Things to Do in Vancouver this Weekend: January 18, 2018

Get ready for a decadent weekend of food, chocolate, multi-media performing arts, music and cabaret! With the PuSH festival, the Opera and Dine Out Vancouver all on at the same time, you can go try a new 3-course meal and see a unique show every single night for the rest of the month.

Friday | Saturday | Sunday | Ongoing

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Friday January 19

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

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

VSO New Music Festival
Where: The Orpheum
What: The musical forces at the festival range from a full orchestra, on down to a baroque-sized ensemble, chamber works and an intimate cabaret. Alongside world premieres by James O’Callaghan, Rodney Sharman, Bramwell Tovey, Leslie Uyeda, Marcus Goddard, and Jocelyn Morlock, the festival celebrates the raw energy of music being written in the 21st century, even as it, in many cases, hearkens back to music from earlier eras.
Runs until: Monday January 22, 2018

It’s Just Drag
Where: Commodore Ballroom
What: From RuPaul’s drag race, Shea Coulee and Chi Chi Devayne star in an eleganza dragstravaganza.

Black Boys
Where: The Cultch Historic Theatre
What: A raw, intimate, and timely exploration of queer male Blackness. Three individuals seek a deeper understanding of themselves, of each other, and of how they encounter the world, subverting the ways in which gender, sexuality, and race are performed.
Runs until: Saturday January 20, 2018

Humans
Where: The Imperial
What: Local darkish electro-pop.

Smooky MarGielaa 
Where: Venue
What: A 15-year-old rapper from the Bronx plays and all-ages show in Vancouver.

Topdog/Underdog
Where: BMO Theatre Centre
What: African-American brothers Lincoln and Booth—birth names given as a joke that sets up an intense rivalry—share a seedy, one-room apartment and are looking for easy money in cards. Things are tight and only get tighter when their competition grows and their lies exceed their truths. When there isn’t room for both to succeed, who will come out on top?
Runs until: Sunday February 11, 2018

Vancouver International Boat Show
Where: BC Place Stadium
What: If you’re in the market for a boat, this is the place to go.
Runs until: Sunday January 21, 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

The Final Year
Where: VanCity Theatre
What: Among other things, 2016 was the eighth and final year of Barack Obama’s Presidency. Filmmaker Greg Barker spent that year with Obama’s State Department team: John Kerry, Abassador to the UN Samantha Power, speechwriter and advisor Ben Rhodes, as the administration signed a nuclear deal with Iran, reached a climate accord in Paris, and negotiated with Russia over Syria. Meanwhile, there was an election going on… This illuminating, candid documentary is often heartbreaking in light of subsequent events.
Runs until: Tuesday January 23, 2018

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Saturday January 20

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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

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

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 January 28, 2018

Cartoon Cabaret
Where: The Rio Theatre
What: Destroy your childhood with some of Vancouver’s top burlesque and cabaret performers with raunchy tributes to your favourite animated personalities from shows like Family Guy, Sailor Moon, The Simpsons, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and Futurama.

ECCW Ballroom Brawl
Where: Commodore Ballroom
What: Local wrestling with all the over-the-top soap opera stuff combined with people hitting each other you could ever want.

Børns
Where: The Vogue
What: A kinda mod glam-pop singer-songwriter from Michigan.

Mary and the Witch’s Flower
Where: VanCity Theatre
What: A family anime from the director of When Marnie Was Here. Mary is a wild red-head bored with life in her grandmother’s country house – until she happens across a magical flower in the woods and is propelled far above the clouds into a school for witches.
Runs until: Sunday January 28, 2018

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Sunday January 21

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The Vancouver Opera: L’Elisir d’Amore (The Elixir of Love)
Where: Queen Elizabeth Theatre
What: A love struck man, a village beauty, an army captain, and a travelling doctor with a magic potion – All set in a picturesque early 1900’s Canadian locale oozing with small town charm. It’s a Cinderella-esque tale in which a poor and hapless young man wins the hand of a small Canadian town’s most beautiful young woman (with the help of a secret “elixir” from a travelling salesman).
Runs until: Saturday January 27, 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

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

Always Sunny Trivia Night
Where: The Biltmore
What: Are you an expert in bird law? Have you perfected the use of the Dennis System? Are you the wild card of the group? Are you just cultivating mass? Are you super into the TV show It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia? This one’s for you.

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Ongoing

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Black Boys
Where: The Cultch Historic Theatre
What: A raw, intimate, and timely exploration of queer male Blackness. Three individuals seek a deeper understanding of themselves, of each other, and of how they encounter the world, subverting the ways in which gender, sexuality, and race are performed.
Runs until: Saturday January 20, 2018

Chinese Lantern Festival
Where: Hastings Park
What: As the largest festival of its kind in Canada will feature 35 illuminated displays transforming over 14 acres. Lantern festivals started during the Han Dynasty, about 2,000 years ago. This festival will be embracing traditions with elaborate new lanterns featuring Dragon, White Pagoda, Kylin, and Huabiao Column, each symbolizing a Chinese sage or legend. There will also be two nightly performances in the PNE Amphitheatre featuring acts such as face changing, acrobatics, and folk dance.
Runs until: Sunday January 21, 2018

Throwdown International TheatreSports Festival
Where: Vancouver Improv Centre
What: Throwdown welcomes TheatreSports teams from around the world who bring their A-Game to head-to head matches with each other and local teams comprised of VTSL’s top improvisers.
Runs until: Sunday January 21, 2018

Canada’s Top 10 Film Festival
Where: The Cinematheque
What: The year’s best Canadian films are in the spotlight in The Cinematheque’s annual presentation of the Canada’s Top Ten Film Festival. Established in 2001 by the Toronto International Film Festival, this celebration of excellence in our national cinema showcases Canadian achievements in feature-length films, short films, and student short films.The festival’s selections are curated by TIFF.
Runs until: Sunday January 21, 2018

Above The Hospital
Where: Red Gate Revue Stage
What: Two Vancouver millennials – the rational nursing student, Lauren, and her older, aspiring, musician-boyfriend, Cameron – live together in an overly priced, tiny apartment above a hospital. A casual evening of sex, pot, and talk turns into a casual night of drinking, arguing and reminiscing about the past, until unexpected guests arrive at their door and disrupt their stable existence, forcing them to re-examine themselves in the face of an unknown future.
Runs until: Sunday January 21, 2018

Vancouver International Boat Show
Where: BC Place Stadium
What: If you’re in the market for a boat, this is the place to go.
Runs until: Sunday January 21, 2018

VSO New Music Festival
Where: The Orpheum
What: The musical forces at the festival range from a full orchestra, on down to a baroque-sized ensemble, chamber works and an intimate cabaret. Alongside world premieres by James O’Callaghan, Rodney Sharman, Bramwell Tovey, Leslie Uyeda, Marcus Goddard, and Jocelyn Morlock, the festival celebrates the raw energy of music being written in the 21st century, even as it, in many cases, hearkens back to music from earlier eras.
Runs until: Monday January 22, 2018

The Final Year
Where: VanCity Theatre
What: Among other things, 2016 was the eighth and final year of Barack Obama’s Presidency. Filmmaker Greg Barker spent that year with Obama’s State Department team: John Kerry, Abassador to the UN Samantha Power, speechwriter and advisor Ben Rhodes, as the administration signed a nuclear deal with Iran, reached a climate accord in Paris, and negotiated with Russia over Syria. Meanwhile, there was an election going on… This illuminating, candid documentary is often heartbreaking in light of subsequent events.
Runs until: Tuesday January 23, 2018

The Vancouver Opera: L’Elisir d’Amore (The Elixir of Love)
Where: Queen Elizabeth Theatre
What: A love struck man, a village beauty, an army captain, and a travelling doctor with a magic potion – All set in a picturesque early 1900’s Canadian locale oozing with small town charm. It’s a Cinderella-esque tale in which a poor and hapless young man wins the hand of a small Canadian town’s most beautiful young woman (with the help of a secret “elixir” from a travelling salesman).
Runs until: Saturday January 27, 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 January 28, 2018

Amazonia: The Rights of Nature
Where: UBC Museum of Anthropology
What: MOA will showcase its Amazonian collections in a significant exploration of socially and environmentally-conscious notions intrinsic to indigenous South American cultures, which have recently become innovations in International Law. These are foundational to the notions of Rights of Nature, and they have been consolidating in the nine countries that share responsibilities over the Amazonian basin.
Runs until: Saturday January 28, 2018

Canyon Lights
Where: Capilano Suspension Bridge Park
What: Re-capture the feeling of wonder and excitement of the holiday season and be amazed by the hundreds of thousands of lights throughout the park. The suspension bridge, Treetops Adventure, Cliffwalk, the rainforest and canyon are transformed into a world of festive lights and visual enchantment. See the world’s tallest living Christmas tree (153 feet !) go on a Snowy Owl Prowl, decorate gingerbread cookies and make your own Christmas card in the Winter Pavilion, and sing-along with the holiday band.
Runs until: Saturday January 28, 2018

True Nordic: How Scandinavia Influenced Design in Canada
Where: Vancouver Art Gallery
What: This ground-breaking exhibition examines the significant influence of Scandinavian craft and industrial design on the development of Canadian culture. Spanning more than seven decades, True Nordic reveals how Scandinavian design was introduced in Canada and how its aesthetics and material forms were adopted, revised and transformed.
Runs until: Saturday January 28, 2018

Tin and Gold: A 10 Year Anniversary Show
Where: The Fall
What: Celebrate 10 years of alternative music, tattoo artistry, and multimedia events. The art show includes artists Megan Majewski, Jenn Brisson, Alison Woodward and more.
Runs until: Thursday February 1, 2018

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

 

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