Things to Do in Vancouver this Weekend: Feb. 8, 2018

This Family Day weekend there’s a lot to do for families, couples, and all by your fab self. Comedy shows, music from New Zealand, films about the rugged outdoors, local music awards, and an art project for all ages about multiple universes should get you started on this journey further into February.

Friday | Saturday | Sunday | Ongoing

Friday February 9

My Funny Valentine

My Funny Valentine
Where: The Dance Centre
What: Hailed as “exceptionally beautiful” (Vancouver Courier), this Jessie-nominated work was written in response to the tragic 2008 murder of Lawrence King, a 15-year-old shot by his male classmate after asking him to be his valentine. In a series of profoundly moving monologues, Vancouver actor Connor Wylie (previous artist-in-residence for Theatre Replacement) will take audiences through the minds of those caught in the aftermath of an unspeakable hate crime.
Runs until: Sunday February 18, 2018

Dead Talks: Ideas Worth Rejecting
Where: The Fox Cabaret
What: The leading non-experts in Vancouver Comedy will come together for one night of uninspiring, totally pointless and downright offensive talks.

A Romantic Pops Valentine (show 1 of 2)
Where: The Orpheum
What: Conductor William Rowson and the VSO perform music that will get you in the mood for Valentine’s. Joined by pianist Jon Nakamatsu, soprano Robyn Driedger-Klassen, and tenor Frédérik Robert, the orchestra dials up some of the most romantic music ever written, including Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue, selections from Bizet’s Carmen, and beautiful music by Strauss, Puccini, and Mascagni.

Romance Week at Vancouver TheatreSports

Romance Week at Vancouver TheatreSports
Where: The Improv Centre
What: Celebrate the fun and funny in relationships and romance. Treat your beloved (or BFWB) to three hilarious new shows.
Runs until: Wednesday February 14, 2018

Fun Home
Where: Arts Club Theatre
What: Alison’s father was many things: a historical preservationist, a funeral home director, a distant parent, and a closeted gay man. In the struggle to understand her father while also dealing with her own coming out, graphic novelist Alison documents the story of her life in coloured panels. This Tony Award–winning musical memoir is a heartbreaking and fiercely funny journey, punctuated with a refreshing score that frames the curiosity of childhood and the complexities of a family.
Runs until: Saturday March 10, 2018

Destroyer

Destroyer
Where: The Commodore
What: Indie rock.

Motown the Musical
Where: Queen Elizabeth Theatre
What: The true American dream story of Motown founder Berry Gordy’s journey from featherweight boxer to the heavyweight music mogul who launched the careers of Diana Ross, Michael Jackson, Smokey Robinson and many more. Motown shattered barriers, shaped our lives and made us all move to the same beat.
Runs until: Sunday February 11, 2018

SFU Philosopher’s Cafe: Do Religion and the Church Still Have Roles to Play in Western Music?
Where: Vancouver Public Library, Oakridge Branch, 2:30pm
What: This series is your chance to discuss philosophical issues with members of your community. In this session explore the question, “do religion and the church still have roles to play in Western music?”.

No Foreigners

No Foreigners
Where: The Cultch
What: Shopping malls become a portal into surreal worlds that carry the nuanced stories of loss and resilience from the Chinese diaspora. This multimedia performance investigates malls as racialized spaces of cultural creation and clash where fashion, food, and commodity tether communities to a vital sense of home.
Runs until: Saturday February 17, 2018

Killer of Sheep

Killer of Sheep
Where: The Cinematheque
What: See a sensitive, neorealist portrait of a disaffected African-American slaughterhouse worker raising a family in Watts, L.A. The film, Burnett’s MFA thesis for UCLA, is an object lesson in ingenuity, belying its meager student budget with gorgeous, handheld 16mm cinematography, a bold, elliptical approach to storytelling, and trained-eye moments of disarming lyrical power.

The Whammys

The Whammys
Where: The Rickshaw
What: Local independent music awards ceremony for the people, by the people honouring the incredible achievements of Vancouver’s largely under-celebrated underground. Hosted by local personalities and voted for by you, the public.

East Van Mardi Gras
Where: The Wise Hall
What: Big Easy Funk Ensemble celebrates the amazing variety of music that has grown out of New Orleans. With influences from 60s funk legends The Meters and Dr. John to current groups like Galactic and Trombone Shorty, BEFE (pronounced ‘beefy’) mixes many genres of funk, jazz, and boogaloo to form soulful grooves.

Kimbra

Kimbra
Where: The Imperial
What: A pop singer-songwriter from New Zealand.

The Main Affair
Where: Heritage Hall
What: A cozy yet sophisticated evening celebrating “The Main Affair” featuring local plant-based Chef Karen McAthy who will be whipping up some delicious vegan tapas and showcasing Vancouver’s very own vegan food and beverage entrepreneurs.

Saturday February 10

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Multiple Universes Art Activity
Where: McMillan Space Centre
What: Release your inner artist and paint an alternate universe as you would imagine it to be. Are the laws of gravity different? What is the shape of your sun? Explore the outer limits of your creative mind.

Valentine’s Day Fondue & Snowshoe

Valentine’s Day Fondue & Snowshoe
Where: Grouse Mountain
What: Enjoy an hour-long guided group snowshoe tour followed by a delicious chocolate fondue, served in a cozy setting.

Vancouver International Mountain Film Festival: Best Of

Vancouver International Mountain Film Festival
Where: The Rio Theatre
What: Playing the best of film that celebrates mountain sports, and wilderness culture.
Runs until: Monday February 12, 2018

Boots & Babes Ball
Where: The Commodore
What: A country music Valentine’s Day party with The James Barker Band.

A Romantic Pops Valentine (show 2 of 2)
Where: The Orpheum
What: Conductor William Rowson and the VSO perform music that will get you in the mood for Valentine’s. Joined by pianist Jon Nakamatsu, soprano Robyn Driedger-Klassen, and tenor Frédérik Robert, the orchestra dials up some of the most romantic music ever written, including Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue, selections from Bizet’s Carmen, and beautiful music by Strauss, Puccini, and Mascagni.

Graham Clark’s Quiz Show

Graham Clark’s Quiz Show
Where: The Fox Cabaret
What: A comedy show that cherry picks the best segments of game shows, plus a few new favourites, and presents them all in one bizarre event. Comedians are the “contestants” with prizes for the audience.

Chinese New Year of the Dog Arts Festival
Where: International Village
What: This Arts Festival aims for exceptional quality of original art. Selection is based on excellence, creativity, originality and technical achievement with an emphasis on artistic accomplishment.
Runs until: Friday February 23, 2017

Lunar New Year Lion Dance and Puppet Shows
Where: Vancouver Public Library, multiple branches
What: Start the Lunar New Year with a lion dance, qigong and kung fu demonstrations. Then explore the beautiful sound of world music with musical performances, and make wishes for a lucky and prosperous year.

Unarmed Verses Film Screening
Where: Vancouver Public Library, Carnegie Branch (Main Street), 1:30pm
What: A thoughtful and vivid portrait of a community facing imposed relocation. At the centre of the story is a remarkably astute and luminous 12-year-old black girl, whose poignant observations about life, the soul and the power of art give voice to those rarely heard in society.

East Side Flea
Where: The Ellis Building
What: 50+ local vendors, rotating food trucks, seasonal drink specials, artisan showrooms, pinball, door prizes, great tunes, cute dogs, and the nicest folks around!
Runs until: Sunday February 11, 2018

Sunday February 11

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Kids Takeover UBC at MOA
Where: UBC Museum of Anthropology
What: Bring your whole family along for a day of youth-led art activities, dancing, and live African fusion music by Zhambai trio. The event is part of the Kids Takeover UBC event, with activities happening all over campus.

Fin and Feathers

Fin and Feathers
Where: VanDusen Gardens
What: Paintings by Jo Scott-B. Jo’s book: Carved in Oak – Medieval Pew Carvings in English Churches began her study of medieval designs in UK and Europe, continued in this body of work. Jo’s children played on the old Shaughnessy Golf Course before it became VanDusen Botanical Garden. For her, it is a perfect venue for her humorous images of fish and birds, set in foliage taken from her sketchbooks.
Runs until: Sunday March 25, 2018

Extreme Survivors: Winter Wildlife Walk
Where: Stanley Park
What: From chickadees to crows, insects to amphibians, and shrews to squirrels, animals display a bewildering variety of adaptations for surviving the winter. Bundle up and walk with a guide to explore how wintering animals beat the cold and meet their shelter, food, and water needs.

Ongoing

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The Possible Impossible Thing of Sound Series

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

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

Vancouver International Mountain Film Festival: Best Of

Vancouver International Mountain Film Festival: Best Of
Where: The Rio Theatre
What: Playing the best of film that celebrates mountain sports, and wilderness culture.
Runs until: Monday February 12, 2018

Romance Week at Vancouver TheatreSports

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

No Foreigners

Legally Blonde the Musical

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

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

My Funny Valentine

Michael Soltis (cropped image)

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

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

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

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

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

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

Fin and Feathers

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.