyle rap battles, emcee competitions, opening for well-known acts to headlining my own sold-out shows across Canada to signing with local legend Snak The Ripper’s label Stealthbomb Records, life has been hectic, but it’s been a blessing.

FIRST CONCERT

The 1993 Binge & Purge Metallica tour in Berlin. I was a wee little guy sitting on my mom’s shoulders with these little binoculars watching the melodic mayhem unfold. AC/ DC was on the bill as well. So it was an iconic and formative experience for the young child that I was. I remember lots of fire and pyrotechnics that day. Fucking eh.

Two Bottles of El Jimador tequila. I hate tequila with a passion. I can’t even smell it or I’ll puke. That being said, it’s very unclear how it got there. But I’ll keep it in there for the freaks that come by and need it for fuel.

Prewrapped peanut butter–and-jelly sandwiches. I rarely cook for myself so my fridge looks like a squatter’s fridge. That being said, my mother works on movie sets as a crafty, so she always brings me the remnants of whatever they’re serving that day. So let me tell you, I fucking love those PBJ sandwiches.

Junk has a new album titled Lions Eat Goats, which he recorded with Young Stitch, but when it comes to what’s in his refrigerator, he’s partial to the PBJ sandwiches. Photo by Shae Mcmanus.

LIFE-CHANGING CONCERT

I think it would be watching my father’s band Prozac Piu in Italy. One time, he was rocking an enormous crowd for the Pope in Rome while opening for U2. Pure madness.

My father is a very well-respected musician in Italy, so it’s watching him that really made me want to do this music thing as a career.

TOP THREE RECORDS

Chef Raekwon Only Built 4 Cuban Linx The slang, the RZA production, the aesthetics, and the verbal wizardry of that album—the first time I heard it and saw the visuals, it made me go buy Tommy Hilfiger and hush puppies immediately. It was also the first album I ever bought. God bless the Wu. Kanye West My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy I’m convinced this is the greatest album ever made, period. Kanye was really

in his bag on this one. From the first note to the last, it’s the perfect sonic masterpiece.

Soda streams. I always have two bottles of carbonated water in my fridge. I am very Euro when it comes to the water I drink. I won’t drink water unless it’s sparkling. g

Hassan Farrow So In Love From the smash pop of Shelter to the sultry R&B of Crazy Beautiful to the ethereal intensity of the title track So In Love, Hassan delivers an album of amazing maturity, consistency and attention to detail.

Stream it today on

Herb Harris Music Co. FRIDAY JULY 2, 7 PM - 11:30 PM

www.twitch.tv/bloodofthephoenixofficial JULY 1 – 8 / 2021

THE GEORGIA STR AIGHT

15

MOVIES

How Zola made space for Black sex workers’ tales

O

by Radheyan Simonpillai

ne October evening in 2015, A’Ziah Wells King, a.k.a. Zola, flexed her Twitter fingers and wrote something revolutionary.

Zola’s words—“we vibing over our hoeism”—rang out like a mantra for sex workers who were finally finding online spaces to tell their stories.

In the crazy viral Twitter thread, which is now a movie, Zola recounted how she met a white exotic dancer named “Jess” at Hooters in Detroit who lured her on a wild trip through Florida involving a pimp, a stooge, several johns, a lot of stupidity, and very real danger, with abductions and shotguns. (Jess has challenged aspects of the tale.)

What made #TheStory resonate weren’t the hair-raising events but the way they were told. Zola’s voice cut through the murk with humour and shaped the narrative with her authenticity, attitude, observation, and insight. According to Ellie Ade Kur from Maggie’s Toronto Sex Workers Action Project, every Black exotic dancer remembers when they read the thread for the first time.

“It spoke to so many workplace dynamics that a lot of us were used to,” says Ade Kur, who was a dancer at the time that #TheStory dropped on Twitter. “It was so

Black sex worker A’Ziah Wells King (right), a.k.a. Zola, put out a 148-tweet Twitter thread in 2015 that ncluded a lively tale about a woman named Jess (left), whom she met in a Detroit Hooters.

exciting because it was a narrative told from the perspective of another Black sex worker. That’s what made it so relatable.”

“I like to find people who relate to me,” Zola says, speaking to the Straight over the phone from Los Angeles. She says she recognizes the sense of community her thread

forged. She felt the connection with Black women, Black sex workers, and even the LGBT community, which she identifies with as someone who is bisexual. “I found all of them in one space. I got to really get my whole sense of community in one space and really run with it.”

Zola tells the Straight about how much has changed for her and for sex workers since the world was introduced to her raw and candid storytelling in the historic thread.

The movie version of those tweets, Zola, drops June 30 wherever theatres are open. In it, director Janicza Bravo’s sticks dutifully to Zola’s tone and plot, even re-creating those moments the author admits were exaggerations. The filmmaker recognizes that Zola’s voice is why we will be watching.

The way people receive Zola’s storytelling has been eye-opening. “Drama, humor, action, suspense, character development,” filmmaker Ava DuVernay wrote on Twitter. “There’s so much untapped talent in the hood.”

Zola, though, is quick to point out that she’s not from the hood. She grew up in the suburbs. Her mom’s a paralegal. On more than one occasion, Zola had to correct observers on social media who confused her Blackness for being ghetto and automatically assumed that her choice of occupation made her a victim of circumstance. She went viral. The stereotypes and easy assumptions she subverts showed up in the replies.

Zola is a hilarious and intuitive writer, see next page

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performer, content creator, and sex worker—often all at once. She’s still posting adult content to OnlyFans, even though she has a buzzy movie coming out, because sex work is a choice, a way to express her sexuality and confidence, not something she has to escape or from which aspires to graduate with newfound success.

“I’m comfortable expressing myself like that,” Zola says, describing camming and OnlyFans as spaces where she can continually reinvent herself. Zola started camming years ago, setting up a stripper pole in her living room so she could do her work from home while reaching a global audience. “I could be talking to a guy over in India for, like, 10 hours and would make way more money than I would just talking to a few men in my city at the club.”

The way the Internet has created new avenues for sex work is more of the same old in an evolutionary trend. Sex work has always been a key economic driver for technological progress. Think about how porn migrated from the printing press, Super 8, VHS, online and now VR. But Zola’s Twitter thread is part of another evolution. She helped move the needle on how sex workers were seen and represented. Her story arrived at a moment when social media was giving marginalized communities a voice, and sex workers were among them. OnlyFans wasn’t a thing yet. Cardi B was just popping off, chipping away at the taboos around sex work. The former exotic dancer turned rapper had

Everyone has their niche. Everyone has their boundaries, so to speak.

– A’Ziah Wells King, a.k.a. Zola

been building her presence on Instagram before appearing on the VH1 reality TV series Love & Hip Hop. Meanwhile, people in the industry began creating Twitter or Instagram pages for themselves. And Zola felt the moment was right.

“It was a now-or-never breakthrough type of time for me to share my experience,” says Zola, whose story took things further.

The story Zola put out was replete with onthe-ground details and nuances about stripclub and Backpage.com economics that you would never know from how sex workers were depicted in movies and TV, which Zola says always got it wrong. “Either it’s too glamourized or its too dehumanized,” she says, referring to the Pretty Woman fantasy or the countless depictions of sex workers in danger in movies. “It’s never [about] just a sex worker who is confident, enjoys their job, and that’s just who they are.”

Zola’s story also has moments of trauma and exploitation, which, she adds, is more reason to decriminalize the business. But she manages those aspects in her writing

with confidence, authority, and insight— the same way she handles the intricacies and relationships involved in sex work.

And as Ade Kur says, it’s Zola’s Black perspective that makes all the difference.

“The dominant voices in this field have typically been cis white women talking at us or about us,” Ade Kur says, noting that Zola’s thread inspired so many more voices to speak out. “It opened the floodgates for a lot of Black dancers and sex workers to use platforms like Twitter and Instagram to really be talking about what actually happens in the life of a Black sex worker, whether its you’re dynamic with clients or with white and non-Black sex workers.”

LIKE THE TWITTER thread, Zola the movie is perceptive about the racial dynamics between Taylour Paige’s Zola, Riley Keough’s Stefani (the character’s name is changed from Jess), and the clients in-between. In a pivotal sequence, Zola is set up with Stefani in a hotel room. They receive johns responding to a Backpage.com ad. Zola answers the door to check out the men seeking Stefani. “And the look of disgust on their face…” Zola says, her half-formed sentence recalling the reallife scenario, a whole weekend receiving men who made their preference for white women blatant. “They’re just like, ‘Umm, I wanted a blond-haired white girl.’ I’m like, ‘Okay.

Calm down. Don’t look at me like that.’ ” That racism is obvious at a lot of strip clubs, too, Zola says, expressing the very sentiment that led to Black strippers

striking across North America last summer. White girls can show up, be cute like “America’s sweetheart”, and make money.

But Black women have to put in the work.

“My personality and my dance skills have to make up for it,” Zola says. “I have to be better than that or I’m not going to make any money. That’s just what it is. That shows in the film when you see Taylour Paige dancing better than Riley Keough.

All those little details are in there.”

The other big difference between Paige’s Zola and Keough’s Stefani is that the former sticks to dancing while the latter provides full-service sex work for a pimp. That gulf is also fodder for discrimination in the sex-work industry, a “whorearchy” where upscale escorts look down on dancers who look down on cam girls who look down on indoor full-service sex workers who look down on people working the street.

Zola acknowledges the whorearchy but makes clear that her story isn’t meant to diminish women who do full-service sex work. Instead, her story is about a woman whose lies and manipulations put Zola in compromising positions.

“If you really are in the community and you work in sex work, you already know,” Zola says. “Everyone has their niche. Everyone has their boundaries, so to speak.…

She’s a full-service sex worker. That’s the hardest work of them all. The issue wasn’t what she was doing but how she was doing it. She was willing to put other people in harm’s way solely for her own benefit.” g

JULY 1 – 8 / 2021

THE GEORGIA STR AIGHT

17

SAVAGE LOVE

Uncle nauseated by the other kind of gay wedding Plus, bi siblings come out, straight guy experiments with trans sex workers, and a closeted pec lover

by Dan Savage

b I JUST ATTENDED the nauseating wedding of my 30-year-old niece to her boyfriend of several years. Both of them seem as gay as possible but they are diehard religious fanatics. I can list 50 signs these two are gay, and once you point it out to someone who isn’t a bible thumper, they go, “Yeah, that makes so much sense.” The bride’s father, who was also the minister, praised them for not moving in together before the wedding—another sign.

I personally find hetero abstinence until age 30 to be highly suspicious. In fact, refraining from heterosexual intercourse until that age only seems realistic if someone is gay or asexual. Our extended families are all religious blowhards and we’re the only queer-friendly outlet in the family.

I want badly to let the newlyweds know it’s okay to question the complexities of sexuality and that we’re here to support them.

I fear they’ll live for decades in awkwardness because my niece’s minister father is beyond judgmental and insists love (and marriage) can only exist between one man and one woman. Is there any tactful way to ask someone if they’re gay? Or to at least offer support if they are closeted? How do we let them know our little corner of the family will love and support them? I wish someone had asked me when I was trying to figure it out.

- Union Not Concealing LGBTQ Energy

Why would you go to that wedding when it’s

still possible to plead pandemic? And avoid having to sit in a room full of unpleasant people and their equally unpleasant friends? Both real and imaginary? A group of people who are also highly likely to be unvaccinated?

Anyway, UNCLE, if you’re out to the family about being queer and/or being queer-friendly—it’s unclear what you ultimately figured out about yourself—your work here is done. Your niece knows queer people exist because you exist; she knows queer people live openly because you live openly. So she knows she has options and she knows she has at least one family member she can turn to. Now if you were to take the next step—a radical step—and actually call your niece on the phone and ask her if she’s queer—if you were to list all the traits you regard as proof that both she and her husband are queer—it’s possible she might suddenly come out. Unlikely, UNCLE, but possible. But it’s almost certain you would be scratched from the guest list for all future family events, whether or not your niece comes out, which seriously tips the scales in favor of making that call.

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THE GEORGIA STR AIGHT

were attracted to me—I decided to explore my sexuality. This is when I discovered trans women and became very confused. I am very aroused by them, even more than to cis women, and this is very confusing to me because they were women with very feminine appearances but their genitals were still masculine.

At first I thought this was just some passing kink, but then I decided to experiment with trans sex workers. I got very aroused and enjoyed these encounters. Does this make me gay? I have never felt anything towards a cis or trans man and can’t picture myself doing anything with one. I have always identified as straight, but this makes me think the label doesn’t fit. Also, I haven’t told anyone else, but my friends think trans women are men and doing anything with them sexually is gay. Are they right?

- Complications Implicating Straightness

Your friends are wrong. You’re a straight guy

Dan tells a reader who suspects that both a married religious niece and her new husband are gay to either be there for future support or to call and find out. Photo by Olivia Baus/Unsplash.

b RECENTLY MY NEPHEW informed the whole family that he is gay. We all said supportive things and I told him about a “coming out” [collection] of movies (called “boys life”), and he appreciated the gesture. Now I come to the real reason for my writing to you. Though I enjoy the company of women—I am a man—my secret is that I find pleasure in sucking the pecs of muscular males. In my college days, I made several male students and professors quite happy and I got pleasure from these encounters as well. Occasionally, when the opportunity presented itself, I came while being dominated by a muscular man with big nips and it was heaven. My family knows nothing about this “other side” of me. I find myself envying my nephew’s openness. Perhaps a naive question, Mr. Savage, but are there others out there like me?

- Pensively Examining Complex Sexuality

P.S. Maybe one day I can take the same brave step my nephew has.

are other bi guys out there. Some are into muscular pecs (although we just call them tits now); some keep this side of themselves from their spouses and families (which exacerbates bisexual invisibility and poor mentalhealth outcomes among bisexuals); and some really get off on being dominated

Yes, PECS, there

JULY 1 – 8 / 2021

(because, like, that shit is hot). So you are definitely not alone.

P.S. Today could be the day. b JUST WANTED TO say thanks for the push I needed to come out as bisexual to my family. I told my parents a couple weeks ago and just told my sisters. Surprise response?

My oldest sister is also bisexual. Not the response I was expecting, but it was a moment of recognition for both of us. I’m 31 years old, and for years I convinced myself that labels weren’t important, but I feel like a huge weight was lifted off me. This is who I am, and it is important.

Thanks for talking about bisexual visibility for a long time. For some reason it took that repetition for me to feel like my bisexuality mattered and that coming out is important for me and the whole LGBTQ+ community.

- Proudly Unmasking Silenced Heart

Welcome out, PUSH , and how cool to learn you have—that you’ve always had—a queer sister!

b I’M A MAN. As a teenager, I had crushes on women but I was usually too shy to do anything about it. I had a girlfriend for two years and I enjoyed her romantically and sexually. After the relationship ended— and after struggling to find women that

who likes dick—dick, not dudes. And luckily for you, CIS, there are plenty of dicks out there that aren’t attached to dudes.

While it might feel like a complicated and complicating way to be a straight guy, CIS, the straight label still applies. b “LGBT” patterns are neurotic, preventable, and treatable. The Left has been lying about this for decades. Friskiness is one thing; perversion is another. Early life problems in parental bonding are the root of most conditions of sexual irregularity.

- Sharon Offers An Opposing View

Lemme guess, Sharon-Rhymes-WithKaren: many, many years ago you caught your husband with a cock in his mouth— the same husband who was never big on initiating sex (at least with you)—and somehow your husband managed to convince you it was just one of those things, just one of those frisky things, a trip to the moon on cocksucker wings, just one of those things.

I’m here to tell you there wasn’t just one.

Your husband has sucked more cock than you know, SOAOV, and less cock than he’d like. And for the record: LGBT describes people, not patterns, and everything you claim—that we’re neurotic, that we can be cured, that we failed to bond with one parent or bonded too much with another—was debunked decades ago. I would urge you to do a little reading but your time might be better spent checking in on your husband.

Where is he right now? g Email: mail@savagelove.net. Follow Dan Savage on Twitter @FakeDanSavage. Website www. savagelovecast.com.

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