PuSh International Performing Arts Festival unveils 2024 program, with works from as far away as China, Brazil, and Australia
Tickets go on sale November 22 for offerings that range from a refugee-camp installation to a dance-circus set amid a surreal paper set
L’Amour Telle Une Cathedrale Ensevelie. Photo by Cory Haas
Pli. Photo by Lucie Brosset
THE PUSH INTERNATIONAL Performing Arts Festival unveiled the programming for its annual event January 18 to February 4, 2024—and the multidisciplinary roster spans work from 15 countries, including Mexico, Australia, France, Haiti, and Brazil. Amid the offerings is a circus-dance hybrid set entirely within a sculptural paper set; an installation that re-creates a Palestinian refugee camp home; and an opera-theatre work that features a Creole and French chorus.
Tickets go on sale November 22 at noon for this year’s fest, which explores themes around social change—including migration, displacement, labour, and injustice.
The entire lineup was unveiled by the PuSh team at a launch party at Granville Island Brewing November 20. Director of programming Gabrielle Martin said at the event that the collection of shows was inspired by the “linguistic roots of care in curate” (“curate” comes from the Latin “curatus,” from “curare,” which means “to take care of”), as well as “my own sense of urgency”.
Amid the offerings are several form-pushing circus-arts works, including NOMADA, a Canadian-Mexican world premiere that features solo artist Diana Lopez Soto honouring her Otomi and Purepecha (Mexican Indigenous) ancestry and our connections to land, water, and history; it takes place February 1 to 3 at the Annex. Pli, by France’s Les Nouvelles Subsistances, uses paper as a visually striking, sculptural playground for a philosophical, circus-dance exploration; Chutzpah! Festival copresents, February 2 and 3 at the Vancouver Playhouse and online.
The program also boasts a strong dance contingent. Returns, by Nellie Gossen, a world premiere copresented with the Dance Centre, finds the artist disassembling retail clothing in an ever-shifting installation, tackling issues around dance, labour, and apparel fabrication; it runs January 18 to February 3 at the Scotiabank Dance Centre. Multimedia Dance Centre/Inner Fish copro Ramanenjana, by Romania-Madagascar-Germany-crossing Tangaj Collective, is a “docufiction performance” about a real event when thousands of people in Madagascar danced to drums in the capital city for weeks, as if hallucinating, January 19 to 21. Tangaj Collective also pairs with Vancouver’s Action at a Distance to create BLOT—Body Line of Thought, redefining how we see our physical selves and their relationship to the world, January 22 and 23 at Left of Main. Elsewhere, January 22 to 24 at Performance Works, Indian Summer Festival and The Cultch copresent because i love the diversity (this micro-attitude, we all have it), by Indian-Belgian-based Rakesh Sukesh—the trancelike, danced story of how the artist was made into a viral poster boy for a right wing channel’s campaign against immigration. Naishi Wang and Jean Abreu (whose work spans Canada, China, the U.K., and Brazil) present Deciphers at the Scotiabank Dance Centre January 26 to 28, in a New Works copro, with mesmerizing movement embracing elements of Chinese folk dance, Brazilian dance styles, spoken word, and ink on paper. And Belgian-Netherlands dancework DARKMATTER, by Cherish Menzo/GRIP and Frascati Producties, invents a movement language that reimagines the biased way we look at our own and other bodies, and the stories we attribute to them, verging into the metaphysical—at SFU Goldcorp Centre for the Arts, January 29 to 31.
As ever, the fest will also feature works that push beyond traditional categories and genres. Dear Laila, January 20 to February 3 at the Fishbowl on Granville Island, finds U.K./Palestinian artist Basel Zaraa inviting you into a model of his childhood home in the Yarmouk Palestinian refugee camp in Damascus, where visitors can inhale sage, open drawers, and leaf through books; it’s copresented with Boca del Lupo and Pandemic Theatre. Meanwhile, the new asses.masses, by Vancouver’s Patrick Blenkarn and Milton Lim, is described as an interactive digital theatre-gaming show, January 20, 27, and February 3 at the Waterfront Theatre. In a witty look at social change, audiences work together to play a video game about a donkey revolution.
Innovative theatre works also abound at the 2024 PuSh Fest. In LORENZO, U.K. artist Ben Target, of Soho Theatre, looks at his real-life pandemic experience of giving up his comedy career to look after his titular octogenarian uncle—and integrates “live carpentry” into his autobiographical work, January 18 to 20 at the Annex. And from Australia, Back to Back Theatre’s The Shadow Whose Prey the Hunter Becomes, an ever-evolving community-hall meeting that weaves through human rights, sexual politics and the projected dominance of AI, runs at the York February 1 to 3. From Haiti, in a copresentation by Théâtre la Seizième and SFU Woodward’s Cultural Programs, L’Amour telle une cathédrale ensevelie tells the story of exiled Haitian families through opera-theatre, with a Creole and French chorus, accompanied by Haitian classical guitar, February 3 and 4 at SFU Goldcorp Centre for the Arts. Toronto’s The Runner—Human Cargo, meanwhile, hits the SFU Goldcorp Centre for the Arts in a copro by SFU Woodward’s Cultural Programs and Touchstone Theatre; a look at the “value of kindness”, according to Martin, it’s the story of an Orthodox Jew who makes a split-second decision of who to help, and his world comes crashing down, January 24 to 26.
Watch also for Talking Stick Festival and the frank theatre takeovers of CLUB PUSH, as well as special youth programming. Working with Playwrights Theatre Centre, PuSh will also offer free consultations with a diverse range of visiting national and international dramaturgs, part of a major new initiative to nourish local artists’ practice and the theatre scene at large. the PuSh Industry Series also returns for 2024; for the third year, PuSh partners with Talking Stick Festival to host Indigenous delegates from Turtle Island and beyond for ceremony, feast, and weaving deeper connections within communities.
Find the full schedule and tickets here.
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