The Georgia Straight - Heart of the City - Oct 31, 2019

FREE | OCTOBER 31 – NOVEMBER 7 / 2019

Volume 53 | Number 2702

TRANSIT TURMOIL

Unifor goes it alone with strike vote

BODY REMEMBERS East Van encounter inspires film

GEOFF BERNER

Has grand aspirations with Hotel Cosmopolis

Heart of the City

An epic Chinatown battle between koi and an otter inspired guitarist Shon Wong’s new musical, Tale of the Eastside Lantern, with Rosa Cheng

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October 31 - November 7 / 2019

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ANALYSIS

As two Unifor locals approach possible strike action, they won’t be getting help from the labour movement.

By Charlie Smith

10 FOOD

Indie roasters and sustainability are the focus of Beanstock, a two-day coffee fest on Granville Island.

By Gail Johnson

21 MOVIES

A local tale unfolds in real time in the stunning new film The Body Remembers When the World Broke Open.

By Janet Smith

24 MUSIC

Convinced that it’s good to be busy, Geoff Berner hopes to do good with a new play, record—and political party.

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e Start Here 10 BOOKS 11 THE BOTTLE 25 CONFESSIONS 18 DANCE 9 HOROSCOPES 11 I SAW YOU 22 MOVIE REVIEWS 6 NEWS 6 REAL ESTATE 27 SAVAGE LOVE 19 VISUAL ARTS

e Online TOP 5

e Listings 20 ARTS 25 MUSIC

Vancouver’s News and Entertainment Weekly Volume 53 | Number 2702 1635 West Broadway, Vancouver, B.C. V6J 1W9 T: 604.730.7000 F: 604.730.7010 E: gs.info@straight.com straight.com

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Check out what people are reading this week on Straight.com.

1 2 3 4 5

Eric Denhoff: Why are Albertans so damned angry?

Woman verbally abuses Burnaby store staff with racist rant.

Vocalist Kim Woojin drops out of K-pop’s Stray Kids.

Ex-Canuck Erik Gudbranson traded for spare parts.

Fet’s Whiskey Kitchen won’t take rare-liquor seizure lying down.

GeorgiaStraight @GeorgiaStraight @GeorgiaStraight

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ANALYSIS

Unions won’t help Unifor if there’s a transit strike

by Charlie Smith

S

Transit operators can legally strike on Friday (November 1). Photo by Stephen Hui

hould the entire bus and SeaBus system be shut down so that transit operators can get longer bathroom breaks?

That’s what some transit riders might be wondering after Unifor locals 111 and 2200 issued a 72-hour strike notice to TransLink’s wholly owned operating company, Coast Mountain Bus Company. The operators in Local 111 and the maintenance and SeaBus workers in Local 2200 are seeking better working conditions, wages, and benefits. They will be in a legal strike position at midnight Thursday (October 31).

This is no ordinary labour dispute, in part because the union is outside the house of labour.

Unifor, the largest private-sector union in Canada, split from the Canadian Labour Congress last year, claiming that U.S.–based locals were interfering in its elections. It’s also no longer connected to the B.C. Federation of Labour or the New Westminster and District of Vancouver labour councils.

That means transit operators and SeaBus and maintenance staff can’t expect much support from other unions, apart from having their picket lines honoured.

Unifor’s president, Jerry Dias, is seen by some as the architect of Ken Georgetti’s loss in the last Canadian Labour Congress presidential election before Unifor pulled out. Georgetti, a former B.C. Federation of Labour president and long-time Burnaby resident, has a lot of friends in the B.C. labour movement.

Not only that, Dias also contributed $300 to former Conservative cabinet minister Kellie Leitch’s unsuccessful bid in 2016 to replace Stephen Harper as Conservative leader.

So you can see why there might be bad blood between Unifor and other B.C. unions.

How this will play out on the ground is anyone’s guess. But Labour Minister Harry Bains and the premier’s unionfriendly chief of staff, Geoff Meggs, likely won’t leap to attention should Dias call, seeking their assistance.

Unifor’s relations with other unions isn’t the only unusual wrinkle in this dispute. Both Unifor locals also have new presidents. Local 2200 president Mike Smith had experience on his union executive before moving into his position. Balbir Mann, who heads Local 111, had never been on the executive before being elected.

And he’s heading a union local that could find itself in a very contentious strike in the full glare of the media.

As the transit system has expanded, Coast Mountain Bus Company has hired many new drivers.

This, along with a contentious recent election, elevates the possibility of a local divided between the newer operators, who have never gone on strike, and the older members, who recall the gruelling and bitter fourmonth walkout in 2001.

Under the most recent contract, transit operators with two years’ experience are paid $32.61 per hour.

Mechanics, machinists, electricians, bodypersons, fare-box-maintenance mechanics, electronic technicians, welders, tire people, and painters who have completed four-year apprenticeships receive $40.09 per hour.

The labour minister, Bains, has said that he wants collective bargaining to unfold without interference. The New Democrats, who hold power in Victoria, have a tendency not to want to meddle in contract talks.

The B.C. government’s “sustainable services negotiating mandate” calls for all public-sector employers to negotiate three-year contracts with general wage increases of two percent per year.

For the public, the biggest risk is if the union locals jack up the expectations of their members beyond what TransLink feels it can offer under the public-sector bargaining mandate.

The upside for TransLink is that the longer the workers go off the job, the more money it will save, which can be put toward future contracts. That’s no consolation for the public, however, who might have to figure out how to get to work or school before the ridesharing companies have had time to get vehicles on the roads. g

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NEWS

Green politico seeks housing solutions

V

by Carlito Pablo

ancouver park commissioner Camil Dumont wants the civic body to build a relationship with the province’s public-housing agency. He told the Straight that his experience dealing with the ongoing homeless encampment at Oppenheimer Park made him realize the need for a direct link with B.C. Housing.

“We have people that are experiencing homelessness in all corners of our city and that are in different parks,” Dumont said in a phone interview. “That said, it certainly is motivated by some of what I have learned through my experience with the situation in Oppenheimer Park.”

Dumont has authored a motion calling for the establishment of an “inter-institutional knowledge-sharing and a relationship of direct, open communication” between the park board and B.C. Housing. It’s on the parkboard agenda for November 4. The motion seeks to explore “potential collaboration to address the impacts of homelessness in Vancouver parks”.

“If B.C. Housing and the Vancouver Park Board form an open, communicative, interinstitutional relationship of knowledge-sharing and collaboration, either or both may be able to provide services more efficiently, more economically, and more effectively for those experiencing homelessness in our city,” the motion reads.

Dumont said that what’s happening in the Downtown Eastside park has “shone a light” to him about how government institutions communicate with each other.

“I want to understand and make sure when we’re talking about humanitarian issues, in particular, we’re dealing with governance as opposed to politics,” he said. “It’s really important to me that we’re not wasting resources or time or energy on these things, because this is people’s well-being and their lives that hang in the balance, and, you know, if the structures of our institutions are streamlined to help us as much as possible, that’s all for the better.”

Last month, Vancouver mayor Kennedy Stewart asked

Vancouver park commissioner Camil Dumont would like to see a direct link between the park board and B.C. Housing.

the park board to temporarily relinquish Oppenheimer Park to the city. According to the mayor, this measure will enhance his ability to work with senior levels of government to move the homeless campers into housing and return the park to normal operations.

The park board refused Stewart’s request.

It has also dismissed suggestions from city hall and the police and fire departments that it seek a court injunction to clear the park of campers.

Dumont introduced a resolution committing to the goal of “voluntary decampment” at the park, which was passed by the board on September 26. His motion also called on the city to “continue to seek housing” for the homeless, including those camping at Oppenheimer Park.

Earlier, on September 5, the board passed another motion by Dumont, which requested that the mayor create a “multi-jurisdictional task force” to address homelessness.

“Since that motion, there hasn’t been an official adoption of any structure,” Dumont told the Straight. “However, there’s all sorts of dialogue and talk going on.”g

Heat pumps cut greenhouse gases

W

by Carlito Pablo

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hen it comes to keeping the house warm and toasty, most people rely on furnaces and base-

board heaters.

Probably not many of them have heard about air-source heat pumps, which are electric-powered devices that can either heat or cool a home.

They take heat from outside and pump it inside. In hot weather, they work in reverse, as an air conditioner: hot air inside is taken out and cold air is taken in. They’re energy-efficient and they’re good for the planet, because they produce less carbon emissions than gas-fuelled heaters.

According to a paper presented to Metro Vancouver by the Community Energy Association, heat pumps are “ideally suited” to the mild climate of the region. However, the nonprofit adviser to local governments has noted that these systems are not widely used in the Lower Mainland.

The CEA was founded in 1995 by the B.C. provincial government and the Union of B.C. Municipalities to help local governments with their energy plans. The group is embarking on a two-year study to find a new approach to increase the rate of retrofitting existing buildings in the Lower Mainland with heat pumps.

According to the CEA, heat pumps

can reduce a typical home’s greenhouse-gas emissions by up to six tonnes per year while also providing “significant financial savings”. The group also pointed out that meeting Metro Vancouver’s climate targets would require about three percent of homes to switch from fossil fuels to renewable sources like electricity in home heating every year.

The CEA noted that according to Natural Resources Canada, heat pumps accounted for only about three percent of heating systems in B.C. in 2015. “This is despite the fact that heat pumps provide significant benefits over natural gas heat,” the CEA stated in its presentation.

The CEA noted that residential buildings produce 20 percent of the region’s greenhouse-gas emissions.

The group also mentioned that single-family homes, attached dwellings, townhouses, and low-rise apartment buildings with fewer than five storeys represent 83 percent of all structures in the Lower Mainland.

Dylan Heerema, an engineer and senior analyst with the Pembina Institute, a think tank that focuses on clean energy, has written that using electricity instead of gas for home and building heating is “one of the cheapest ways” to reduce carbon and air pollution. “While gas is cleaner burning

than heating oil, it is far more polluting (around 17 times more) than our electricity, which comes mostly from hydro,” Heerema explained.

Heerema pointed out that heat pumps cost “a little more” than gas furnaces but are “vastly more energyefficient”. After rebates, a heat pump costs about $8,000 compared to $5,000 for a furnace.

Erik Blair, an air-quality planner with Metro Vancouver, has prepared a report regarding the CEA’s twoyear project for 2019-20.

According to Blair, the CEA has received funding from the Real Estate Foundation of B.C. and the Bullitt Foundation, a U.S.–based nonprofit that promotes sustainable communities in the Pacific Northwest. In-kind support was committed to by the city governments of Vancouver, New Westminster, Surrey, West Vancouver, and Richmond.

Blair recommended that the regional government provide meeting space and staff expertise to the CEA undertaking. That suggestion was made in his report, which is included on the agenda Friday (November 1) of the Metro board. As for the role of the devices in dealing with climate change, Blair wrote: “Heat pumps are a market-ready solution for buildings to reduce greenhouse gases.” g

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HOROSCOPES

ARIES

March 20–April 20

The next few weeks of Mercury retrograde will either dig you deeper or see you make a significant turnaround, this regarding finances, a significant relationship, a health matter, or a personal challenge. Venus in Sagittarius, starting Friday, puts the matter on the increase and/or upswing. Next Tuesday, Mars turns a productive corner with Pluto. The rest of the week holds good potential.

B

TAURUS

April 20–May 21

This is no ordinary Mercury retrograde. There’s someone or something to confront, a major change of heart, mind, or plan in the works. Although it has been on brew for a while, this exposing moment along the timeline can feel abrupt or jarring. It is time to ask more questions of yourself, to reassess what is now most lucrative or in your best interest.

C

GEMINI

May 21–June 21

Don’t set yourself up with a tight schedule or overly high expectations. Mercury retrograde can mess with your workday, your plans and progress, your trust or security.

Renovations can go over budget; repairs or costs can add up. Make sure to stay well informed and to be clear when giving instructions or when contracting services. By Tuesday, you’re onto a better move-along.

D

CANCER

June 21–July 22

Whether in person or through memories, the next few weeks can put you back in touch with one who tugs hard on the heartstrings.

Mercury retrograde sets an appropriate backdrop for deeper soul-searching and self-examination. One way or another, Venus in Sagittarius will put you to work. The week ahead is opportune for exploring better options.

LEO

July 22–August 23

Halloween is not the only reason for the emotional dial-up! The start of Mercury retrograde can play havoc with plans, emotions, or intentions. Take the next few weeks to hunker down for review, reassessment, soul-searching, and renovations (attitude included). Venus into Sagittarius, starting Friday, points you in the direction of truth and best bets. Tuesday moves you onto a next page.

F

VIRGO

G

LIBRA

H

SCORPIO

NOV 7 – 10

DIRTY JOHN SECRET LIFE OF CANADA THE ALLUSIONIST RED MAN LAUGHING THUNDER BAY DARK POUTINE

August 23–September 23

Are you finding good value in the act? Should you get more involved or go deeper? As Mercury retrograde gets underway, an important reassessment process does too.

Yes, have another conversation, with someone or with yourself. Professional help or advice is money well spent.

As of Tuesday, Mars/Pluto sets you onto a productive move-along with someone or something. Ease your way along Wednesday/Thursday.

DESIGN & ILLUSTRATION BY LISA CHEN-WING

f politicians knew what astrologers know, they never would have scheduled the Brexit deadline for October 31—the day Mercury starts retrograde! By the same token, if the world knew what astrologers and scientists know about climate change, we’d see a fast track of real and significant game-changing action, enough to allow Greta to go back to a teenage life with a smile on her face (I’m just sayin’…).

Through November 20, Mercury travels retrograde in Scorpio. Don’t expect to get off lightly, especially if the transit makes direct contact to your natal chart. Extra care and caution are always wise during the cycle. Heed intuitive hits and warning signals; back up your computer; put safety and security to the forefront of all that you do. Make sure anything that could be poisonous or toxic is out of reach of the kids. That’s especially important, not only on Halloween but throughout the cycle. Mercury retrograde in Scorpio can increase the potential for bacterial, parasite, mould, and E. coli infections.

Clean-water issues and other survival matters continue to demand our attention. Viruses, bladder infections, sexually transmitted diseases, bad drugs, and suicide attempts also fall under the Scorpio rulership.

My apologies for painting it black.

The transit also holds positives. Mercury retrograde kicks off with a fresh infusion from Venus, the net-worth and self-worth/self-love planet. It’s an excellent time to get your sexy on, to strengthen loving bonds, to reevaluate, recommit, and rebuild. Mercury/ Venus can replenish and enrich the relationship, the wallet, or the process.

Starting on Friday, Venus in Sagittarius puts benefit, gain, and opportunity on the increase. Financial markets, spending, and opportunity—and everything to do with the upcoming holidays—also hit a fuller swing. Mars/Pluto turns a constructive corner on Tuesday and heads on to the next item on the checklist. Wednesday/Thursday are smooth-rolling.

A

E

OCTOBER 31 TO NOVEMBER 6, 2019

2019

I

by Rose Marcus

September 23–October 23

You can’t skirt around it no matter how hard you try. Watch for Mercury retrograde to zero in on the heart of the matter. You can reclaim that part of yourself that has taken a hit along the way. Lighting a fresh spark, Venus in Sagittarius, starting Friday, moves the conversation forward. It also boosts your mood, financial prospects, and social and romantic opportunity.

Mercury now takes a retrograde tour in your sign. While you can expect the usual out of the transit—i.e., misplacing things, misreading circumstances, health issues, unexpected expenses, et cetera—there is an upside, too. It’s an excellent time to push the refresh button for revision and review, for replenishment (personal, creative, romantic, or spiritual).

I

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CAPRICORN

December 21–January 20

AQUARIUS

January 20–February 18

Priorities are changing. Rules, dictates, or schedules can be too. Reserve judgment and stay flexible. Renew a loan or mortgage, consult with a specialist, try another person in charge, invest more to rebuild your business or reputation. You have more going for you than you fully recognize.

Starting Friday, Venus puts assets and opportunity on the increase.

L

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November 22–December 21

Goals, plans, or conversations can change. Watch for Mercury retrograde to clue you in to more, perhaps unexpectedly so. To the plus, it could be an opportunity to nip it in the bud or to make a well-timed adjustment. The cycle is best used to reassess, renew, renegotiate, revisit.

Tuesday to Friday, the stars keep it smooth and rolling.

K

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SAGITTARIUS

Just as soon as you think you have a good feel for it, you could hit a change of heart, mind, or momentum. The start of Mercury retrograde coincides with the start of Venus on a quick tour of Sagittarius. Combined, they can put you or it on the move faster than you have factored.

Through Tuesday, it’s an evolution.

J

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PISCES

February 18–March 20

Mercury retrograde can prompt a significant change of mind, heart, plans, or expectations. As of Friday, Venus on the move in Sagittarius launches you on your way in some real and tangible way. Tuesday sets a productive backdrop for working it out and shifting onto a next task. Wednesday/Thursday, you’re onto a clearer, smoother sail. g

Book a reading or sign up for Rose’s free monthly newsletter at rosemarcus.com.

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FOOD Third-wave java on Beanstockâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s menu

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by Gail Johnson

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ancouverites love their coffee, and just as the local craft-beer industry has exploded, the indie-roasters scene is heating up. The upcoming Beanstock Coffee Festival celebrates all things micro and sustainable on the java front while taking a deep dive into coffee culture.

The festâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s focus is on third-wave coffee, says Mengo McCall, co-owner of Mountain Coffee, a Vancouverbased importer of green coffee beans that is behind Beanstock.

Briefly, the first wave was 20thcentury commercial coffee; think Folgers, NescafĂŠ, and MJB, McCall explains in a phone interview with the Georgia Straight. Multinational companies dominated, and there wasnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t much in the way of choice for households, restaurants, and truck stops. The second wave came as Europeans introduced better-quality coffee to North America, with Starbucks becoming that generationâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s biggest success story. The third wave started to take off as microroasters began taking a different approach to one of the worldâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s most popular beverages, using skillful roasting techniques with carefully sourced, high-quality beans and being less concerned about price. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s a quality movement,â&#x20AC;? McCall says. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Younger generations said, â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;This is a science.â&#x20AC;&#x2122; Everything is measured to a very, very precise degree, and there are roasting curves with softwareâ&#x20AC;Śto control roasting time and temperature and airflow. Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s so precise. People are really understanding and exploring coffee. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Wine has about 500 chemicals that lead to flavour; with coffee, itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s around 1,500,â&#x20AC;? he adds. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re still discovering more every day. Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s incredibly complex and fascinating, and

Coffee is incredibly complexâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;even more so than wineâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;according to Mengo McCall, co-owner of Mountain Coffee, which is behind the Beanstock festival.

the more you learn, you realize how little you know.â&#x20AC;?

A key component of third-wave coffee is social responsibility. Proponents of specialty coffee support growers and farmers around the globe, McCall says, paying them fair prices so they can make a living. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Thirdwave movement is promoting a more sustainable future for coffee,â&#x20AC;? he says.

As interest in specialty coffee has grown, so has coffee culture. Going for a pour-over or an Americano isnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t just about finding delicious, fine brews but also about being in an environment that has a certain feel and aestheticâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;usually, one that has an undeniable cool factor.

Beanstock aims to celebrate coffee culture and connect microroasters with the public. Taking place at Performance Works on Granville Island on Saturday and Sunday (November 2 and 3), the event will bring about 30 microroasters to the table from B.C., Alberta, and beyond. Among them are Structure Coffee Roasters (from Montreal), Agro Roasters, Moja Coffee, 2% Jazz Coffee, Smoking Gun

Coffee, and Canoe Coffee Roasters.

With a setup akin to a wine festival, the zero-waste event allows attendeesâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;who get a ceramic cup to keep with their admission (plus some take-home samples)â&#x20AC;&#x201D;to make their way around the room, sampling small sips from as many roasters as they like. Most of the coffees will be served pourâ&#x20AC;&#x201C;over style and black, for the truest expression of flavour.

People who have a hankering for a latte, however, need not fret; there will be a full espresso bar as well as a selection of food and craft beer available, and a DJ will add to the festive feel.

McCall says people might be surprised by what they discover. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ll encounter tastes youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve never tasted before,â&#x20AC;? he says. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Thereâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s coffee that tastes like pure blueberry, coffee that tastes like pure strawberry or peach. Other coffees are combinations of flavours; maybe theyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ll taste a little bit of blueberry with some nuttiness, maybe walnut or cloves. Some will have a floral or lavender taste.

Theyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re all incredibly different.â&#x20AC;? g

Radical compassion saved ex-racist

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by Charlie Smith

ancouver antiracist educator Tony McAleer is astonishingly transparent about his past life as a neo-Nazi activist. In his new memoir, The Cure for Hate: A Former White Supremacistâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Journey From Violent Extremism to Radical Compassion, he describes attending the Aryan Nations World Congress of 1988, which took place at the racist groupâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s compound in Idaho. â&#x20AC;&#x153;There were various members of Klans (contrary to popular belief, the Ku Klux Klan is not a large solitary force but has splintered into dozens of regional and sometimes competing groups of different sizes) and oldschool Nazis from the days of George Lincoln Rockwellâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s American Nazi Party, founded in 1959, wearing brown shirts and swastika armbands,â&#x20AC;? McAleer writes. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Every major white supremacist faction was represented, but at this Congress, skinheads were present in large numbers for the first time. There was even a group of Christian Identity skinheads from Las Vegas accompanied by sisters and girlfriends who all had blonde hair and brown Nazi uniformsâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;they were euphemistically referred to as the Brown Skirts.â&#x20AC;?

How did McAleer, a Catholic-school-educated son of a psychiatrist from Dunbar, end up in a place like this?

It started with the beatings he received in school at the hands of the Christian Brothers, as well as the Saturday detentions. He took great satisfaction in refusing to buckle under all the discipline, with a level of defiance that he writes was off the charts. As a teen, he began listening to racist music and hanging out with skinheads in East Van, and by Grade 12 he was learning about the history of the Weimar Republic, the Third Reich, and the Second World War. â&#x20AC;&#x153;What started as being provocativeâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;wearing buttons and pins with swastikas and other white supremacist symbolsâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;led people to start challenging my beliefs,â&#x20AC;? he reveals.

Whereas his friends relied on violence and intimidation, McAleerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s weapons of choice were his intellect and his gift of the gab. He founded Canadian Liberty Net, a telephone service that engaged in Holocaust denial, blaming people of colour for causing crimes, and endorsing violence. In this remarkably frank memoir, McAleer confesses to embracing and excelling at being an asshole. â&#x20AC;&#x153;I wish I could say that my daughterâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s birth meant the end of my involvement with skinheads, neo-Nazis, and white supremacists, but it didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t happen that way,â&#x20AC;? he writes. â&#x20AC;&#x153;I had too much personal and social capital invested in my identity to let it go. My trajectory deeper into the world of white supremacy had too much momentum.â&#x20AC;?

The Cure for Hate author Tony McAleer cofounded a group that helps people cut ties to white-supremacist organizations.

But eventually, after his son was born, he began turning things aroundâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;but only after suffering a brutal beating by two members of the skinhead band Odinâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Law in his living room. â&#x20AC;&#x153;The idea that my son had watched me get my teeth knocked in had planted a seed of doubt and disillusionment in me.â&#x20AC;?

He separated from the mother of his children, who moved to Australia, and he became a full-time single parent. The deepening bond with his kids led McAleer to disengage from the movement, but it wasnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t until he saw the film American History X, starring Edward Norton as a neo-Nazi, that he took more dramatic steps to heal himself. With the help of a Jewish psychiatrist, McAleer shed his old self and embarked on a new mission: to prevent other kids from becoming racist monsters. In 2011, he cofounded Life After Hate, which practises radical compassion in trying to encourage people to exit the movement. â&#x20AC;&#x153;The moment when I received radical compassion from my mentor Dov marked the beginning of an incredible journey deep into the darkest reaches of my subconscious towards the fear, towards the wounds, towards the pain that had cast their shadows across my life until then, the pain that I had been running away from my entire life,â&#x20AC;? he writes.

McAleer visited Auschwitz, spoke in synagogues, and learned how to forgive major figures in his life, including the mother of his children and his philandering father. â&#x20AC;&#x153;I clearly wasnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t the only kid who grew up with adultery in the home or was beaten at Catholic school,â&#x20AC;? he notes in the book. â&#x20AC;&#x153;This isnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t an excuse but rather the foundation for understanding and healing.â&#x20AC;? g

DRINK AFGHAN HORSEMEN

Natural-wine movement is on the rise

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RESTAURANT SINCE 1974

by Kurtis Kolt

his week’s column is being filed from Montreal, where I’ve been devouring and relishing the local wine and food scene. This is my first time visiting Canada’s second-largest city (I know, I know), and it’s the local edition of the international Raw Wine fair that has brought me here.

Founded in London in 2012 by Isabelle Legeron, who is France’s first female Master of Wine, Raw Wine has a tight focus on natural wine from around the world. Although the term natural wine is still not an official designation, the fair’s featured wineries all adhere to the general agreed-upon parameters: grapes are organically or biodynamically farmed, then processed in the winery with minimal intervention.

This means fermentation comes via indigenous yeast rather than commercial strains; there aren’t any added chemicals or enzymes; fining and filtering are rare; and additional sulphites to aid in the preservation of the finished wine are either kept to a minimum or not used at all.

“I wanted to create a place where wines like these, living wines with emotion, are shared,” Legeron said as we toured around Le Salon 1861, the buzzy event venue situated in an old church. “And this event is for everyone: from trade to wine lovers to those who are simply curious.”

It is hard to say whether Raw Wine—which has expanded to Berlin, Miami, Los Angeles, and beyond—is dovetailing with the still-expanding natural-wine movement or has been massively influential in propelling it.

Whether it’s the chicken or the egg, there’s certainly no sign of this fair or this scene slowing down anytime soon.

Montreal is, no doubt, the Canadian epicentre of natural wine and a key hub for those looking to dive into this world. Many wine lists around town feature an array of natural styles, if not wholly devoted to them.

Devotion is not a word I use lightly.

One key spot, Alma, a Mediterraneaninfluenced wine bar in the Outremont district, has a natural-wine program that is not only curated by coproprietor Lindsay Brennan but fully stocked with wines she imports that are unavailable anywhere else in the city, never mind the country, making for quite the one-of-a-kind experience.

Of course, Vancouver is no slouch when it comes to the category. Places like Burdock & Co., Juice Bar, and Farmer’s Apprentice are popular with thirsty natural-wine fans, and many other restaurants carry a good

through a secondary fermentation in the bottle like traditional-method bubble, the bottle is sealed while the wine is still going through its initial fermentation, resulting in trapped carbon dioxide making for fizzy deliciousness. This one is made from Pinot Noir, offering a mix of cherries, nutmeg, and savoury truffles.

redtruckbeer.com

Isabelle Legeron is the founder of Raw Wine, a fair showcasing natural wines.

This event is for everyone: from trade to wine lovers to those who are simply curious.

canadian-visa-law yer.com

– Isabelle Legeron

smattering of them on their lists.

Here, a quintet of favourites I supped at the fair that offer a good introduction to natural wine for the curious. These wines, and others by these producers, can be found at private stores like Kitsilano Wine Cellar, Liberty Wine Merchants’ Commercial Drive location, and Legacy Liquor Store in Olympic Village.

FREE FORM ANCIENT METHOD 2017

(Okanagan Valley, B.C.; $34.90, okanagancrushpad.com) For a style unheard-of to most a few years ago, ancient-method sparkling wines (also known as pétillant naturel, or pét-nat) are practically a dime a dozen these days in the natural-wine world. Rather than the wine going

CHÂTEAU LE PUY EMILIEN ROUGE 2016

(Bordeaux, France; $52 to $56, private wine stores) Take another look at Bordeaux with this Merlot-forward blend that also carries splashes of Cabernet Franc, Cabernet Sauvignon, Malbec, and Carménère. Crunchy black and purple fruit sits atop dried herbs, cocoa, and a good dose of earthiness.

Two years spent in French oak keeps everything in its right place.

For those interested in learning more about natural wine, Legeron’s 2014 book, Natural Wine: An Introduction to Organic and Biodynamic Wines Made Naturally, is highly recommended. More on the book, Raw Wine, and Legeron herself can be found at IsabelleLegeron.com. g

For reservations visit www.afghanhorsemen.com or call 604.873.5923

THE 22NDAnnual 18

2015

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Golden Plate Awards Best Vegetarian 20 years running Restaurant for Winner Best a 3am meal Kitsilano Winner Best Restaurant Runner-Up Most Vegan Friendly Runner-Up Best Vegetarian

LATE NITE TERMINAL SKYTRAIN ST

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I SAW A: I AM A: WHEN: OCTOBER 18, 2019 WHERE: Legion

I asked if you needed to be let in through the SkyTrain gate, you said you were smoking. I proceeded onwards then turned back cause I knew I wasn’t gonna get you off my mind. Just wanted to say a huge thank you and I appreciate you for the lady you really truly are. You helped me find me again without a doubt I am smitten for you. I spelt you with a "Y" at the end you said an "I ". I have a "U" not a "?".

J. (with the shaved head).

Let’s discuss the 0 hr workweek? You were worried about being “that guy”. I picked the sticker off a blue lighter. You kept popping up beside me, or maybe it was vice versa. I tried texting the number you weren’t sure of.

Idk why I was silly and didn’t just give your friend my number. I will always fondly remember what you gave me right before I ran off. I want to give it back. -T.

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Friday night you were directing cars at the park entrance at West Georgia. You were in an orange jacket and you’re a little older but hawt! You told me I should go to Spanish Banks instead. I came back to find you because I wanted to have you come with me, but you were gone. You look like a cop but you are super sweet.

HMU. Girl in the black VW GTI and you remarked about my music.

TSAWWASSEN FERRY TERMINAL

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WEEKLY MARKETS AT

You asked if you could sit with me because the terminal was packed. Cancellations because of the extreme winds. You had wonton soup, a toque, black suitcase... We didn't really talk at all and then my son came to sit too.

My son and I were joking around, and you chatted with us a little. You left and got a drink at the Salt Spring Coffee bar. I should have asked your name... I guess I just felt too shy.

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FRI OCT 18TH - BAF / KARAOKE

I SAW A: I AM A: WHEN: OCTOBER 29, 2019 WHERE: Terminal and Main SkyTrain St.

I SAW A: I AM A: WHEN: OCTOBER 25, 2019 WHERE: Tsawwassen Ferry Terminal

FOR MORE INFORMATION VISIT

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

WINTER SEASON BEGINS

RILEY PARK & HASTINGS PARK

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2724 W. 4th Ave. / 738-7151 / www.thenaam.com

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NOVEMBER 2

OPEN HOUR

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I SAW A: I AM A: WHEN: OCTOBER 25, 2019 WHERE: Stanley Park

WINTER

Celebrating

2019

STANLEY PARK RANGER, DURING THE WINDSTORM

IGA igastoresbc.com

1833 Anderson St. (2nd Floor) Vancouver

BEFORE THE ENTRANCE TO GRANVILLE ISLAND, RIGHT BEHIND THE STARBUCKS

CLAUS PREISINGER BLAUFRÄNKISCH 2016

(Burgenland, Austria; $25 to $29, private wine stores) Fans of buoyant Pinot Noirs or Gamays should easily gravitate to the similarly structured Blaufränkisch variety. This one shimmers with cracking acidity and minerality, keeping all of those raspberries, mulberries, and violets alive and well.

2019

Open 7 Nights A Week from 5pm to close

FRANK CORNELISSEN SUSUCARU 2018

(Sicily, Italy; $41 to $43, private wine stores) A wild-fermented blend of Malvasia, Moscadella, Insolia, and Nerello Mascalese, this juicy deep-pink wine is so damn pretty in the glass. It features waves of Italian plums, Rainier cherries, pomelo, and lime leaf, and I’ve yet to find a dish or cuisine with which it doesn’t pair well.

22 NDAnnual

SINCE 2008

(Brda, Slovenia; $35 to $37, private wine stores) Marmalade, honey, dried apricot, and lime cordial make for one of the most fascinating, charismatic takes on Pinot Gris I’ve encountered. A good wine for how we eat here on the West Coast, from fresh seafood to Indian, Thai, and Malaysian curries.

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REPEATED EYE CONTACT ON VERY FULL UBC BUS

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I SAW A: I AM A: WHEN: OCTOBER 26, 2019 WHERE: 04/14 Bus to UBC Me - Short haired, tallish pale man with big ears in big black coat & boots lugging large rectangular case on the bus.

You - lanky, tan, tall, in jeans that didn’t fit and a high, loosely tied, dark auburn ponytail, wearing little to no makeup. You were listening to something on a largish iPhone with a translucent case. I was determined not to notice anybody, but I noticed you when you got on, Downtown around Granville @ Davie, a few stops after me. Your angular and distinctive features and distinctly anti-aesthetic fashion choices complimented the aura of cool self-assurance you projected across my horizon. I kept noticing you. Then I noticed you noticing me noticing you. This continued to happen until you got off the bus (at maybe around W. Broadway @ Alma). The last thing you did was half turn your head to flash your eyes at me. Unsure if your noticing my noticing you was positive or negative, but you left a lasting impression on this end. I already know I would gladly devote many more attention cycles to you. If you think you might like that, hit me up.

COSTUME PARTY

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I SAW A: I AM A: WHEN: OCTOBER 26, 2019 WHERE: The Union Jack Pub You were dressed up as a swat officer and I as a tourist. You had a great smile and we chatted briefly. Wish I had asked for your number before you left. Coffee sometime?

BEAUTIFUL WOMAN IN SAVE ON FOODS, CAMBIE

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I SAW A: I AM A: WHEN: OCTOBER 25, 2019 WHERE: Save on Foods, Cambie I was shopping for a *******, and was randomly wandering the isles looking for anything else I may need. I passed you (you were pushing a cart, I had a basket), and I’m sure you noticed my admiring gaze. We passed each other a few times (coincidence?), and then I saw you at the self-serve checkout.

The checkout next to you was empty so I took it and was about to introduce myself when... I was interrupted by someone who thought I’d jumped ahead of them! Oooops - perhaps I did (accidentally), but I only had eyes on the prize!

If you recall the ******* that I had in my basket, I’d love to connect with your and introduce myself properly.

POWELL BUS NO.4 BEAUTIFUL LADY NEXT TO ME, WE SAID HI

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I SAW A: I AM A: WHEN: OCTOBER 24, 2019 WHERE: Vancouver, Downtown Powell Bus No.4 Beautiful lady next to me, we said hi, and I was shy to talk to you, you got off and we said bye. Hope to see you again.

LANGARA PARKING

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I SAW A: I AM A: WHEN: OCTOBER 16, 2019 WHERE: Langara I was looking for the parking lot and we discussed dinner.

Shall we make it happen?

Shawn

Visit straight.com to post your FREE I Saw You _ OCTOBER 31 – NOVEMBER 7 / 2019 THE GEORGIA STR AIGHT 11

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arts

Beijing opera meets guitars in Lantern

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by Alexander Varty

here’s a lot going on in Tale of the Eastside Lantern, Chinese-Canadian guitarist and bandleader Shon Wong’s first venture into theatre: a haunting, a breakup, a revelation… and Koi Otter.

Remember the 2018 news story about the voracious predator that had slithered up from False Creek to wreak devastation on the koi population at Chinatown’s Dr. Sun Yat-Sen Classical Chinese Garden? Wong sure does, and when he heard about the wily weasel’s urban adventures he knew he had the perfect subplot for his innovative musical.

“When this thing happened, I was like, ‘You can’t even make this up!’ Know what I mean?’” he tells the Straight in a telephone interview from his Chinatown home.

“I couldn’t make that up, but it’s so symbolic in so many ways.”

For Wong, the hungry otter represents the outside forces of gentrification that are threatening the cultural values and architectural heritage of his neighbourhood. Meanwhile, the koi—brightly patterned fish that Asian aesthetes have bred for colour and size over centuries—symbolize beauty and tradition. The battle between otter and koi is also an oddly apt analogue for the twin streams that make up Wong’s sonic heritage: the rough-edged, Springsteen-esque rock music he delivers with his band Son of James, and the strains of Beijing opera that were handed down to him on his mother’s side.

Wong’s dad, James, was a thoroughly acculturated second-generation Chinese Canadian. Although he worked in Chinatown for much of his life, he was born in Cranbrook, the son of a railway labourer, and preferred to speak English rather than Cantonese. His mother,

Shon Wong and Rosa Cheng star in Tale of the Eastside Lantern, a musical that blends two sonic heritages. Photo by David Cooper

though, was an artist, trained in one of the world’s most highly refined theatrical traditions.

“My father met my mom in Taiwan,” Wong says. “And on her He’d show me side, my grandfather and his whole family, they were a Chinese opera videos of Chinese troupe who’d escaped China during opera and tell the Cultural Revolution and went to Taiwan. And my grandfather was me what...makes really instrumental for me, in terms Chinese opera cool. of keeping the Chinese heritage in me alive. He’d show me videos – Shon Wong of Chinese opera and tell me what makes this good, what makes Chinese opera cool.

“There are all these little nuances in Chinese opera that take years and years to develop—the way they the pitch of the singing—just the hold a pose, the way they walk, rhythm of the whole production,”

he adds. “So those are things that I learned that kind of stuck with me for a while.”

Tale of the Eastside Lantern, which gets a workshop production as part of the Downtown Eastside Heart of the City Festival this week, is in no way a traditional Chinese opera. In fact, Wong’s happy to mock some of the genre’s conventions; he’s a rocker, after all, and notes that what he’s doing isn’t trying to take Chinese classical music and electrify it. “It doesn’t work like that,” he says. “That would be like someone took a Beethoven song and tried to rock it up. You know, it’s still Beethoven!”

The supernatural element in the piece, however, is typical of

Chinese-opera plot lines. “It’s a story about a man named Jimmy,” Wong says. “He’s living in a rundown SRO in Chinatown, and he’s battling his own personal demons. One night he gets visited by a ghost—this ghost named Mei, who appears in Chinese-opera form. And she says, ‘You’re living in the same apartment that I was burned alive in, and you need to help me find the people responsible for this.’ So this sends Jimmy on a wild-goose chase through Chinatown, and through that I’m using that story to give people a kind of history of Chinatown.”

Aiding Wong and Son of James will be director Andy Toth, erhu virtuoso Lan Tung, members of Vancouver Cantonese Opera, and veteran guitarist Henry Young, a Chinatownraised musician who spent 25 years on the road with the legendary singer Nina Simone. Wong’s especially happy about this relatively recent addition to the creative team: he’s trying to tell the story of Chinatown, but Young’s lived it.

“He’s given me this really great lesson on how Chinatown was one of the only places in Vancouver that would bring up all these black R&B acts from the States,” Wong says.

“They’d stop in Vancouver on their way to Alaska, and Chinatown was the only place that would let them play. So there were a lot of useful things that I had no idea about.”

Some of these have made their way into the plot, he adds, bringing even more real-life drama to a story that promises to be a fascinating blend of the supernatural and the streetwise. g The Downtown Eastside Heart of the City Festival presents Tale of the Eastside Lantern at CBC Studio 700 on Thursday (October 31).

Heart of the City solos soar on oral traditions

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by Janet Smith

he title of Yvonne Wallace’s new one-woman show is ūtszan—an Ucwalmícwts word meaning “to make things better”.

And for Wallace and another Indigenous solo artist at the upcoming Downtown Eastside Heart of the City Festival, reclaiming language has been making things better. It’s helped rebuild identity, the key to finding a way forward amid truth and reconciliation.

Raised in the Líl’wat Nation in Mount Currie, Wallace started relearning her language after being away from home for 21 years. She had to commute to the Líl’wat Nation once a week for lessons.

“I didn’t know how many barriers I would have to overcome emotionally, physically, psychologically, and geographically to learn it,” says the playwright and performer, whose grandmother and great-grandmothers were fluent speakers.

Little by little, Wallace has acquired the language, and tapped the tradition of storytelling in her culture. It’s now led to what she calls her “heart story”: ūtszan focuses on Margaret, who returns home to the Líl’wat Nation after a long absence (sound familiar?), and the older aunt who refuses to speak English and only uses Ucwalmícwts so that her young niece will learn the language.

Writing the play, which works in extended sections of rich and flowing Indigenous dialogue, was as much of a learning process for Wallace as studying the words in school had been.

“I started writing it in English first,” she says, explaining she took it to an elder for early consultation. “For hours, we would talk about ‘What would Auntie say?’ And she would say it and I would transcribe it.”

After workshops at Native Earth Performing Arts and the Playwrights Theatre Centre, Wallace showed it to her mother, who’s also a

Yvonne Wallace, left, weaves the Ucwalmícwts language into ūtszan, while Taninli Wright recounts true stories of racism and the time she took a 1,600-kilometre walk in Sis Ne’ Bi-Yïz (photo by David Cooper).

language teacher. “We would be talking and writing, and she was editing, she was adding things,” recounts Wallace, who plays the various characters in the story. “We were drinking tea and laughing.” Her mother even helped her translate Patsy Cline’s “Walkin’ After Midnight” for the show.

Don’t expect the resulting play, which Wallace first developed as her graduating project at Capilano University, to translate all of the Ucwalmícwts for the audience, either.

“The experience of it really fights against the idea that our language is hard,” Wallace says.

“It’s quite easy if you pay attention. I also wanted people to hear how beautiful our language is, and to honour people that have learned the language. This story was my way of reaffirming to my ancestors and my elders who had the foresight to develop my language into a curriculum.”

For Wallace, the learning process continues far beyond the show. “Every day I learn one word,” she says.

LANGUAGE HAS BEEN a big part of actorwriter Taninli Wright’s journey as well. “We belong to an oral tradition and it’s based on what we remember,” Wright tells the Straight over the phone before her own solo show, Sis Ne’ Bi-Yïz: Mother Bear Speaks, opens at the Heart of the City Festival. “It’s used in how we govern our land. Everything we’ve done, we’ve done in our language. It’s like breathing.”

The Wet’suwet’en artist’s play tells the story of her Messenger of Hope Walk, in which she walked 1,600 kilometres across British Columbia for improved education for First Nations and other marginalized kids. But it also traces her painful past, growing up amid bullying and abuse in Smithers, B.C. In one story, she recounts how a carful of teens whipped a milkshake into her face while shouting racist slurs.

“You need to picture this little Indian girl in this racist town of Smithers, and I kept myself in this little prison in my mind,” says Wright, who

opens up about her traumas in the one-woman show. “To the outside world I look like I’m functioning, but I’m really in my own little prison.”

Theatre and acting have offered a way out, she says. Though she has a bachelor’s degree in education, she switched to acting about five years ago, studying at New Image College Film Acting Conservatory. “I always wanted to be an actor, but society punches you and knocks you down, you know?” she says. “It says, ‘You’re gonna end up being pregnant or on welfare.’ ” That same strength fuelled her through her Messenger of Hope Walk in 1997, a journey she made by flying to Prince Rupert and then walking back to Vancouver.

For her march, she took strength from her tsets, her late grandfather, the ancestor who had fought to protect his kids from residential school and kept the language going.

“I was told lots of stories about my tsets— that he was a community runner to deliver urgent personal messages or deliver invitations to community potlatch,” she explains. “According to my uncle and my mom, he once ran 100 miles in one night.”

She also drew support from community members who walked with her along her 52day journey. And now, with Sis Ne’ Bi-Yïz: Mother Bear Speaks, which was produced by Instruments of Change (a group that uses the arts as an educational tool), she wants others to know they aren’t alone either.

“There aren’t a lot of survivor stories out there,” she says. “It’s nice to see a story of a person that can draw on the beauty of their culture to help overcome things.” g The Downtown Eastside Heart of the City Festival presents ūtszan at the Firehall Arts Centre from Thursday to Saturday (October 31 to November 2) and Sis Ne’ Bi-Yïz: Mother Bear Speaks at the same venue on Wednesday (October 30) and from Friday to Sunday (November 1 to 3).

OCTOBER 31 – NOVEMBER 7 / 2019 THE GEORGIA STR AIGHT 13

ARTS

Aszure Barton reenergizes bold Busk

“Y

by Janet Smith

ou can’t blast it out from the beginning or you will have nothing left at the end,” choreographer Aszure Barton is advising the Ballet BC dancers in a Scotiabank Dance Centre studio. But it may be too late—for this rehearsal, at least.

They’re collapsed around the room catching their breath, some flapping their T-shirts to cool off, others slumped on the barres.

The group has just finished a runthrough of Busk, Barton’s hyperenergetic, densely choreographed work that sends the dancers flying around to the sounds of frenzied klezmer violas, accordions, and folk choirs.

All of Barton’s signature touches— the humour, the vulnerability, the defiance—are there: amid the piece’s surging bodies, you glimpse dancers doing handstands, sticking out their tongues, blowing raspberries, and, yes, that was Scott Fowler laughing maniacally and Miriam Gittens breaking into a killer back flip.

“Going back to Busk, I’m reminded that the physicality and the form speak better than any kind of theatrical intention,” Barton, who’s reviving and tweaking the work she created for her own company around a decade ago, says after rehearsal. “There’s so much multitasking in this piece—the head is doing one thing, the arms are doing another, the feet are doing another—and if it’s danced properly, it exposes the humanity in the body.”

“One of the fundamental themes of it was exhaustion,” her long-time rehearsal director Jonathan Alsberry adds with a smile. “It’s good to give them something that seems beyond their reach.”

Barton, the Alberta-born choreographic star who’s long been based in

Ballet BC dancers meld the humorous, the deeply human, and the physically pummelling in Busk. Photo by Michael Slobodian

New York City but now calls Los Angeles home, was pleased to find Ballet BC in the top form the piece requires.

She had crossed paths with American dance icon William Forsythe last season, when he praised the company and told her he was staging his seminal Enemy in the Figure with it. Barton decided to get a ticket to fly up for that opening.

“I’m such a proud Canadian, and just to hear that they’re one of the hot companies right now, not just from him but others too, I wanted to go,” she says. “When I saw it, I thought, ‘Wow, those dancers are killing it.’ ” Witnessing the Vancouver troupe nail Forsythe’s intricate work, she knew it could handle Busk.

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“The fire was lit,” continues Barton, whose Vetrale was staged by Ballet BC seven years ago. “There are a lot of companies that wouldn’t have that creative endurance.…

Seeing Bill’s [Forsythe’s] work showed me that they had the chops, but also that they had the focus.”

Knowing the “meticulous” approach of artistic director Emily Molnar, who is spending her last season with Ballet BC before heading to the renowned Nederlands Dans Theater, helped seal the deal.

“The strength comes from the top,” Barton observes. “She’s a workhorse; she’s a disciplined artist, and I have a lot of respect for Emily and what she does. Her commitment to dance is

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London Drugs VSO Pops / TELUS VSO Digital Concert Hall The VSO performs the music of one of Hollywood’s most iconic films while you enjoy Bogart and Bergman’s tragic love story on the big screen above. With live orchestra!

ONE NIGHT IN VIENNA

OCT 30, 8PM | CENTENNIAL THEATRE,

NORTH VANCOUVER

North Shore Classics

OCT 31, 2PM | ORPHEUM

Parc Retirement Living Tea & Trumpets Christopher Gaze, from Bard on the Beach, hosts a concert that will make you want to take to the dance floor: the great Viennese waltzes, from the likes of Strauss, Brahms,Beethoven and Mozart.

ORCHESTRA FROM PLANET X

NOV 3, 2PM | ORPHEUM

RUFUS WAINWRIGHT WITH THE VSO

NOV 6, 8PM | ORPHEUM

The great Canadian vocalist and songwriter joins the VSO for a night of his greatest hits with orchestra.

CROUCHING TIGER & BEYOND

NOV 9, 8PM | ORPHEUM

TELUS VSO Digital Concert Halll See a legendary martial arts symphony come to life!

Chinese Maestro Tan Dun conducts three of his own concertos from the films Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Hero and The Banquet while beautiful scenes from the movies play overhead. One night only. Get tickets today.

OriginO Kids Concerts Two aliens have landed in the concert hall trying to influence “Earth Music.” A fun, sci-fi twist in a program full of music by Copland, Williams and more.

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incredibly inspiring and important.”

In Ballet BC’s season-opening program, Barton’s work will join a remount of the equally adventurous B.R.I.S.A., by Swedish sensation Johan Inger. Later, Busk will become part of an all-female bill with Sharon Eyal’s Bedroom Folk and Crystal Pite’s Solo Echo, as Ballet BC tours to Texas and then through Europe next year.

A spot on an all-female roster sparks a feeling of pride in Barton, who danced at the National Ballet of Canada, and has also been a pioneer in a small but strong group of women choreographers at the world’s big companies. She’s in demand everywhere from American Ballet Theatre and Hubbard Street Dance Chicago

to Nederlands Dans Theater and Les Ballets Jazz de Montréal. At the same time, she has her own Aszure Barton & Artists (which has come here in the past as part of the Chutzpah Festival). Along with Pite and Eyal, she’s helped put a more female face on international dance creation, where, in both classical-ballet and contemporary worlds, men have, until recently, been more prominent.

“I think it’s really important to talk about,” Barton says. “For years I chose not to acknowledge that.

I thought for years, ‘I don’t want to have this discussion,’ but I do now.…

But I’m curious to see if it changes.

Choreographers need space to get better, and there are so many female choreographers.”

Barton seems to be in a comfortable place these days, both careerwise and personally. She retreated to the West Coast, where fellow danceartist sisters Cherice and CharissaLee live, to be closer to family. She’s artist in residence at the University of Southern California’s dance program, and she’s enjoyed escaping the New York rush for the West Coast state of mind—even if the work takes her regularly across and out of the U.S. “It’s been so so wonderful for actual clarity, and for the anxiety—I still have all that, but it’s diffused a lot,” she says with a smile. “It’s useful and important to look back at the work you’ve made, to refuel.”

It feels like Barton is taking the same advice she gives the dancers: she’s learned to pace herself, while still retaining all her creative energy. g Ballet BC presents Program 1 at the Queen Elizabeth Theatre from Thursday to Saturday (October 31 to November 2).

OCTOBER 31 â&#x20AC;&#x201C; NOVEMBER 7 / 2019 THE GEORGIA STR AIGHT 15

ARTS

American Idiot finds the positives in punk rock

Back from electrifying performances in New York City and Barcelona

F

by Mike Usinger

Program 1 Oct 31 Nov 1 2 Aszure Barton BUSK Johan Inger B.R.I.S.A.

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BALLET BC DANCER SCOTT FOWLER. PHOTO BY MICHAEL SLOBODIAN.

or director Richard Berg, taking on the stage version of American Idiot was an educational experience. The more he learned about the world of Green Day, Lookout Records, and 924 Gilman Street, the more he began to understand and appreciate a culture that always seemed foreign to him.

“I grew up in North Van, and I wasn’t a punky kid at all,” Berg says, speaking by cellphone between classes at Capilano University, where he’s returned to school to work on a liberal-arts degree.

“So I had all these preconceived ideas about punk being about rebellion, punk being about ‘Fuck the man’ and all that sort of stuff.”

A deep dive into the history of Green Day and American punk gave him a different perspective.

“What I discovered through the documentaries and the books I read was that punk wasn’t about rebelling against something, it was about a place to belong,” he says. “It was about a sense of family. All the people that were interviewed talk about how punk was about no sexism, no racism, and no homophobia. It was a culture that was really a leader in what we see as the liberal side of things now.”

American Idiot started out as a critically revered 2004 Green Day concept album that has three friends—Johnny, Will, and Tunny— struggling to break out of the souldestroying hell known as suburbia.

A half-decade after its release, the album became a musical when Green Day frontman and main songwriter Billie Joe Armstrong teamed up with director Michael Mayer, the show eventually landing on Broadway.

In its original album incarnation, American Idiot was a punk-rock opera about a self-destructive antihero in the era of George W. Bush, the Iraq War, and sprawling cultural wastelands ruled by Walmart. Johnny—also known as Jesus of Suburbia—starts out raging against everything. After moving to the city, he’s reborn as the cocksure St. Jimmy, who ends up in a downward spiral of addiction. Will discovers that breaking out of one’s small-town shackles isn’t easy when you’ve got the obligations that come with having a pregnant girlfriend. And Tunny opts for a stint in the military that changes his perspective on life in ways that he never dreamed.

The U.S., of course, has a bigger problem in the White House these days, namely a deluded racist and class-

Ali Watson and Colin Sheen star in American Idiot. Photo by Robert Sondergaard

ist megalomaniac who sees the developing world as a cesspool of “shithole” countries. With that in mind, the URP production of American Idiot updates things for the reign of Donald J. Trump.

“The album was originally a response to the George W. Bush, post– 9/11 era and what was going on at that time,” Berg says. “But it wasn’t a lot of work for us to say ‘What if we just set it now? It will still be relevant.’ There’s a lot of rage from young people who feel like they are losing their country.”

The power of American Idiot is in the way it suggests that sometimes anger can be cathartic, and that the bonds of friendship can get us all through seemingly hopeless times.

Berg likes that the musical falls squarely between the worlds of theatre and rock show, with a six-piece band on-stage to re-create Green Day’s distortion-powered punk.

“The production isn’t afraid to treat the songs as rock songs,” he says. But because American Idiot nonetheless has its feet planted in both worlds, Berg adds that the play isn’t just for those fully immersed in punk.

“What’s been a real mind flip for me has been the way that I always thought of punk rock as being a rather exclusive, we-don’t-want-you culture,” he says. “Instead, it’s a very welcoming culture, which really comes through in the show. We’ve designed the costumes so the characters aren’t a cast of 18 homogeneous people, but instead a cast of 18 misfits who welcome each other and belong together. And to that end, my daughter can come enjoy American Idiot, and my mother and her friends, who are in their 70s, can also come and feel welcome. I feel like there’s a great message there.” g American Idiot runs from Tuesday (November 5) to November 10 at Centennial Theatre in North Vancouver.

Western Front Presents

AYELET ROSE GOTTLIEB & PNEUMA

“Everything she sings is radiated by an instinctive musicality, breadth of phrasing and generosity of spirit” — The Telegraph

TICKETS START AT

MEASHA BRUEGGERGOSMAN

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with JUSTUS ZEYEN, PIANO & BLACK DOG STRING QUARTET SUN NOV 17 at 3pm I CHAN CENTRE FOR THE PERFORMING ARTS Whether it’s performing in front of billions at the opening ceremonies of the Olympic Games, or an intimate gathering at Westminster Abbey with the royal family, this charismatic Canadian soprano always delivers powerful and passionate performances. Don’t miss her long-awaited return to Vancouver!

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CAT TOREN Western Front ~ 303 E 8th Ave Nov 8, 7:00PM Advance $15/10 ~ Door $20/15 Tickets and Info ~ front.bc.c Ayelet Rose Gottlieb and Cat Toren return to Vancouver for a concert of new music inspired by wind and BC geographies. Gottlieb (voice) performs with Michael Winograd, James Falzone and Francois Houle (clarinets) as Pneuma, and Toren (piano) plays with Katie Rife (percussion) and Joshua Zubot (violin).

ARTS

Versatile Wainwright straddles pop and opera

F

by Alexander Varty

rom fireside sing-alongs with his family to writing for the Canadian Opera Company to celebrating camp icon Judy Garland to creating innovative electroacoustic settings for the sonnets of William Shakespeare, Rufus Wainwright has enjoyed an enormously diverse creative life. But which Wainwright will we see when he comes to the Orpheum next week, for a performance with the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra?

The answer, most likely, is “All of them.”

“I have several incarnations that, over the years, I’ve inhabited,” the 46-year-old singer-pianist tells the Georgia Straight in a telephone interview from his Los Angeles home.

“When I go out and do solo shows, for instance, I’m kind of the troubadour, and then when I produce operas I become the composer, and I think when I do these orchestra shows, in most cases it is a sort of broad representation of work I’ve done. Mostly in pop, but also tinged with some operatic influences here and there, plus a couple of Judy moments. So, yes, it is a sampler, but nonetheless it’s sort of… I don’t know. If anything, I think it’s sort of proof that I’m a great lover of classical music, because I think people are kind of struck when they come to it that the arrangements are very much devoted to the tradition of orchestral writing—and that my songs are very much tied to an operatic tradition.

“I’ve stolen from opera for years,” he adds, laughing. “So, if anything, it’s all coming together.”

Wainwright’s two operas—Prima Donna, which debuted in 2009, and Hadrian, premiered by the COC last

year—have met with a mixed response from critics and opera cognoscenti, but that doesn’t dismay their maker.

“When I first entered into the operatic universe, I was a little naive, thinking that I could conquer the form with this life of a singer,” he admits. “But on the other hand, I am realizing that it is obviously a long game. And right now, I’m assured by many who tell me ‘You’ve really done well in this world, and you just have to be a little more patient.’

“With Hadrian, the word is that, you know, it’s a good piece and it has a future,” he continues, hinting that there’s talk of a Vancouver production. “And it’s only my second opera.

As someone told me, ‘It took time for Verdi to become Verdi.’ ” Even if Wainwright succeeds in becoming the Verdi of the 21st century, he has no plans to discontinue his pop career, which should see a new album of songs released next spring. Nor will he give up his own orchestral appearances.

“That is one of the great thrills of mankind,” he says of singing with a symphony. “But by the same token it’s also very, very swift, in a sense, because you can’t rehearse a ton.

You’re not there to experiment, due to financial circumstances and also just the reality of having 100 people there, sitting around. I always get the feeling that it’s a bit like a fashion show, or doing some sort of terrible illicit drug that only lasts for five seconds, where it’s this amazing rush but it’s gone before it began. So, yes, it’s utterly thrilling.” g

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Rufus Wainwright joins the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra at the Orpheum next Wednesday (November 6).

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OCTOBER 31 – NOVEMBER 7 / 2019 THE GEORGIA STR AIGHT 17

ARTS Spirit mesmerizes with the animistic and the ancient

by Janet Smith

MUSICAL INNOVATORS

Indigenous dance influences Bangarra’s fluid style. Photo by Zan Wimberley

DANCE

TURNING POINT ENSEMBLE & COULOIR

SPIRIT

A Bangarra Dance Theatre production. A DanceHouse and Dancers of Damelahamid presentation. At the Vancouver Playhouse on Friday, October 25.

No remaining performances

Nov. 9, 11 – 7:30pm At the Orpheum Annex 823 Seymour St WWW.TURNINGPOINTENSEMBLE.COM

J PRE -CO OIN US NCE RT T FOR A ALK AT 6 :45P M

STRANGE BEASTS

LIVE ONSTAGE · 129(0%(5 ৰ৳ȁৱ৲ HISTORICAL THRILLER

THE

DOUBLE A E MURDERS By

Berni Stapleton

Directed by Tamara McCarthy Produced by Rusticate Theatre

Who will survive the long, haunting night?

7:30PM | FRIDAY, NOV 15, 2019

KOERNER RECITAL HALL, VANCOUVER ACADEMY OF MUSIC 1270 CHESTNUT STREET

Birds, the animals that sing, have throughout history captured the imagination of composers. But what other beasts have inspired composers? This concert, with a blend of the old and new, presents beasts regular and strange in a range of styles. In this bizarre bestiary, no holds are barred. Also included is the premiere of a new arrangement commissioned from American composer Paul John Rudoi.

TS T ICKNELY O

$

29

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Yoshié Bancroft. Photo By Kayla Isomura.

18 THE GEORGIA STR AIGHT OCTOBER 31 – NOVEMBER 7 / 2019

d RUSTLING LEAVES, smoking ceremonies, birdsong, and body painting: the animistic and the ritualistic met contemporary movement in Bangarra Dance Theatre’s Vancouver debut on the weekend.

The Australian dance company celebrates the 65,000-year-old culture of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island peoples, bringing a flowing stream of vignettes from 30 years of work.

The effect is mesmerizing and mysterious, casting a kind of spell where time becomes f luid.

It’s a sensory feast, dazzling in its parched outback colours, one huge backdrop textured with weeds and thick brush. In one number, a group of men hide and leap out from behind scraggly bushes; in another, a projected image looks like a vast, cracked rock face.

Aurally, the score by David Page and Steve Francis (with traditional music by Djakapurra Munyarryun) mixes pulsing percussion with insect and bird sounds, and—crucially— Indigenous spoken word. Like the First Nations languages here, Aboriginal languages were once banned by the colonial government, and are now being reclaimed.

The dance itself is a fascinating fusion of the grounded Indigenous traditions with the fluid finesse of contemporary training.

Low, prowling lunges and flexed feet abound, but so does beautiful partner work, as in the opening vignette’s strange and sensual pas de deux between a bird-man and a human woman. One hypnotic piece finds three women crawling low across the darkened stage, bending their limbs like spiders.

Bangarra works with Indigenous elders to make sure its more ceremonial elements are respectful and authentic. Spirit invites the audience into those rituals, particularly through the work of elder Elma Kris—whether she’s rubbing feathers over a woman’s skin in the opening, or sending curlicues of smoke out from two bowls near the end.

There’s a generosity to these moments, but in the face of history there’s a strong sense of resilience here, too—especially in a transcendent final moment, with a projection of an Aboriginal face that feels like you’re looking into the eyes of 65,000 years. It leaves you with the feeling that this ancient culture will live for many millennia more. g

ARTS

Sherman buries herself in her work

by John Lucas

VISUAL ARTS CINDY SHERMAN

At the Vancouver Art Gallery until March 8

d FOR AN ARTIST whose oeuvre has centred almost entirely on images of herself, Cindy Sherman has revealed very little of herself in her work. Yes, that is her face we see in that canny re-creation of Caravaggio’s Young Sick Bacchus, and in that vaguely disturbing photograph of a thrift-store-attired clown, and in that monumentally scaled image of an imperious-looking high-society matron. If none of them tell the viewer anything about the woman who made them, that is entirely by design. None are self-portraits; as Sherman told Apollo magazine earlier this year, “I’m trying to erase myself more than identify myself or reveal myself. That’s a big, confusing thing that people have with my work: they think I’m trying to reveal these secret fantasies or something.

It’s really about obliterating myself within these characters.”

The VAG’s current Sherman retrospective, organized in collaboration with the U.K.’s National Portrait Gallery, features more than 170 pieces spanning the influential American conceptual artist’s career, from her early-1970s student days at Buffalo State College to today. One of the most fascinating is Untitled #479, from 1975, which offers a rare peek behind the curtain at Sherman’s early process. The 23 hand-coloured silver gelatin prints show her gradually transforming from bookish-looking art-school student to glammed-up, cigarettepuffing party girl. It’s one of the few times that Sherman allows us

N OV E M B E R 2 0 19 Cindy Sherman’s Untitled #546 exposes the artifice of fashion photography by juxtaposing high-style Chanel pieces with cheap wigs and awkward poses.

to see her as herself, and it’s a good starting point for an exhibition that takes gallerygoers from high fashion to the knowingly grotesque and back again.

Reams have already been written about the themes in Sherman’s work.

Her 1981 “Centerfolds” series, for example—commissioned by, but never published in, Artforum—knocks the male gaze for a loop as, instead of offering the female body up for the titillation of the viewer, Sherman subverts expectations by imbuing each image with psychological tension and even implied violence. In the “Chanel” series, for which she was given access to clothing items from the design house’s archives, Sherman plays with the artifice of fashion photography, accessorizing Chanel’s high-style pieces with cheap wigs and striking awkward stances. That she has incongruously Photoshopped herself into rugged Icelandic landscapes heightens the dissonance between couture fantasy and uncomfortable reality.

Sherman is certainly calling our attention to these things with intent, but, in much the same way that she attempts to submerge her identity

beneath the carefully constructed surfaces of the characters she presents, the artist has claimed that she would prefer to have viewers draw their own conclusions. “I don’t want to have to explain myself,” she once said. “The work is what it is and hopefully it’s seen as feminist work, or feminist-advised work, but I’m not going to go around espousing theoretical bullshit about feminist stuff.”

Fair enough. After all, the espousing of theoretical bullshit is best left to art critics, who have venerated Sherman and helped cement her status as one of the most important artists of the past 40-odd years.

And rightly so; even among the other members of the New York City milieu known as the Pictures Generation (Barbara Kruger, Richard Prince, et al.), Sherman stands as a singular talent. Another artist with connections to that scene, Vancouver’s own Vikky Alexander, has a concurrent VAG retrospective, titled Extreme Beauty. It’s worth viewing both shows, if only to see how radically different two approaches to feminist-informed photo-based conceptual art can be. g

FLAMENCO LEGENDS: THE PACO DE LUCÍA PROJECT Sat Nov 2 at 8:00pm

Presented by the Chan Centre Spanish guitarist Paco de Lucía’s legacy lives on in this stirring flamenco celebration led by members of the late musician’s tour-de-force sextet.

DESMOND HOEBIG, CELLO & JON KIMURA PARKER, PIANO Tue Nov 12 at 6:30pm

Part of the President’s Concert Series Cellist Desmond Hoebig and pianist Jon Kimura Parker come together for an impassioned performance as part of UBC President Santa J. Ono’s concert series.

BACH’S BRANDENBURGS WITH TON KOOPMAN Nov 15 at 8pm + Nov 17 at 7:30pm

Presented by the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra Pianist and master Bach interpreter Ton Koopman performs a program of Bach and Handel.

ORQUESTA AKOKÁN Sat Nov 16 at 8:00pm

Presented by the Chan Centre 21st century mambo featuring punchy horns, driving rhythms, and the soaring vocals of José “Pepito” Gomez channels the 40s and 50s heyday of old Havana.

MEASHA BRUEGGERGOSMAN & JUSTUS ZEYEN Sun Nov 17 at 3:00pm

Presented by the Vancouver Recital Society Canadian soprano Measha Brueggergosman performs with pianist Justus Zeyen.

BLACK LIKE ME: AN EXPLORATION OF THE WORD N***** Nov 20 at 7:30pm + Nov 21 at 12:30pm | Telus Studio Theatre

Presented by the Chan Centre Dance artist Jade Solomon Curtis’ solo work confronts the power and oppression of a singularly charged word.

HANDEL MESSIAH

Sat Nov 30 at 8:00pm Presented by Early Music Vancouver Guest director Ivars Taurins leads a team of soloists, the Pacific Baroque Orchestra, and the Vancouver Cantata Singers in a thrilling period instrument performance of Handel’s Messiah.

CHAN CENTRE FOR THE PERFORMING ARTS 6265 Crescent Road, Vancouver (UBC)

chancentre.com SERIES SPONSOR:

OCTOBER 31 – NOVEMBER 7 / 2019 THE GEORGIA STR AIGHT 19

ARTS LISTINGS ONGOING

WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 30

LUZIA Cirque du Soleil presents a poetic and acrobatic ode to the culture of Mexico. To Dec 29, Under the Grand Chapiteau (Big Top), Concorde Pacific Place. $39-$270.

CHUTZPAH FESTIVAL Comedy, theatre, dance, and music, featuring Sandra Bernhard, Iris Bahr, Daniel Cainer, and Gary Lucas. To Nov 24, various venues. $24-60.

HOLD THESE TRUTHS Play starring Joel de la Fuente as Gordon Hirabayashi, a U.S. Presidential Medal of Freedom recipient who fought against the mass incarceration of people of Japanese ancestry during World War II. To Nov 2, Historic Theatre. $25-50.

COST OF LIVING Pulitzer Prize–winning play about relationships and living with physical disabilities. To Nov 3, Goldcorp Stage at the BMO Theatre Centre. From $29.

THE BUSINESS OF MURDER Richard Harris’s psychological thriller on the theme of revenge. To Nov 2, 8-10:30 pm, The Theatre at Hendry Hall. $20/18.

FRANKENSTEIN: LOST IN DARKNESS Mary Shelley’s haunting fable of hubris and loss reinterpreted as an immersive audio drama. To Nov 2, 8-10 pm, Pacific Theatre. $20-36.50.

BEAR WITNESS Thriller about a young woman who witnesses a murder. To Nov 2, 8-10:30 pm, Deep Cove Shaw Theatre. $22/20.

GASLIGHT Patrick Hamilton’s thriller set in Victorian England in 1880, directed by Peter Isaac. To Nov 9, 8-10:30 pm, Kay Meek Studio Theatre. $22/18.

VANCOUVER ART GALLERY aVIEWS OF THE COLLECTION: THE STREET to Nov 17 aVIKKY ALEXANDER: EXTREME BEAUTY to Jan 26 aROBERT RAUSCHENBERG 1965–1980 to Jan 26 aTRANSITS AND RETURNS to Feb 23 aCINDY SHERMAN to Mar 8

16TH ANNUAL DOWNTOWN EASTSIDE HEART OF THE CITY FESTIVAL Twelve days of music, stories, theatre, poetry, film, dance, readings, forums, workshops, gallery exhibits, art talks, and walks. Oct 30–Nov 10, Firehall Arts Centre. $15-25/free/by donation.

HUFF Indigenous playwright and performer Cliff Cardinal’s solo work. Oct 30, 12 pm, 7:30 pm, Chan Centre for the Performing Arts.

VANCOUVER COMEDY UNCENSORED Politically incorrect comedy featuring headliner Jon Gagnon. Oct 30, 8-10 pm, The Bourbon in Gastown. $10-15.

THURSDAY, OCTOBER 31 KREEPY KITTY Late night Halloween-based improv-comedy. Oct 31, 9:15 pm, The Improv Centre. From $10.75.

LUKE WELCH Toronto pianist performs works by Mozart, Scarlatti, and Chopin. Oct 31, 10:30-11:30 am, Silk Purse Arts Centre. $22/17.

LOST GIRLS BURLESQUE RESURRECTION A daring exposé of flesh featuring Veronica Vex, Jungle Kat, and Bunny. Oct 31, 8-10:30 pm, Fox Cabaret. $25.

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 1 ESCAPED ALONE Western Gold Theatre presents Caryl Churchill’s intricate, elliptical, and acutely female view of the apocalypse.

Nov 1-17, Pal Studio Theatre. $20-32.

DIA DE LOS MUERTOS Come celebrate Dia De Los Muertos with us while helping make a monumental difference in the lives of poverty stricken kids in rural Mexico!

With the power of education, our goal is to bring this gift to as many children as possible! Every child has dreams, and they all deserve a chance to feel what it’s like

to achieve them. Dress up and come early because we’re featuring live mariachi, a live catrinas fashion show, Latin food vendors, live DJ, beer garden, and much more! Nov 1, 3-11 pm, The Shipyards. $15.

LUMIÈRE VANCOUVER More than 25 artistic light installations at four downtown sites. Nov 1-3, 5-10 pm, English Bay, Jim Deva Plaza, Lot. 19, and šxw ́ exən Xwtl’a7énk Square (formerly known as the North Plaza of¯ the Vancouver Art Gallery). Free.

GREASE Karen Flamenco’s Pink Ladies and Troy McLaughlin’s tap dancing T-birds present a flamenco and tap collaboration. Nov 1-2, 7-9 pm, Vancouver Playhouse. $56/40.

DOWLAND LACHRIMAE British lutenist Nigel North joins Canadian viol consort Les Voix Humaines for a performance of John Dowland’s 1604 Lachrimae. Nov 1, 7:30 pm, Christ Church Cathedral. $18-76.

VANCOUVER BURLESQUE MARATHONG Big night of Vancouver burlesque features 25 performers. Nov 1, 8-10:30 pm, Rio Theatre. $25/30.

MODULUS LATE NIGHT Composer and improviser Joshua Zubot is joined by musicians Jesse Zubot, Peggy Lee, Meredith Bates, and James Meger, dance artist Stéphanie Cyr, and C130. Nov 1, 10:30 pm, Gold Saucer. $25/10.

SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 2 THE BOOKBINDER New Zealand theatre company Trick of the Light presents the story of the last brave young man to hold the role of a bookbinder’s apprentice. Nov 2, 3-4:30 pm, Studio Theatre Surrey Arts Centre. $15/ four-packs $45.

STILL LIFE WITH AVALANCHE Chamber ensemble Standing Wave joins Julia Chien (percussion), Aaron Graham (percussion), and Kimia Koochakzadeh-Yazdi (composer).

Nov 2, 5 pm, CBC Studio 700. $29/15.

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20 THE GEORGIA STR AIGHT OCTOBER 31 – NOVEMBER 7 / 2019

SAT & SUN 11AM-6PM

see page 23

movies

Strangers meet on an East Van street

by Janet Smith

T

Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers and Violet Nelson star in the acclaimed feature The Body Remembers When the World Broke Open.

he real-life story that inspired the new local feature The Body Remembers When the World Broke Open took place during one of those raindrenched Vancouver rush hours when the damp goes right to the bone. Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers was walking along Dundas Street in Vancouver’s East Side when she spotted a teenaged woman standing in the downpour without a coat.

“She was distraught, she was barefoot, she was visibly Indigenous, and she was very pregnant,” the Vancouver actor-director recalls, speaking from a film shoot in Hamilton, Ontario, and sharing a conference call with the film’s codirector and cowriter, Kathleen Hepburn. “Nobody was stopping to help her.”

In a description that mirrors a scene early in her new movie—which begins screening at the Vancity Theatre on Friday (November 1)—Tailfeathers realized the woman was focused on a male yelling at her from across the street. Tailfeathers, a member of the Kainai First Nation and the Sámi from Norway, invited her back to her nearby apartment, confident that she could find her help. But getting someone out of a domesticabuse situation turned out not to be so easy—and not just because every shelter she called that day was full.

Tailfeathers has never forgotten the woman or her story—even though she’s never seen her again. She’s been haunted by the thought that the cars whipping by that day might have stopped for Tailfeathers if she’d been in distress; she has lighter skin and can pass as non-Indigenous. The experience led her to take a hard look at her own relative privilege, and her presumptions that she and the system could rescue the person being abused.

The resulting film is loosely based on the event, and focuses on the complex relationship that forms between two women—Áila, who’s educated and housed in a well-appointed apartment, and Rosie, who lives in an abusive home with her boyfriend and his mother.

Tailfeathers knew from the outset that she wanted to shoot it in real time, seamlessly edited to resemble a single take—achieving an intimacy and intensity it might not have otherwise.

“Spending a couple hours with that woman had such an impact on me that I kind of wanted to see how that story could impact audiences just having to sit with those hours too,” Tailfeathers explains.

Hepburn adds there were other compelling reasons to take on the momentous challenge of a real-time, meticulously choreographed shoot that would require camera operators to

get in and out of taxis and move from room to room with the actors. “It was such a closed experience in so many ways,” Hepburn observes. “So much happened in just a few hours: it was two strangers that may never see each other again but will have, potentially, a life-changing impact on each other.”

Hepburn adds the real-time approach also aided Violet Nelson, who plays Rosie; she’s a 17-yearold who had never acted before. “It gave her an opportunity to react and respond in an authentic way,” says Hepburn, whose debut film was 2017’s critically acclaimed Never Steady, Never Still.

Cinematographer Norm Li ended up shooting the long takes in 16mm.

Hepburn describes an intense, fiveday process where everything was plotted out and the story was shot in its full 90-odd minutes each day.

“It was so surreal and also exciting: I was watching the whole film through every night,” Hepburn enthuses, revealing there were 12 camera transitions designed to seamlessly meld into the film.

power to women—give them the voice on-screen.”

The Vancouver setting is just as integral to the story, underscoring the dichotomies in the movie.

“I wanted to honour the Indigenous community that lives in East Vancouver and especially Indigenous youth that are aging out of care,” Tailfeathers says, referring to the controversial B.C. system that has cut people off of foster-care support at the age of 19. “And then it’s just about witnessing all the change and displacement happening there.…A lot of single moms are really struggling to get by in one of the most expensive places in the world. So it’s the beauty and the pain of East Vancouver.”

“We often don’t get to see a Vancouver that we know on-screen,” adds Hepburn, who also lives in the East Side. “We live in this neighbourhood but we feel so conflicted about our presence there and the role of artists in gentrification.”

She points to a scene where Tailfeathers’s Áila is taking a cab up Hastings Street, past the redevelopment

We often don’t get to see a Vancouver that we know on-screen. We live in this neighbouhood but we feel so conflicted about our presence there.

– Filmmaker Kathleen Hepburn

Preparations included a fourweek rehearsal process in a small studio space—a rarity for indie film, which actors often have to do on the fly. “I started in theatre, and what I loved is that you have the opportunity to rehearse for a long time and spend time with the other actors,” Tailfeathers says. “So we wanted to experiment with that and see if we could re-create that magic.”

Tailfeathers and Hepburn took pains to portray the sensitive matter of abuse delicately, conscious of not showing the violence when it’s inflicted. In fact, the male who terrorizes Rosie doesn’t appear onscreen, though his presence, and his voice, loom large.

“As women filmmakers, we don’t want to contribute to the sensationalization of the violence on-screen,” Hepburn explains. “We don’t want to make it exciting or thrilling to watch.…And we wanted to give the

happening along that route, and suddenly the mountains come into view.

“In those mountains you can see the history of the land and what’s been lost, and then there’s what’s been taken over by condos,” Hepburn says.

“We’re really wanting to give an authentic representation of the place that is our home.”

As tied as the filmmakers are to their Vancouver location, The Body Remembers is generating considerable buzz at festivals far outside this city and its complex social problems—starting with the film’s premiere at Berlinale.

“It’s been disheartening but beautiful and profound that every time we’ve had a screening, someone will say, ‘I’ve had an experience where I tried to reach out but nothing happened,’” Tailfeathers says.

“It’s very specific to East Vancouver and Indigenous women, but it’s also such a universal story.” g

Paula Kremer, Artistic Director

FRIEDE AUF ERDEN

P E AC E A N D R E M E M B R A N C E

SATURDAY NOVEMBER 9, 2019 7:30PM Christ Church Cathedral 690 Burrard St. Vancouver, BC

Tickets: vancouvercantatasingers.com or 604-730-8856

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OCTOBER 31 – NOVEMBER 7 / 2019 THE GEORGIA STR AIGHT 21

MOVIES

Pedro Almodóvar back in all his Glory REVIEWS PAIN AND GLORY

Starring Antonio Banderas. In Spanish, with English subtitles.

Rated PG

d PEDRO ALMODÓVAR sums up many of his strongest themes in Pain and Glory, an autumnal look back at a career that arrived kicking and screaming and, even at this introspective stage, still has room to move.

Frequent collaborator Antonio Banderas plays Salvador Mallo, a popular Spanish film director struggling with a creative and personal dry spell after the death of his mother. In elaborate flashbacks set in Francoera rural Spain, she is seen as an uncontainable force of nature played by Penélope Cruz. This earthy mama overwhelms the boy, whose incipient sexuality she senses and is frightened by, just as Cruz somehow swamps the movie—especially when it comes time to match her with an older actor playing her character closer to today.

(Spoiler alert: it can’t be done.)

The suave director hasn’t made anything in several years and has become a virtual recluse at his modernist urban villa in Madrid. But something impels him to join his onetime star (Asier Etxeandia, a Viggo Mortensen type) for an event celebrating the restoration of their breakthrough film. Unfortunately, this Alberto Crespo (also the name of a famed race-car driver) introduces him to heroin, and our movie guy’s an easy mark for opiates, having had severe back pain and other physical ailments since childhood.

What’s most impressive here is the quietly amusing way Banderas

conveys both the agony and ecstasy of his situation. (The Spanish title, Dolor y Gloria, has more playful poetry to it.) As always, Almodóvar is not about to let dour circumstances get in the way of visual fun. His palette favours cool greens and greys, shot through with slashes of gold and red, probably to suggest the suffocating Catholicism that marked the director’s childhood, and his creative psyche. There are even animated bits, recalling Saul Bass graphics from ’50s movies, as well as many nods to favourite filmmakers.

P&G is being treated in some circles as Almodóvar’s 8 ½, and indeed the Fellini references are strong; his Salvador still dallies over thoughts of a long-lost love named Federico, but he calls the man Marcello in the tart memoir he’s writing. Of course, you don’t have to decode any of this inside stuff to get real pleasure from this glorious Pain.

by Ken Eisner

Movies

TIP SHEET

d HALLOWEEN/THE THING The Shape and the original shape-shifter come together for the final night of the Vancity Theatre’s seasonal horror fest on Thursday (October 31). d TEL AVIV ON FIRE ArabIsraeli tensions are given a comedic twist in this festival hit, receiving four nights at the Vancity Theatre starting Friday (November 1). d THE KING OF COMEDY In the wake of Joker, the Rio Theatre welcomes Martin Scorsese’s deeply unsettling 1982 film back to the big screen on Tuesday (November 5).

As Salvador Mallo, a wild-haired Antonio Banderas stands in for his director and frequent collaborator in Pedro Almódovar’s introspective latest, Pain and Glory.

THE BODY REMEMBERS WHEN street. Rosie (newcomer Violet NelTHE WORLD BROKE OPEN Starring Violet Nelson. Rated PG son) is barefoot, bedraggled, pregnant, and shivering in the rain. What d IT TAKES SOME time to adapt to to do next? the real-time rhythms of this VanThe movie takes place over the couver-set drama, which centres on course of a single afternoon, with the a chance encounter between women few events focusing on a long converof overlapping backgrounds but very sation across the class divide—first different life trajectories. in the elegant Áila’s pleasant, midElle-Máijá Tailfeathers, who cowrote dle-class apartment, later in taxis and codirected this with Kathleen and a halfway house Rosie relucHepburn (Never Steady, Never Still), tantly agrees to visit. Rosie, running plays Áila, a well-educated East Side from an abusive environment, comes woman who—like Tailfeathers—is across as someone who’s never had a of mixed Blackfoot and Sámi back- decent break, and is therefore wary ground. (This explains why Norway of receiving help from strangers—eshelped produce the film.) Áila has just pecially those who might be ambivabeen to see a gynecologist regarding lent about their own motivations. contraception when she bumps into None of this is dramatized in the another Indigenous woman on the usual sense. The filmmakers make unusual choices, such as letting trips to the bathroom or wherever take as long as they need, and having cinematographer Norm Li’s camera rest on one participant instead of having both people in the shot. This creates a subjectivity that pulls you in, even if the action isn’t always what you’d call exciting. There’s no music on the soundtrack, save what’s found inside the frame. And that makes it even more emotional when Rosie plays a track off Joni Mitchell’s Blue LP, and places the headphones on her belly— aching beauty for a future generation to hear and feel.

Moments like that make you realize how much of everyday life VIFF‘19 escapes our perpetually recording eyes. In keeping with the subtle provocation of the title (taken from First Nations poet Billy-Ray Belcourt), it offers a daring kind of storytelling— one that asks us to notice what, and who, we’ve been taught to ignore.

by Ken Eisner

THE KING

Starring Timothée Chalamet. Rating unavailable

22 THE GEORGIA STR AIGHT OCTOBER 31 – NOVEMBER 7 / 2019

d JUSTIFYING THE HYPE surrounding his role in The King, Timothée Chalamet gives a star-making turn as a youthful, tormented Henry V—transforming from a louche booze artist with father issues into a heroic warrior who despises war.

Brooding and intense, he’s emorevival suave in his chain-mail cowls and bowl cut. If you think he’s too young, consider early-15th-century lifespans: Henry was just 26 when he took the throne, and died at 35.

Elsewhere, director David Michôd (Animal Kingdom) offers up a host of bold and meaty (maybe slightly showy) characterizations in this Netflix production. At the beginning, Ben Mendelsohn’s warmongering, sickly Henry IV is an unhinged hippie. Joel Edgerton’s Falstaff is a harddrinking buffoon, but one haunted by battlefield PTSD. Robert Pattinson’s Dauphin is a sinister pretty boy, a psychopath disguised in face powder, frills, and rings.

In the tradition of last year’s equally brazen The Favourite, The King takes contemporary liberties with its characters and history—although with much more blood and mud. These are the gritty 1400s, and you can almost smell the cinder-stained fireplaces and stinking sewage ditches running through dirt streets.

Unlike The Favourite, though, The King dares to tread on sacred ground: Shakespeare’s Henry V looms large, and purists might be put off. Michôd and Edgerton’s script sometimes mimics the Shakespearean plot and language, but it’s less convoluted and there are F-bombs. It even dares to mess with the St. Crispin’s Day speech at the Battle of Agincourt (immortalized by the likes of Laurence Olivier and Kenneth Branagh), with Chalamet turning it into a kind of primal howl.

The film begins in the throes of the Hundred Years’ War with France, with Scotland and Wales closing in from the north. Henry has fallen out with his father because he opposes the battlefield carnage his elder has created. But when Henry IV dies, his son reluctantly accepts the throne.

He tries to avoid more war, but his advisors want him to take France— and the Dauphin keeps sending insults to him. Michôd and Edgerton up the ante by interweaving surprise deceptions along the way.

As history tells us, Henry will end up on a battlefield after all, leading one of Britain’s most famous bloodbaths. Let’s just say that Michôd does for the armour-and-broadsword Battle of Agincourt what Steven Spielberg did for the D-Day invasion. He gets the cameras right down in the mud, where tinmen are suffocating, and in one gruelling long take captures Henry driving daggers through face slits, wrestling in the muck, and getting trampled in a sea of clanging metal. It’s brutal, deglamorized, and horrifyingly spectacular (a reason to see this flick on a big screen).

Still, what does it all mean? If Henry didn’t so full-heartedly throw himself into the sword-swinging violence, you could read Michôd’s movie as a treatise against the warring powers of our time. But in Chalamet’s offbeat portrayal, Henry is a guy who may be helpless to resist the forces that have shaped him into a soldier since he was a boy; just watch him when he decides he has to lop off the noggin of an old friend who may be a traitor.

The most compelling take may be that Henry is wracked by the same dark instincts and paranoia as his father, impulses either inherited or just bred into society and power itself. And, with apologies to die-hard Shakespeareans, that’s an intriguing alternative to some of the more actor-ish, pomp-filled explorations of the king.

by Janet Smith

HARRIET

Starring Cynthia Erivo. Rated PG

d THE STORY OF Harriet Tubman is so inspiring, rich in historical importance, and crucial to battles still being fought for the American soul, you’d think her saga would be told more often.

Remarkably, the best-known version has been a 1978 TV miniseries, A Woman Called Moses, which starred Cicely Tyson, fresh from the widespread popularity of the Roots miniseries. (She also played Coretta Scott King in the same year.) This is odd, considering that Tubman personally rescued more than 70 slaves without losing any, while strengthening what became known as the Underground Railroad to Canada. She later became a Union spy during the Civil War (Drunk History did a good job with that), and an outspoken suffragist in the early 20th century, living to be 91.

This was despite seizures that resulted from a brain injury, at age 13, when an “owner” struck her with a heavy metal object. The movie Harriet understandably focuses on a fairly narrow band of action. Despite some controversy over having this American icon played by England’s Cynthia Erivo (so good in Bad Times at the El Royale), she’s mostly impressive as Tubman—at least once the former Minty Ross escapes Maryland and becomes the dagger-carrying renegade of legend.

The movie is less convincing about her private life, not least because this is more a matter of conjecture for director Kasi Lemmons, who cowrote the original script with Gregory Allen Howard (Ali, Remember the Titans). To put it bluntly, the material involving the future Harriet and her family is pretty boring compared with the derring-do to come. But the whole package is disappointingly conventional, with the usual drone shots, sweeping orchestral score—not a hint of Africa to be heard—and the stolid speech-making you expect from a routine biopic.

There’s barely a moment spared for the sense of displacement, let alone wonder, felt by a woman born in chains and suddenly exposed to luxurious food, clothes, and lodging, as well as the respect of a mixed society. Instead, you get painterly tableaux with “historical” figures standing stiffly in their costumes, intercut with far too many return trips to the exact same locations, and dreamy scenes depicting her seizures, which she attributed to a special relationship with God. The movie hammers home parallels with Joan of Arc, but by reinforcing her mystical qualities, it undermines her stunning efficacy as a real person who simply, and fiercely, had the courage to act.

by Ken Eisner

from page 20

WHY I DESIGN Twenty-five designers stationed throughout the museum’s galleries discuss approaches to their practice. Nov 2, 7-10:30 pm, Museum of Vancouver. $20/25.

ANIMAL ATTRACTION April O’Peel Productions presents a showcase of Vancouver burlesque. Nov 2, 8 pm, Rio Theatre. $25/30.

SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 3 CHOPIN PROJECT: THE QUINTESSENTIAL CHOPIN Pianist Sunny Qu performs the Ballade No. 1, Scherzo No. 2, and “Heroic” Polonaise in A Flat. Nov 3, 2-4 pm, Vancouver Academy of Music.

NANCY TAM’S WALKING AT NIGHT BY MYSELF Performance-maker, composer, and sound designer explores perception, social acceptability, and individuality with a projector. Nov 3, 5 pm, CBC Studio 700. $29/15.

JOHN LUTHER ADAMS’S ILIMAQ An exploration of spirituality through a diverse range of sounds, rhythms, and melodies. Nov 3, 7:30 pm, Roundhouse Community Arts & Recreation Centre. $29/15.

TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 5 12 MINUTES MAX STUDIO SHOWING Works in progress by Ana Sosa, Dance// Novella (Racheal Prince and Brandon Alley), Linda Hayes, and Rachel Helten. Nov 5, 6 pm, Scotiabank Dance Centre. Free.

GREEN DAY’S AMERICAN IDIOT A 90-minute immersive Green Day experience. Nov 5-10, 8-9:30 pm, Centennial Theatre. $25-45.

WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 6 TRADER TIME Ivan Coyote and Sarah MacDougall’s multimedia odyssey about growing up queer in Whitehorse. Nov 6, 7:30 pm, Chan Centre for the Performing Arts. $35.

KUROKO World premiere of Tetsuro Shigematsu’s play about a reclusive woman challenged to save her father’s life Nov 6-17, 7:30 pm, Historic Theatre. From $26.

PASSAGES OF RHYTHMS Dancer-choreographer Alvin Erasga Tolentino of CO.ERASGA presents an evening of three dynamic duets, featuring three diverse artists. Nov 6-9, 8 pm, The Nest. $30/20.

THE TURN OF THE SCREW Aenigma Theatre presents an adaptation of Henry James’s ghost story. Nov 6-10, 8-9:30 pm, Studio 16. $25/20.

THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 7 CIRCLE CRAFT CHRISTMAS MARKET Over 300 artisans gather to show their wares. Nov 7-11, Vancouver Convention Centre.

THE SOUND OF MUSIC Musical about a young governess of a large family who falls for its widowed father. Nov 7–Jan 5, 2020, Stanley Industrial Alliance Stage. From $39.

SOUND HOUSE: AWOKEN WORD Performances by poet Angelica Poversky, hip-hop artist

Keliya, poet Ifrah Hussein, poet and emcee Dana, musician Ital Blue, and the UBC Slam Poets. Nov 7, 7 pm, Museum of Anthropology at UBC. $15.

THE WARS UBC Theatre and Film presents Timothy Findlay’s World War I drama, adapted by Dennis Garnhum. Nov 7-23, 7:30 pm, Frederic Wood Theatre. $11.50-24.50.

CHELSEA HANDLER American comic, TV host, and author performs two standup comedy shows. Nov 7-8, 8 pm, Chan Centre for the Performing Arts. Nov 7 SOLD OUT, tix for Nov 8 $150/85/69.50/49.50.

Arts HOT TICKET

all your favourite rockin’ tunes from the movie, plus live guitar.

WORLD ACCORDION AND TANGO FESTIVAL (November

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 8 LOST VOICES In honour of November 11th, join Symphony 21 for our program of Lost Voices: composers and works forever linked to the loss of war. Butterworth: On the banks of green willow; Ravel: Le tombeau de couperin; Schreker: Kammersymphonie. Join us early for a showing of the 2013 Oscar-winning short film “The lady in number 6”. Nov 8, 7 pm, Roy Barnett Recital Hall. Pay what you can.

CULTURAL SUMMIT Connect with local arts leaders and creative thinkers at the Coquitlam Cultural Summit! The Summit features an Arts Night Social, keynote addresses, roundtable talks, and immersive live arts experiences. Tickets for the event are $25 and include admission to all events.

Find out more at: www.coquitlam.ca/ culturalsummit. Nov 8, 7-9 pm; Nov 9,

GREASE (November 1 and 2 at

the Vancouver Playhouse) The fiery footwork of flamenco meets its match in tap dance, as two art forms combine forces for a rendition of the ’50s-set musical like you’ve never seen it. Sparks fly when Karen Flamenco’s Pink Ladies meet with Troy McLaughlin’s tap-dancing T-Birds;

8 and 9 at various venues) Transport yourself from Buenos Aires to old Paris in this event celebrating an instrument, a musical genre, and the planet’s sultriest dance. Among the highlights will be Duo ParisMoscou (November 8 at St. John’s Shaughnessy Church), in which Domi Emorine and Roman Jbanov blend squeezebox virtuosity with ample humour, and the multimedia Tango del Cielo concert, with accordion star Jelena Milojevic. g

10 am–4 pm, Evergreen Cultural Centre. $25.

online using the event-submission form

ARTS LISTINGS are a public service provided free of charge, based on available space and editorial discretion. Submit events

don’t make it into the paper due to space

at straight.com/AddEvent. Events that constraints will appear on the website.

“A TRIUMPH! ALMODÓVAR’S BEST SINCE ‘VOLVER’ AND POSSIBLY ‘TALK TO HER’.”

-Justin Chang, LOS ANGELES TIMES

El Deseo presents a film by Almodóvar

pain and glory

written and directed by Pedro

Almodóvar

DRUG USE, NUDITY, COARSE LANGUAGE, VIOLENCE

EXCLUSIVE ENGAGEMENT STARTS FRIDAY

FIFTH AVENUE 2110 Burrard St. • 604-734-7469

Check theatre directories for showtimes

OCTOBER 31 – NOVEMBER 7 / 2019 THE GEORGIA STR AIGHT 23

music

Berner aims to be useful to people

W

by Mike Usinger

hen Geoff Berner suggests he’s a little overstressed at this point in his life, he’s got reasons for feeling like it’s all too much.

The veteran Vancouver klezmer renegade, newly minted playwright, and sometime politician is launching three major projects, and he’s not sure how he’s going to pull things off.

“There’s my first full-length musical,” Berner says, on the line from home. “We’re doing an hourlong version of it, so it’s slightly truncated, but I’ve never done that before. That will be the opening act for the album-release show—all at the WISE on Friday.

And just because I didn’t have enough going on, we scheduled the launch for the new political party this week.

So we’re trying to break into musical theatre and launching an album and then taking on the entire B.C. leftGreen political establishment. We’ll see how that goes.”

The new political endeavour he’s helped get off the ground as an alternative to the mainstream left is the B.C. Ecosocialists Party.

“There’s nobody to vote for on the left,” Berner says. “The Greens are basically a bunch of white Mountain Equipment Co-op customers. And the NDP are just another branch of the managerial class with no reason to want to change things in any serious way. They’re doing fine—they’ll get their Tesla.”

The play, written with collaborators including TJ Dawe, Toby Berner, Jack Garton, and Tallulah Winkelman, is titled The Trombonik Returns to New Chelm. And his new album, which solidifies him as one of the city’s most consistently fascinating, thought-provoking, and subversively funny songwriters, is called Grand Hotel Cosmopolis.

Berner sums up The Trombonik Returns to New Chelm as follows: “A fake rabbi comes to a little Jewish town in Saskatchewan, starts off trying to fleece them, and winds up getting involved in a whisky-making scheme.”

According to Jewish folk tales, Chelm was founded when an angel was sent to Earth with a sack of foolish souls to be placed across the planet, only to trip and dump them all in one locale. Berner’s riff on the mythical village touches on everything from the systemic oppression of Jews in Europe to North America’s shameful history of colonialism and its effect on Indigenous people. If that sounds heavy, consider also that the

Geoff Berner is launching a full-length play, a new album, and a left-green political party. Photo by Mischa Scherrer

genius of Mel Brooks was studied, dissected, and then channelled during the creation of the play.

“In Jewish folklore, they call it the village of idiots,” he says. “We don’t call it that because we don’t say that anymore. But also, when you look at the stories of Chelm, the people are actually pretty resilient, robust types who always manage to think their way out of their problems. The way they think might be a bit off the beaten path, but they make it and survive.”

That idea of taking something bad and spinning it around into a positive inspired Grand Hotel Cosmopolis.

Cinematic in scope, the album’s 10 songs swing from stomping klezmerpunk (“Grand Hotel Cosmopolis”) to dialled-down, accordion-and-violinadorned folk (“Why Don’t We Just Take the Billionaire’s Money Away”).

There are moments of atmospheric high art (the menacing and ghostly “What Kind of Bear Am I”) and there are times when Berner happily shotguns a beer and rips it up on the dance floor (“The Drummer Requests”).

Grand Hotel Cosmopolis takes its name from a successful social experiment in Augsburg, Germany, where a group of activists turned an abandoned high school into an artsfocused hostel. But rather than serving only backpackers, they also made the Grandhotel Cosmopolis a safe landing spot for immigrants fleeing persecution in their homelands. Arriving from troubled locales like Somalia, Syria, and Myanmar, families are given not only a place to stay, but also a chance to earn money by doing jobs on-site.

Making this record and this play…was, for me, all about digging myself out of that hole.

– Geoff Berner

Berner learned of the Grandhotel Cosmopolis when it was in the planning stage.

“This buddy of mine puts on shows in Augsburg,” Berner says. “He’s been putting on shows since the early punk days. Our songs are sometimes about how it might be nice to be nice to travelling people, and about the connection between the history of Jewish people and refugees today. So he said, ‘You might be interested in this place.’

We were first brought there when it was still an abandoned high school.

They were like, ‘Und dis is vere ve are going to put all the people,’ and we were like, ‘Um, sure, buddy.’

“And then we came back two years later and it was all done and working,” he continues. “It was like, ‘What the hell?’ It was this incredible thing where these Germans were doing this fantastic thing. They were welcoming people who desperately

just need somewhere to be.”

The most devastating song on Grand Hotel Cosmopolis is the retrojazz-tinted “Would You Hide Me”, where the singer-accordionist starts out recounting childhood life lessons with “My grandmother said ‘Don’t kid yourself my dear/For one second you think it can’t happen here’ ” and “Friends and neighbours in the neighbourhood would turn us in to the Gestapo for the public good.” Proving he’s able to come at the blackest of situations with humour, he continues: “When I first come over to visit for tea/My behaviour may seem erratic/ I’m just poking around assessing the livability of your attic.”

Berner admits that, quite understandably, history sometimes skewed the way he viewed the world. But one of the reasons he loves the Grandhotel Cosmopolis is that it helped change the way he looks at his fellow human beings.

“My sympathies already lay with the Syrians and the Somalians,” he says. “I’m already onboard with the idea that you have to treat people decently when they are running for their lives, because that’s a moral imperative. What I think I learned more about at the space was the Germans.

Being a Jewish klezmer musician travelling in Germany is kind of a different, special way to be a touring musician. You know what I mean? A lot of the initial tours were solo, so it was like Agent Berner, with his accordion, infiltrating enemy territory. That’s what I’d been raised to feel about Germany: that they tried to kill us all.”

As much as he met nice people during early swings through the country, he found himself on edge, something that he notes in “Would You Hide Me”.

“What changed things for me was hanging out with people running the Grandhotel Cosmopolis, and hanging out with women in Augsburg who are activists devoting their lives to helping people they’ve never met before. Sometimes they’re defying the cops to do so—and being super funny about it, having a really dark sense of humour. What I’ve discovered is that these are my people. They like to have a beer, watch old episodes of Bonanza, and they like to laugh.”

That ability to laugh is important.

Berner understands that sometimes it’s the only way out of the darkness.

Well, that and devoting yourself to a cause, whether by starting up a political party, writing a play, or creating something like the Grandhotel Cosmopolis.

“I was pretty low and pretty anxious a lot of the time over the past couple of years,” he says. “Making this record and this play, and helping start this party, was, for me, all about digging myself out of that hole. I had a lot of depression and anxiety and selfloathing, and it started to get to where I couldn’t handle it. I needed to go to therapy, I needed to talk to a doctor.”

Berner continues: “Eventually, I came to see that the best way to move forward was to try and be useful to people with the skills that I’ve got. Whether it’s writing songs, doing theatre, or doing activism, the more useful I can be to other people, the better I feel.”

His ultimate hope for Grand Hotel Cosmopolis, then? Being admired as a clever songwriter is nice, but nowhere near as gratifying as the idea that, maybe, he’s helping make the world a little better.

“If I can tell people about the Grandhotel Cosmopolis, maybe get them to go to their website and make a donation, or think about how they might be able to build something like that in their own hometown, then I’m doing some good. A lot of times people are like, ‘Things are fucked and I don’t even know where to begin.’ But there’s lots you can do if you just know where to go.” g Geoff Berner celebrates the premiere of The Trombonik Returns to New Chelm and the release of Grand Hotel Cosmopolis at the WISE Hall on Friday (November 1) as part of the Chutzpah Festival.

Dubreuil speaks the language of music d DOES BILINGUALISM HELP promote musical creativity? Gabriel Dubreuil’s blossoming career suggests that it almost certainly does.

Born to francophone parents in that most English of cities, Victoria, the 24-year-old violinist is fluent not only in both of Canada’s official languages, but in several distinct musical dialects: Celtic, classical, jazz, and folk.

“My family is totally bilingual,” Dubreuil reveals in a telephone conversation from Parksville, where he’s performing with Spirit of the West spinoff band Early Spirit. “Family conversations switch languages at will, and for me that’s very freeing—and kind of representative of what it is to be francophone in Western Canada, where you live in English but you have French to express yourself with when you maybe don’t have the words in English.”

As for how that’s played out in his musical development, Dubreuil admits that he hasn’t Dubreuil plays solo and with Nova Scotia’s really considered it—but he’s intrigued by the Gabriel P’tit Belliveau. Photo by Dominique Pelletier notion. “That’s a funny question to think about,” he muses. “Learning new languages and having kind of grew up with. I never realized that it was to study multiple languages is just something I an unusual thing in Western Canada until more 24 THE GEORGIA STR AIGHT OCTOBER 31 – NOVEMBER 7 / 2019

recently. And kind of in the same way, musically, I just tried to explore as many different styles as I could on my instrument. I just thought it was so exciting that you could do all these different things on the violin that hadn’t necessarily been done yet. And, for sure, the ability to switch from one language to another definitely translates to music, as well. I’ve always considered music to be just another language, and if that’s the case then the ability to switch between styles would be helped by the bilingualism.”

Helped, too, by early training in classical music, followed by a degree from Boston’s jazz-oriented Berklee College of Music. While Early Spirit splits its focus between Spirit of the West founding member Jay Knutson’s singersongwriter contributions and Dubreuil’s fiddle tunes, the violinist’s own band incorporates all of his influences. And so, too, will his upcoming appearance at the Coup de Coeur festival of francophone music, in which he’ll present a solo set followed by a collaboration with Nova Scotia’s folk-rock–inflected P’tit Belliveau.

“We’ll have two days of rehearsal beforehand, and we’re just sending each other some

charts and stuff,” Dubreuil says, noting that he’s inviting his friend and occasional collaborator Finn Manniche, known for his work with the Roma-swing band Van Django as well as the Yaletown String Quartet, to join in on cello. “But we’re basically just going to see what happens. It’s tough to really know exactly what it will look like until we’re all playing together in the same room, but I’m hoping that we’ll have something really magical that kind of draws on the Cape Breton francophone style and fiddle language.

“I think it’ll be really fun,” he adds. “We’ll be able to get some super-fiddle-sounding moments, and also do some classical moments that maybe are a little more arranged.

I’m hoping to have some things come out that are really magical and memorable and original—and that are not something that any of us would have expected.”

by Alexander Varty

Gabriel Dubreuil and P’tit Belliveau play Studio 16 on November 16, as part of the Coup de Coeur festival. For a full Coup de Coeur schedule, visit coupdecoeur.ca/.

More Fun a loving tribute to L.A. punk

by Mike Usinger

their platinum-shifting Beauty and MORE FUN IN THE NEW WORLD: the Beat, the five-piece was part of the THE UNMAKING AND LEGACY same scene that gave the world X, the OF L.A. PUNK Germs, and Black Flag.

By John Doe, with Tom DeSavia In the chapter titled “Sliver of and friends. Da Capo Press, 317 pp, Glass”, Go-Go’s guitarist Jane Wiedlin softcover recalls being on tour in Washington state during the summer of 1981, when d BEFORE WE CELEBRATE the way “Our Lips Are Sealed” became one L.A. punk changed the lives of every- of the most played songs in America. one from broken-home runaways to With a border crossing into Canada on Academy Award–winning actors to the horizon the next morning, the Gomodern-art icons, let’s start with the Go’s headed off to a Pacific Northwest outrageous stuff. More Fun in the New house party.

World: The Unmaking and Legacy of “When we got there we found out L.A. Punk is a collection of essays by everyone was in the backyard doing those who witnessed the rise and after- opium…up their butts,” she writes. math of one of alternative music’s most “Being the Go-Go’s, we naturally fabled scenes. joined in, squatting around a campfire Impossibly, the craziest revela- with about fifteen kids, all of us with tions come from the unlikeliest of opium shoved up our asses.” bands: the Go-Go’s. Before becoming Lest one think that was an isolated America’s sweethearts on the back of incident, Wiedlin goes on to recount

how, unable to cope with sudden fame, the Go-Go’s chose to spend every waking moment either drunk or high or both. The guitarist recalls showing up on the tour bus early in the morning with a six-pack after spending the night smoking crack with skids in a swank Atlanta hotel, snorting Mount Everest–size mounds of cocaine, and drinking enough to float a battleship.

The endless lost weekends in More Fun in the New World don’t stop there.

In “Another State of Mind”, Social Distortion’s now-clean Mike Ness chronicles how he started using drugs and alcohol in his teens.

“Hollywood Shuffle” has Circle Jerks frontman Keith Morris remembering the ’80s as follows: “For me this was the period of the beerbonic plague when I was on a cocaine leash and drinking a case or two a day.”

But the great thing about More Fun

MUSIC LISTINGS

CONCERTS JUST ANNOUNCED ROCK 4 PROSTATE Cover band Posing Til Closing plays a benefit for prostate cancer research. Nov 8, 8-11 pm, Backstage Lounge. $10-20.

VAVA Rapper from China (“My New Swag”).

Dec 11, 9 pm, Fortune Sound Club. Tix on sale Nov 1, 10 am, $65.

THE STARLING EFFECT Local indie-rock band, with guests Dark Dials. Dec 12, 8 pm, LanaLou’s Restaurant. $7.

DAN DEACON American composer and electronic musician. Mar 21, 8 pm, Venue. Tix on sale Nov 1, 10 am, $18.

COWBOY JUNKIES Canadian alt-country band.

Apr 8, 8 pm, Chan Centre for the Performing Arts. Tix on sale Nov 4, 10 am, $69.50/55/39.50.

WHITE DENIM Rock band from Austin, Texas.

Apr 11, 9 pm, Rickshaw Theatre. Tix on sale Nov 1, 10 am, $20.

JIMMY EAT WORLD Alt-rock band from Arizona, with guests White Reaper. May 18, 8:30 pm, Commodore Ballroom. Tix on sale Nov 1, 10 am, $45.

LOUIS TOMLINSON Former member of One Direction. Jul 23, 8 pm, Orpheum Theatre. Tix on sale Nov 1, 10 am, $97.75/77.75/57.75.

FRANKIE COSMOS Indie-rock band from New York, with guests Lomelda and Stephen Steinbrink. Nov 2, 8 pm, Fortune Sound Club. $22.50.

TOM MORELLO Guitarist playing full songs off his 2018 collaborative release, The Atlas Underground. Nov 2, 8 pm, Commodore Ballroom. $45.

THE GREATEST SONS Rocket From Russia presents an album-release show, with guests You Big Idiot, Stranded Hikers, the Highsides, and Die Job. Nov 2, 8 pm, SBC Restaurant. $10.

GUTTER DEMONS Rock ‘n’ roll trio with rockabilly roots, with guests the Devil’s Sons.

Nov 2, 8 pm, Pat’s Pub & Brewhouse. $15.

LEMON BUCKET ORKESTRA This notorious party-punk, Balkan-inspired band’s live shows are truly immersive experiences.

Nov 2, 8 pm, Rickshaw Theatre. $30 advance/$35 door—cash only.

HOLLERADO Indie-rock quartet from Ottawa.

Nov 2, 8 pm, Commodore Ballroom. $24.50.

THE PACO DE LUCÍA PROJECT Flamenco group carries on the musical legacy of late guitar legend Paco de Lucía. Nov 2, 8 pm, Chan Centre for the Performing Arts. From $46.

PARADE OF LOST SOULS AFTER PARTY Featuring the Dusty Flower Pot Cabaret, DJ Sweet Anomaly, and Tarran The Tailor. Nov 2, 9-11:30 pm, WISE Hall. $25/35.

WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 30

SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 3

DYGL Indie-rock quartet from Tokyo. Oct 30, Biltmore Cabaret.

THE MIDNIGHT HOUR Hip-hop artists Ali Shaheed Muhammad and Adrian Younge.

Nov 3, Biltmore Cabaret. $22.50.

STEPHEN LEWIS FOUNDATION BENEFIT Performances by TriVo (Brian Tate, Dawn Pemberton, and Karla Mundy) and Zimbabwe’s Kurai Mubalwa. Nov 3, 8-10:30 pm, St. James Hall. $30.

THURSDAY, OCTOBER 31 JAGUAR Local rock band plays a Hallowen show, with guests the Big Coast and In Bliss.

Oct 31, Railway Stage and Beer Café. $10.

RICH AUCOIN Indie-rock musician from Halifax. Oct 31, Biltmore Cabaret. $20.

JINJER AND THE BROWNING Metal bands from Ukraine and Kansas. Oct 31, 6:30 pm, Rickshaw Theatre. $18-145.

ROCKULA VS FUNKENSTEIN: A HALLOWEEN THRILL SHOW Halloween bash featuring performances by Brass Camel, Chase the Bear, Raincity, and Bad Magic. Oct 31, 7-11:30 pm, WISE Hall. $15.

MIAMI HORROR Electronic-music band from Melbourne, Australia. Oct 31, 8 pm, Fortune Sound Club. $20.

BIG WRECK Can-Am rock band, with guests Texas King. Oct 31–Nov 1, 8 pm, Commodore Ballroom. Nov 1 SOLD OUT, tix for Oct 31 $42.50.

VIBE SELEKTAZ HALLOWEEN Future-funk duo headlines a Halloween dance party, with guests Muklife, T Funk, Ray Black, Bass Cat, and Driftwood. Oct 31, 10 pm, Central Studios. $15.

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 1 THE BAND PERRY American country-pop trio composed of siblings Kimberly Perry, Reid Perry, and Neil Perry, with guests Phangs. Nov 1, Vogue Theatre. $30.

SAN FERMIN Avant-pop project of Brooklynbased composer and songwriter Ellis LudwigLeone. Nov 1, 7:30 pm, Venue. $18.

STRUNG OUT California skate punks, with guests the Casualties from New York City.

Nov 1, 8 pm, Rickshaw Theatre. $24.50.

THE EAST POINTERS Juno-winning folk trio from PEI. Nov 1, 8 pm, Fox Cabaret. $21.

GOLDROOM L.A.–based songwriter-producer.

Nov 1, 8 pm, Fortune Sound Club. $25.

STEPHEN FEARING Canadian folk singersongwriter, with guest Matt Patershuk. Nov 1, 8-10:30 pm, St. James Hall. $28/24.

GEOFF BERNER Grand Hotel Cosmopolis album release. Nov 1, 8-11:30 pm, WISE Hall.

SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 2 RA RA RIOT Indie-rock band from Syracuse, New York, with guest Bayonne. Nov 2, Biltmore Cabaret. $23.

FKA TWIGS English art-pop singer-songwriter plays two nights. Nov 2-3, Vogue Theatre. $34.99.

(SANDY) ALEX G Indie-rock musician from Philadelphia. Nov 2, Imperial Vancouver. $23.

TINY MOVING PARTS Emo revival band from Minnesota, with guests Fredo Disco and Standards. Nov 2, Fox Cabaret. $22.50.

DON AMERO Country and folk singer-songwriter from Winnipeg. Nov 2, 8 pm, Shadbolt Centre for the Arts. $36.

MONDAY, NOVEMBER 4 BISHOP BRIGGS Indie rock singer-songwriter from London, England, with guests Miya Folick and Jax Anderson. Nov 4, 8 pm, Commodore Ballroom. $29.50.

SWMRS Punk-rock quartet from Oakland.

Nov 4, 8 pm, Rickshaw Theatre. $23.50.

TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 5 SEAWAY Pop-punk band from Ontario, with guests Youth Fountain, First Ghost, Chief State, and Chase Your Words. Nov 5, Rickshaw Theatre. $20.

MONO Instrumental post-rock quartet from Japan, with guests Mamiffer. Nov 5, Imperial Vancouver. $20.

TRAMPOLINE Antirock trio makes Vancouver debut, with guests Ford Pier and the Lone Palms. Nov 5, 8 pm, Red Gate Arts Society. $12.

TERRA LIGHTFOOT Canadian roots-rock singer-songwriter and guitarist, with guest Sam Weber. Nov 5, 8 pm, Biltmore Cabaret. $20.

WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 6

I went through a complete stress-induced mental breakdown about three years ago following three major changes in unbelievably quick succession. I used to feel incredibly proud to be a connector, and had a wealth of friends... (con’t @straight.com)

THE BUILDING Singer-songwriter from Youngstown, Ohio, with guest Heather Woods Broderick. Nov 8, Biltmore Cabaret. $14.

JASON MRAZ American soul-pop singersongwriter. Nov 8, 7:30 pm, Queen Elizabeth Theatre. $99.50/75.50/55.50/45.50.

DUNE RATS Rock band from Brisbane, Australia. Nov 8, 9 pm, Rickshaw Theatre. $20.

CURRENT SWELL Indie-rock band from Victoria. Nov 8, 9:30 pm, Commodore Ballroom. $30.

Things sure change I used to cringe at the music my father liked, but fifty years later, it doesn’t sound that bad after all

Marijuana

SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 9

I feel like a sellout for buying government weed.

CITY AND COLOUR Canadian singer-songwriter Dallas Green, with guests Jacob Banks and Ben Rogers Nov 9, Pacific Coliseum. $45.50-85.50.

SEEFEEL British postrock band, with guests Sweguno and Kinetoscope. Nov 9, Biltmore Cabaret. $26.50.

MIKAL CRONIN Indie-rock singer-songwriter from California. Nov 9, 8 pm, Fox Cabaret. $15.

TWIN PEAKS Rock band from Chicago, with guests Post Animal and Ohmme. Nov 9, 8 pm, Venue. $25.

BRUCE COCKBURN Canadian folk-rock legend. Nov 9, 8 pm, Chan Centre for the Performing Arts. $65.

JAYMES YOUNG Alt-rock singer-songwriter from Seattle. Nov 9, 9 pm, Imperial Vancouver. $20.

BIG SUGAR Canadian blues-rockers, featuring singer-guitarist Gordie Johnston. Nov 9, 9:30 pm, Commodore Ballroom. $39.50.

Dumpster diving When I don’t have enough money to eat sometimes I go dumpster diving.

My hearing is X-rated.

I know a lot of people misconstrue song lyrics, but I tend to mis-hear them in an obscene or sexual way. For example, I’ve listened to Brenda Lee singing “Rockin’ Around The Xmas Tree” on YouTube, and the fourth line really... (con’t @straight.com)

Excited and scared I recently contacted a family friend who I haven’t seen in years and I will be so excited if they reply because they were such a huge part of my life in the past. I am hoping to see them again in the near future and will be the... (con’t @straight.com)

MUSIC LISTINGSare a public service provided free of charge. Submit events 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.

2 LEMON BUCKET ORKESTRA

NOV

2 GUTTER DEMONS

NOV

5 SEAWAY

Visit

WITH GUESTS THE CASUVALTIES, SELFIST

NOV

HOSTED BY: EVIL BASTARD KARAOKE EXPERIENCE

W/ THE C.R. AVERY STORM COLLECTIVE

W/ THE DEVIL’S SONS, SETH ANDERSON

WITH GUESTS LOS DUENDES

8 DUNE RATS

WITH TENNIS SYSTEM, WAR BABY

NOV NOV

9 YEMEN BLUES - HALLEL

NOV

14 AVEVA

NOV

Chickpea

NOV

15 0PR8R LAUNCH PARTY

NOV

16 ALESTORM

*LATE SHOW*

W/ AEPHANEMER, PLUS GUESTS

NOV

16 DANY LAJ & THE LOOKS

NOV

W/ SYNCHROMANTICS, TOTAL SHOCK

WITH EXMORTUS, HELLFIRE

NOV

20 THANK YOU SCIENTIST

WITH BENT KNEE, THE TEA CLUB

NOV

“NEVER GET OVER YOU FAREWELL TOUR” 21 PROZZÄK WITH NIÑA MENDOZA

NOV

22 JENNY AND THE MEXICATS

NOV

23 DESERT DWELLERS

NOV

24 ENSIFERUM

AT LANALOU’S *EARLY* SHOW

AT PAT’S PUB

WITH SPECIAL GUESTS

18 DEATH ANGEL

AT PAT’S PUB

15 LIL PEEP’S “EVERYBODY’S EVERYTHING” SCREENING

NOV

17 IN FLAMES

W/ LEILA NEVERLAND, MOUNTAIN SOUND

15 K-MAN & THE 45S

to post a Confession

NOV

WITH GUESTS JACK GARTON

14 JD PINKUS & EDDIE SPAGHETTI

NOV

AT PAT’S PUB

W/ YOUTH FOUNTAIN, FIRST GHOST, CHIEF STATE, CHASE YOUR WORDS

7 NOVALIMA

HAVE YOU BEEN TO... ilovechickpea.ca

It’s time to make right

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 8

NOV

OPEN UNTIL 3AM FRIDAY AND SATURDAY

Scan to confess

LOUISE BURNS Vancouver indie-rock singer-songwriter, with guests Biawanna.

Nov 7, Biltmore Cabaret. $15.

THE BABE RAINBOW Psychedelic rock band from Australia. Nov 7, 9 pm, Fox Cabaret. $17.50.

7 DAYS A WEEK

FOLLOW US ON INSTAGRAM!

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.

THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 7

1 STRUNG OUT

9:30PM-CLOSE

fabulously surreal cautionary tale “The Ongoing Cost of a Low-Grade Immortality” and you’ll think twice about ever starting a band, even if it has the potential to be as great as T.S.O.L. The ultimate message of More Fun in the New World is that it’s possible to take something raw, original, and entirely outside the mainstream and use it as a soundtrack for a dream that’ll sound insane to everyone but your fellow weirdos.

As X bassist John Doe writes in the final chapter, “This time in American art was about more than just the music; it was about individuality, diversity, and self-expression. About what not giving a damn what people said, and doing stuff anyway.”

Chances are you weren’t there.

More Fun in the New World will make you feel like you were, but, thankfully, without the screaming hangover. g

DEAD GHOSTS Local garage-rock quartet, with guests Black Wizard. Nov 6, Biltmore Cabaret. $12.

ALEX CUBA Cuban-born, B.C.–based soulpop singer-songwriter performs tunes from new album Sublime. Nov 6, 7:30 pm, Kay Meek Arts Centre. $49/47/29.

MORGAN EVANS Australian-born country singer-songwriter. Nov 6, 8 pm, Venue. $25.

NOV

KARAOKE

in the New World is the way it makes clear L.A. punk led to more than the two-day hangovers of those who were wasted in the mosh pit.

Tim Robbins details how seeing Fear, Black Flag, X, and the Circle Jerks taught him that he could set up his own DIY guerrilla theatre shows when he was starting out as an actor.

Street-art giant Shepard Fairey credits acts like Agent Orange and Suicidal Tendencies not only with saving his life as a pressure-relief outlet (“I was miserable, mean, desperate, and about to blow”), but also with shaping his visual aesthetic.

Get past Terry Graham’s strangely sour-grapes recounting of his time behind the kit in the Gun Club, and you’ll walk away with a treasure trove of trivia on the band cited as essential listening by Jack White. Devote 20 minutes to Jack Grisham’s angry and

NOV

WITH MARIA BLUES, CAWAMA

WITH ATTYA

WITH KALMAH, ABIGAIL WILLIAMS, AENIMUS

30 SHE PAST AWAY

WITH WIRE SPINE, DJ SHARLESE

OCTOBER 31 – NOVEMBER 7 / 2019 THE GEORGIA STR AIGHT 25

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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.

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A MDABC peer-led support group is a safe place to share your story, your struggles and accomplishments, and to listen to others as they share similar concerns. Please Note: Support groups are not intended to provide counselling/therapy. ?

Please visit www.mdabc.net for a list and location of support groups or call 604-873-0103 for info.

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is a safe place to share your story, your struggles and accomplishments, and to listen to others as they share similar concerns. Please Note: Support groups are not intended to provide counselling/therapy. ?

Please visit www.mdabc.net for a list and location of support groups or call 604-873-0103 for info.

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Don’t let your little dick hold you back

by Dan Savage

b MY LITTLE DICK has always held me back. I didn’t date in high school because I couldn’t stand the thought of girls discussing my tiny manhood.

That said, I’ve adapted fairly well and become skilled with my tongue and hands. The biggest problem is that my dick is just small enough that the head pokes straight forward and can be seen through my pants.

I never tuck in a shirt because of it. Because I am always in oversize shirts that hang past my waist, I never look professional. I’ve tried stuffing with socks and it didn’t work. Do you know of anything that can mask a pathetic johnson? I’d love to move up in the world.

friends with wonderful men who I shared an obvious sexual tension with at the start of our “friendships”.

(Our mutual friends often noted the sexual tension.) Not a single one has ever turned into more than a one-off drunken kiss. Maybe it’s who I’m picking, but I’m starting to think that I’m the problem. An ex of mine (who I met on Bumble) told me that I give off “don’t touch me” vibes. Looking back, I can see that all my relationships started in settings where romantic interest was implied: apps, blind dates, et cetera. I’ve been spending a lot of time with a classmate of mine. We get along well, and he’s hot and single. How do I (for lack - Physically Embarrassing Nub Isn’t of a better term) seduce him?

Sufficient

- Dreading The Friend Zone

Have you considered packing? Trans men, drag kings, butch dykes, and even straight cis women experimenting with gender expression will sometimes pack—that is, wear “packing dildos” that create the appearance of a masculine bulge. Packers are modelled on soft cocks, not hard cocks, and they come in a range of sizes and colours. And so long as you don’t engage in false advertising, PENIS—so long as you make it clear to new partners that the bulge in your pants is not a prologue—there’s no reason why you couldn’t pack, just as there’s no reason why you and other guys with small dicks can’t strap on a regular dildo when your partner wants a deep dicking.

Don’t seduce, ask. Don’t put the moves on someone, use your words—or think of your words as your move, DTFZ. Since you give off “don’t touch me” vibes (that’s some valuable feedback from an ex!), and since we’ve asked men to do a better job of perceiving and respecting a woman’s “don’t touch me” vibes, you will have to make your interest clear and unambiguous: “Hey, classmate, we’ve been spending a lot of time together, and I was wondering if you might be interested in going on a date sometime.”

b I’M A MID-20s straight woman, and there’s a pattern in my life that I’m trying to break: since high school, I’ve repeatedly ended up being

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b I AM A PUBLIC-school teacher in the United States. I love teaching, and I want to teach for the rest of my career. I am very good at it but, unfortunately, that doesn’t affect my pay in the slightest. After 10 years of poverty, I’m getting tired of going without. I thought perhaps I could do some sex work on the side to help pay off my student loans and get some more money for classroom supplies.

Thanks to de facto segregation, all of my students are one specific ethnicity and very poor, so I think I could easily avoid accidentally servicing a parent or relative of a student. But how on earth does someone safely and discreetly embark on sex work as a side hustle?

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come and then seeing you crawl back for more abuse is most likely part of the power trip that turns your hot, sexy friend on, BIND, and he’s unlikely to start lavishing attention on your dick on my orders. And since it sounds like he gives you plenty of hot JO material for after your bondage sessions, it’s not like there isn’t something in it for you, right?

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b I HAVE HAD a very hot, sexy bodybuilder friend with benefits for many, many years. He’s Dominant and into really intense bondage and SM, and - Need A Second Job That Actually Pays it’s fantastic. The harder he goes on me, the more aroused he gets. Some- Someone you work with, someone times he comes three times in one ses- you went to school with, someone you sion, always with me in superintense used to date, someone who lives in and painful bondage positions. It your apartment building—it’s not just

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parents and relatives of your students you need to worry about, NASJTAP. Vindictive exes and small-minded, sex-negative busybodies of all stripes can be a problem for sex workers. And since the consequences of being outed as a sex worker are always swift and severe for someone who works with children, you’ll want to find another side hustle. You should also get out there and support—we should all get out there and support—Democratic presidential candidates who are calling to forgive or cancel student-loan debt, like Elizabeth Warren and/or Bernie Sanders. And, yes, it’s possible to support more than one candidate at this stage of the political process.

more types of people or acting on longstanding attractions to other types of people doesn’t mean they’ve changed, TYM; it means they’ve grown.

b MY GIRLFRIEND and I have been going strong for almost 10 months. She told me that in the past she dated only older men: her teachers, her boss, a police officer, and other older men who were, in her own words, “flat-out wrong for me” (two of them were married). I am interested in your take on why she is dating me now. I’m a couple of years younger than she is: she is 30, and I am 28. She says she sees a future with me and I’m unlike anyone she’s ever met. Can what someone likes change in this way?

I think there are enough women out there who don’t like having their pussies eaten—some struggle with insecurity and shame, others simply don’t enjoy the sensation—that there’s no reason for this guy to inflict himself on women who do like having their pussies eaten. And if making your partner feel good doesn’t make you feel good—if giving pleasure as well as receiving pleasure doesn’t make you feel good—then you’re a lousy fucking lay. All that said, I agree that people should be able to do what makes them feel good in bed without being judged. But if what you’re doing in bed—or refusing to do in bed— makes other people feel bad about themselves or their bodies, well, then you should be judged harshly. g

- The Younger Man

the exception—the rare younger man your girlfriend finds attractive—or it could be that she was never attracted exclusively to older men. Just because someone dated a string of one type of person (older, younger, taller, shorter, maler, femaler), it doesn’t follow that someone isn’t interested in other types, too.

Someone realizing they’re attracted to

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b I’M A 21-YEAR-OLD woman. Yesterday I talked to a 26-year-old guy who won’t do cunnilingus but loves to get blowjobs. My friends judged him harshly. Does this go against the rule that people should be able to do what makes them feel good in bed without being judged? Guys who refuse to give oral sex but want to receive it make us feel as if our pleasure is not as important as theirs. Please tell me what you think.

- Desperate Clitoris

On the Lovecast, Dan enlists straightboy help from Michael Ian Black.

Listen at savagelovecast.com. Email: mail@savagelove.net.

Follow Dan @ fakedansavage on Twitter. ITMFA.org.

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TALK MEN OFF GET TALKED OFF OCTOBER 31 – NOVEMBER 7 / 2019 THE GEORGIA STRAIGHT 27

DEAD BROKE

by Dan Venes

New British blues LP available at Vinyl Records (321 West Hastings) . . . . .

Digital version available on streaming platforms

28 THE GEORGIA STR AIGHT OCTOBER 31 â&#x20AC;&#x201C; NOVEMBER 7 / 2019