Things to Do in Vancouver this Weekend: Feb. 1, 2018

It may be grey and wet outdoors, but inside the colours are brightly painted, music plays for you to dance your shoes dry, and the kitchens are hot – cooking up the last weekend of the Dine Out Vancouver festival.

Friday | Saturday | Sunday | Ongoing

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Friday February 2

Dance by Daina Ashbee: Pour
Where: The Dance Centre
What: A dark and devastating solo, Pour explores the vulnerability and strength of women, using the subject of the menstrual cycle as a departure point and turning it into an object of painful beauty steeped in symbolism. The piece applies imagery from the seal hunt to boldly tackle complex questions about femininity, blood, and the loss of control, deploying the body and voice in an unflinching depiction of suffering and catharsis. 
Runs until: Saturday February 3, 2018

Unsung Heroes Festival
Where: Blue Water Cafe
What: Celebrate lesser known and often overlooked fin and seafood to educate diners about alternative sustainable Ocean Wise choices.
Runs until: Tuesday February 27, 2018

Club PuSH: Spokaoke
Where: The Fox Cabaret
What: Taking karaoke to a different place, there’s no Gloria Gaynor, no Queen or Taylor Swift on this evening. In their place are some other great artists who have gone down in history for their passion, their eloquence, their spoken word. Speak along to Socrates, Muammar Gaddafi, Ronald Reagan and more. Their speeches have helped make the world as we know it, and on this occasion audiences do their own covers of them.

Hobiyee! Nisga’s New Year
Where: PNE Forum
What: The Nisga’a of Ts’amiks (Vancouver), hosts this celebration each year and invites dance groups from other Nations to celebrate with them, the strength, beauty and diversity of indigenous cultures. The 1400 Nisga’a of Ts’amiks invite the general public to Hobiyee to share the rich Nisga’a culture.
Runs until: Saturday February 3, 2018

Sh*t
Where: Firehall Arts Centre
What: Consider women with foul mouths and weathered faces, women who spit, fight, swear, hurt and steal; and Billy, Bobby, and Sam – angry, unrelenting, terrifying, damaged women. They discuss fist fights, foster care, babies, their mothers, crying, and what it’s like to believe in absolutely nothing. Named Australia’s most unapologetic playwright, Patricia Cornelius examines the lives of three incarcerated underclass women in a manner unseen on most theatre stages.
Runs until: Saturday February 10, 2018

The Possible Impossible Thing of Sound Series
Where: The Western Front
What: An installation series investigates real and imagined sounds beyond the hearing spectrum.
Runs until: Friday February 9, 2018

The Art of Tea Gastronomy
Where: TWG Tea Salon
What: The team at TWG Tea are ready to take you on a voyage of flavour discovery with an extravagant five-course menu.

Michael Soltis
Where: Kimoto Gallery
What: This series represents over of a year of the artists most personally focused and explorative artwork to date. In approaching each piece, the goal was to not edit, but to create with complete inhibition, to follow his intuition and ignore the impulse to question.
Runs until: Saturday February 24, 2018

Neuterhead Ace of Spays Rock and Metal Fundraiser
Where: The Rickshaw
What: Local metal and rock band members re-arrange into cover bands playing for the animals – 100% of ticket sales go to helping local charities spay and neuter pets. Lots of donated raffle prizes are there for the winning as well.

Drive By Truckers
Where: The Imperial
What: Southern rock.

Our Time Will Come
Where: The Cinematheque
What: The latest offering from veteran Hong Kong cinéaste Ann Hui applies her refreshingly measured, low-key approach to the under-told tale of resistance fighters in Hong Kong during the Imperial Japanese occupation of the 1940s.
Runs until: Sunday February 4, 2018

Oh Oh! YTV Burlesque Show
Where: The Rio Theatre
What: There’s no doubt about it, 90s YTV was totally formative to Canadian Millennials. Reboot, Freaky Stories, Goosebumps, house hippos, PJ Phresh Phil (and Snit), and more graced our television sets and entertained us, taught us life lessons, and encouraged us to, “Keep It Weird!” Here is an adults-only version for those who grew up watching.

Legally Blonde the Musical
Where: Michael J Fox Theatre (Burnaby, BC)
What: A cast of local theatre luminaries are in this bright and boisterous celebration of beauty that embraces brains.
Runs until: Saturday February 17, 2017

 

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Saturday February 3

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Takashi Murakami: The Octopus Eats Its Own Leg
Where: Vancouver Art Gallery
What: Featuring fifty-five remarkable works, some newly created for the presentation in Vancouver, this retrospective offers a critical and serious meditation on the current state of Japanese society in the midst of a complex, global world, while highlighting Murakami’s important role as a committed and often conflicted commentator on cultural production.
Runs until: Sunday May 6, 2018

Issamba African Roots Experience
Where: The Wise Hall
What: An exquisite presentation of artistry from all five African regions united through a single show. Deeply immerse yourself in African roots through African instruments, traditional rhythms and a fusion of dancing styles. Let the rhythm move you and don’t repress the urge participate – dancing is encouraged!

The Eternal Tides
Where: Queen Elizabeth Theatre
What: In this dance spectacle, renowned choreographer Lin Lee-Chen creates a vivid tableaux with exquisite dancers adorned by stunning costumes and surrounded by epic sets. Merging ancient Taiwanese ritual with radical vision, Lin pays tribute to water and its vital cycle of renewal.

Cris Derksen
Where: The Fox Cabaret
What: The music of cellist and composer Cris Derksen bears the mark of a true original. Classical, Indigenous and urban elements combine: you may get the propulsive pounding of powwow music, the head-nodding rhythms of a hip hop track, the metronome thumps of a techno mix, or all three in the same song. Her instruments are loop pedals, a drum machine and, of course, the cello: its melodies are plaintive but catchy, growing in number as the song progresses.

Winter Wander
Where: Vanier Park
What: One $5 ticket gets you into Vanier Park’s museums! Experience waterfront attractions showcasing art, history, crafts, science and roving performances from Bard on the Beach and the Vancouver Academy of Music. Kids under 5 are free, and yes, there’s also food.

Symphonie Espagnole
Where: The Orpheum
What: The complex beauty of VSO composer-in-residence Jocelyn Morlock’s Earthfall kicks off a concert that also features exceptional French violinist Alexandra Soumm’s take on French composer Edouard Lalo’s Symphonie Espagnole. Lalo’s unique work, part symphony, mostly concerto, took Paris by storm with its Iberian flavours, sensual rhythms, and hints of Flamenco and Tango.

Vancouver Canucks vs. Tampa Bay Lightning
Where: Rogers Arena
What: A good ‘ol hockey game.

Intervals
Where: The Rickshaw
What: Metal/rock group founded by guitarist & composer Aaron Marshall in 2011.

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Sunday February 4

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Vancouver World Chef Exchange: Nashville
Where: 1536 West 6th Ave
What: Join Farmer’s Apprentice Chef and Owner David Gunawan in welcoming Chef Trevor Moran from Nashville, Tennessee. Each chef brings their own global experiences and focus on local ingredients to this unique North American collaborative dinner.

Lionfish Are Way Cool Because
Where: Beatty Biodiversity Museum
What: With their zebra-like pattern and huge feathery fins, lionfish are definitely one of the most strikingly handsome fishes in the sea. But these beauties from the Indian and Pacific Oceans are wreaking ecological havoc in the Caribbean Sea, where they were accidentally released by people keeping them in aquariums as pets.

Milky Chance
Where: The Commodore
What: A folk group from Kassel, Germany.

Kangaroo
Where: VanCity Theatre
What: Just because it’s their national mascot, don’t think Australians love the Kangaroo. To farmers this remarkable animal is primarily a pest, and increasingly it is also be butchered for its meat, for dogs, and for humans. This revelatory doc sounds the alarm about the rate at which they are being slaughtered, and the unsafe treatment of the meat, and celebrates the activists standing up for animal rights. The Directors will be in attendance.

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Ongoing

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Club PuSH
Where: The Fox Cabaret
What: Spend an evening alongside artists and art-lovers while taking in your choice of eight shows ranging from the hip and queer, to the radical and riotous. Raise a glass to a trans filmmaker’s stop-motion animated adventure; an unmasked drag artist’s one-man variety show; a comedian’s confrontation with toxic masculinity; a sequined-skin dancer’s vogue-inspired display; a showcase of Indigenous music heavyweights, and more.
Runs until: Saturday February 3, 2018

Hobiyee! Nisga’s New Year
Where: PNE Forum
What: The Nisga’a of Ts’amiks (Vancouver), hosts this celebration each year and invites dance groups from other Nations to celebrate with them, the strength, beauty and diversity of indigenous cultures. The 1400 Nisga’a of Ts’amiks invite the general public to Hobiyee to share the rich Nisga’a culture.
Runs until: Saturday February 3, 2018

Dance by Daina Ashbee: Pour
Where: The Dance Centre
What: A dark and devastating solo, Pour explores the vulnerability and strength of women, using the subject of the menstrual cycle as a departure point and turning it into an object of painful beauty steeped in symbolism. The piece applies imagery from the seal hunt to boldly tackle complex questions about femininity, blood, and the loss of control, deploying the body and voice in an unflinching depiction of suffering and catharsis. 
Runs until: Saturday February 3, 2018

Dine Out Vancouver Festival
Where: Various locations
What: Canada’s largest food and drink festival dishes up unlimited ways to enjoy the flavours of the city. Choose from a 17-day calendar of culinary events and experiences, hundreds of restaurants throughout the city and relaxing hotel Dine & Stay packages to create delicious experiences.
Runs until: Sunday February 4, 2018

PuSH Performing Arts Festival
Where: Various locations
What: Featuring artists from 11 countries, the 14th annual PuSh Festival showcases thought-provoking works from the intimate and immersive, to the monumental and spectacular. In store this year: a stunning tribute to water by dance artists direct from Taiwan; an Oscar-winning film brought to life with a live tour-de-force drum score; a gender-busting dance party led by a powerhouse performer; a rowdy reunion recounted in spellbinding spoken word; a radical upheaval of King Arthur’s legend.
Runs until: Sunday February 4, 2018

The Human Library
Where: Vancouver Public Library – Central Branch
What: Borrow a human and discover a life – have a 20-minute, one-on-one conversation that will open your eyes to the diversity of lived experiences. Available on a first-come, first-served basis.
Runs until: Sunday February 4, 2018

Portrait of the Artist
Where: Vancouver Art Gallery
What: This exhibition brings together The Royal Collection’s paintings depicting self-portraits, portraits of artists and artists at work. Encompassing over eighty works, Portrait of the Artist is a rich survey of how artists have seen themselves and the role of the artist within society.
Runs until: Monday, February 4, 2018

Femme January
Where: The Cultch
What: The Cultch is dedicating a whole month to celebrate the power of female and female identifying voices. Femme January is their way of addressing and speaking truth to the challenges and the triumphs of the feminine. Join performances and discussions that focus on the female experience.
Runs until: Sunday February 4, 2018

Gordon Smith: The Black Paintings
Where: Vancouver Art Gallery
What: The exhibition features a body of work described as black paintings that Gordon Smith began producing in 1990. These densely painted, darkly abstracted paintings—punctuated with occasional colour, text and collaged elements—sometimes refer explicitly to this wartime experience. Smith was deployed with the Allied invasion at Pachino Beach, Sicily (code name Husky), in July 1943, when he was twenty-four.
Runs until: Monday February 4, 2018

Reassembled, Slightly Askew
Where: The Cultch
What: The survivor of a medically induced coma and acquired brain injury, creator Shannon Yee presents a chance for us to live through her medical journey. In this radically immersive production, audience members lie on hospital beds, put on headphones and enter her mind. It’s an audio experience like no other: re-enactment, internal monologue, evocative aural textures and more.
Runs until: Sunday February 4, 2018

Our Time Will Come
Where: The Cinematheque
What: The latest offering from veteran Hong Kong cinéaste Ann Hui applies her refreshingly measured, low-key approach to the under-told tale of resistance fighters in Hong Kong during the Imperial Japanese occupation of the 1940s.
Runs until: Sunday February 4, 2018

Carol Sawyer: The Natalie Brettschneider Archive
Where: Vancouver Art Gallery
What: Sawyer’s ongoing project that reconstructs the life and work of the genre-defying, fictional singer and artist Natalie Brettschneider. The works on view will connect Brettschneider to a community of mid-twentieth century artists and musicians in British Columbia.
Runs until: Monday February 4, 2018

The Possible Impossible Thing of Sound Series
Where: The Western Front
What: An installation series investigates real and imagined sounds beyond the hearing spectrum.
Runs until: Friday February 9, 2018

Sh*t
Where: Firehall Arts Centre
What: Consider women with foul mouths and weathered faces, women who spit, fight, swear, hurt and steal; and Billy, Bobby, and Sam – angry, unrelenting, terrifying, damaged women. They discuss fist fights, foster care, babies, their mothers, crying, and what it’s like to believe in absolutely nothing. Named Australia’s most unapologetic playwright, Patricia Cornelius examines the lives of three incarcerated underclass women in a manner unseen on most theatre stages.
Runs until: Saturday February 10, 2018

Hot Chocolate Festival
Where: Metro Vancouver
What: All over the city restaurants and cafes will be heating up inventive hot chocolate concoctions with ingredients like rose oil, beet juice, mushroom, and donkey’s milk.
Runs until: Wednesday February 14, 2018

Legally Blonde the Musical
Where: Michael J Fox Theatre (Burnaby, BC)
What: A cast of local theatre luminaries are in this bright and boisterous celebration of beauty that embraces brains.
Runs until: Saturday February 17, 2017

Ruined
Where: Pacific Theatre
What: Mama Nadi’s bar both protects and profits off the bodies of the women who have become casualties of a long and brutal civil war in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. She ensures survival by catering to both sides of the conflict, but how long can she keep the war outside her walls?
Runs until: Saturday February 17, 2018

City on the Edge: A Century of Vancouver Activism
Where: Museum of Vancouver
What: A photo-based exhibition exploring how protest demonstrations have shaped Vancouver’s identity from the Vancouver Sun and The Province newspapers’ photo collection. These photographs are exceptional historical records of intense and transformative moments in the lives of Vancouverites.
Runs until: Sunday February 18, 2017

Flight of the Dragon
Where: FlyOver Canada
What: In addition to flying over Canada from East to West, you’ll follow a mythical dragon as you soar over some of China’s most spectacular landscapes and scenery.
Runs until: Sunday February 18, 2018

Michael Soltis
Where: Kimoto Gallery
What: This series represents over of a year of the artists most personally focused and explorative artwork to date. In approaching each piece, the goal was to not edit, but to create with complete inhibition, to follow his intuition and ignore the impulse to question.
Runs until: Saturday February 24, 2018

Unsung Heroes Festival
Where: Blue Water Cafe
What: Celebrate lesser known and often overlooked fin and seafood to educate diners about alternative sustainable Ocean Wise choices.
Runs until: Tuesday February 27, 2018

Robson Street Outdoor Ice Rink
Where: Robson Square
What: Bring your skates, hold hands for balance, and circle the rink for free right in the heart of Downtown Vancouver. Skate rentals are also available, and for that you’ll need to bring cash.
Runs until: Wednesday February 28, 2018

Jitters
Where: Arts Club Theatre
What: Four actors, a director, a playwright, and one grand dream of Broadway-bound success. Anything from a forgotten line to a faulty wig may just make or break their new Canadian play. Can this motley crew set aside their egos and anxieties in order to make it to the big time?
Runs until: Wednesday February 28, 2018

Tasting History: The Traveling Tales of Tea
Where: Roedde House Museum
What: Tea is one of the most consumed liquids in the world, second only to water. But the beverage that brings much pleasure and calm to our 21st century senses is steeped in a turbulent history of politics and society. The exhibit will also feature stories from Vancouver’s modern-day tea community.
Runs until: March 2018

Winter Yoga Series on Grouse Mountain
Where: Grouse Mountain
What: Begin your Sunday morning with a journey through the twinkling Light Walk and over to the hiwus feasthouse atop a mountain. Come prepared with snow-appropriate footwear or strap on your snowshoes for the this snowy walk.
Runs until: Sunday March 4, 2018

Emily Carr: Into the Forest
Where: Vancouver Art Gallery
What: Far from feeling that the forests of the West Coast were a difficult subject matter, Carr exulted in the symphonies of greens and browns found in the natural world. With oil on paper as her primary medium, Carr was free to work outdoors in close proximity to the landscape. She went into the forest to paint and saw nature in ways unlike her fellow British Columbians, who perceived it as either untamed wilderness or a plentiful source of lumber.
Runs until: March 4, 2018

The Lost Fleet Exhibit
Where: Vancouver Maritime Museum
What: On December 7, 1941 the world was shocked when Japan bombed Pearl Harbour, launching the United States into the war. This action also resulted in the confiscation of nearly 1,200 Japanese-Canadian owned fishing boats by Canadian officials on the British Columbia coast, which were eventually sold off to canneries and other non-Japanese fishermen. The Lost Fleet looks at the world of the Japanese-Canadian fishermen in BC and how deep-seated racism played a major role in the seizure, and sale, of Japanese-Canadian property and the internment of an entire people.
Runs until: March 25, 2018

Into the Arctic
Where: Vancouver Maritime Museum
What: This exhibit encompasses over 50 Arctic oil paintings and 3 films from Trepanier’s 4 Arctic expeditions to the furthest reaches of the Canadian North. Its wilderness is so remote and untouched that many of its landscapes have never been documented before.
Runs until: Sunday March 25, 2018

Two Scores
Where: Contemporary Art Gallery
What: A solo exhibition of ambitious new work by Vancouver-based artist Brent Wadden, his first in a public institution. Dominated by singular woven statements upon the floor and walls, in their dramatic scale and graphic simplicity, they mark a point of departure for the artist, but might also be said to reveal both an unseen structure and a complex set of tensions that quietly anchor Wadden’s ongoing practice as a whole.
Runs until: Sunday March 25, 2018

Chief Dan George: Actor and Activist
Where: North Vancouver Museum
What: An exhibition exploring the life and legacy of Tsleil-Waututh Chief Dan George (1899- 1981) and his influence as an Indigenous rights advocate and his career as an actor. The exhibition was developed in close collaboration with the George family.
Runs until: April 2018

空 / Emptiness: Emily Carr and Lui Shou Kwan
Where: Vancouver Art Gallery
What: The exhibition pairs Canadian modernist Emily Carr with the founder of the New Ink Movement in Hong Kong Lui Shou Kwan. Looking across culture, geography and time to explore expressions of the sublime in landscape painting, the exhibition draws connections by exploring how each artist experimented with abstraction and spirituality in their respective depictions of nature.
Runs until: Sunday April 8, 2018

The Fabric of Our Land: Salish Weaving
Where: UBC Museum of Anthropology
What: For generations Salish peoples have been harvesting the resources of their territories, transforming them into robes of rare beauty and power. Symbols of identity, they acted as legal documents and were visible signifiers of the presence of knowledge holders and respected people. Now mostly stored away in museums these masterworks are rarely seen. They have much knowledge to share and many stories to tell. Musqueam asked the Museum to bring these weavings to inspire weavers and share part of this rich legacy with all of us.
Runs until: Sunday April 15, 2018

Public Artwork by New Delhi-Based Artist Asim Waqif
Where: Vancouver Art Gallery
What: Inspired by environmental concerns and the pace of human consumption, Waqif will construct an immersive architectural experience from materials collected at re-purpose stores, transfer stations and landfills in the metro Vancouver area. Waqif’s architectural structure will also incorporate an interactive acoustic system using microphones, effects pedals and speakers. Visitors are encouraged to move through the installation maze allowing them to actively experience the architecture instead of passively observing it.
Runs until: Sunday April 15, 2017

Winter Farmers Market
Where: Nat Bailey Stadium
What: Each week you can look forward to finding locally grown vegetables and fruit, meat and seafood from local ranchers and fishermen, artisan cheese and bread, herbs and seasonal nursery items, baked goods, prepared foods and artisanal craft.
Runs until: April 21, 2018 (Saturdays)

N. Vancouver
Where: The Polygon Gallery
What: The show in the newly-opened gallery will pay tribute to the evolution of North Vancouver and will feature commissioned works by more than 10 artists, including Andrew Dadson, Gabrielle Hill, Althea Thauberger, Stephen Waddell and Tracy Williams, paired with existing work by Stan Douglas, Greg Girard, Fred Herzog, Curt Lang, and Jeff Wall, among others.
Runs until: Sunday April 29, 2018

In a Different Light
Where: Museum of Anthropology
What: More than 110 historical Indigenous artworks and marks the return of many important works to British Columbia. These objects are amazing artistic achievements. Yet they also transcend the idea of ‘art’ or ‘artifact’. Through the voices of contemporary First Nations artists and community members, this exhibition reflects on the roles historical artworks have today. Featuring immersive storytelling and innovative design, it explores what we can learn from these works and how they relate to Indigenous peoples’ relationships to their lands.
Runs until: Spring 2019

Takashi Murakami: The Octopus Eats Its Own Leg
Where: Vancouver Art Gallery
What: Featuring fifty-five remarkable works, some newly created for the presentation in Vancouver, this retrospective offers a critical and serious meditation on the current state of Japanese society in the midst of a complex, global world, while highlighting Murakami’s important role as a committed and often conflicted commentator on cultural production.
Runs until: Sunday May 6, 2018

What are you up to this weekend? Tell me and the rest of Vancouver in the comments below.

 

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