Spring Arts Guide: Festivals feature global dance, cherry blossoms, photo exhibitions, and much more
The cultural calendar is filled with everything from film screenings to experimental theatre to stuff just for kids
Blossoms After Dark at the Vancouver Cherry Blossom Festival. Photo by Lung Liu
Club Origami at Vancouver International Children’s Festival.
CELEBRATIONS OF SAKURA, citywide photography exhibitions, and the best of documentary film: they’re all on the roster for the coming months.
Here’s a look at some of the arts festivals that are springing forth this season in and around Vancouver.
MARCH
Vancouver International Dance Festival
To March 15 at various venues
It’s the 25th anniversary of VIDF, which is putting on three raw, kinetic, and experimental shows per day as well as installations, late nights, and workshops at this year’s fest. Among this year’s highlights are Nepantla: Magia Ancestral, a duet by Salomé Nieto and Julio Medina, which draws from Mexican culture; Flux by Elie-Anne Ross, which showcases the popping style; and The Disaster Show by Mile Zero Dance, which fuses dance with augmented reality and live music in a show about fires, hurricanes, and melting ice. Need to Know: Stage Crasher is a party where audiences and artists come together after the first week of shows to dance the night away. It takes place on March 8 and features DJs Scott G and DJ Static, who’ll be playing three hours of funk, house, and disco.
Festival du Bois.
Festival du Bois
March 7 to 9 at Mackin Park
Maillardville’s music and culture festival is now in its 36th year. Headlining the fest is Yves Lambert and his seven-piece “Grand Orchestre”, which will celebrate the namesake artist’s 50 years in music, beginning with his time as a founding member of La Bottine Souriante. Also performing are fiddle player, step dancer, and singer Jocelyn Pettit; New Brunswick’s La Patente; and stilt-walking acrobatic artist Isabelle Kirouac, to name just a few. Need to know: March 7 is a free community night featuring contra-dance specialists The Sybaritic String Band with caller Katie Pinter.
Vancouver Greek Film Festival
March 13 to April 2 at The Cinematheque
This celebration of Greek cinema returns for a fourth year with Jean Negulesco’s 1957 romantic adventure Boy on a Dolphin on opening night, March 13 at 8 pm, with a pre-show reception at 7 pm; the fest’s curator, Harry Killas, will introduce the film. More titles in store include a new 50th-anniversary restoration of director Theo Angelopoulos’s masterpiece The Travelling Players, Greek American director Elia Kazan’s On the Waterfront, and A Touch of Spice, in which director Tassos Boulmetis takes viewers on a journey down memory lane through a culinary lens.
Iris Bahr, at the Chutzpah! Plus Spring Edition.
Chutzpah! Plus Spring Edition
March 18 to 23 at various venues
The Chutzpah! Festival: The Lisa Nemetz Festival of International Jewish Performing Arts returns for spring with five days of cultural programming. Taking part are Iris Bahr, who’ll perform Stories from the Brink: My Festive Near-Death Adventures; Talia Reese, who has sold out New York City with her signature “kosher style” comedy; and Belle Spirale Dance Projects (Chutzpah! resident artists) and Spain’s Fernando Hernando Magadan, who will present Everything and Nothing and STATERA, two new works that touch on cosmic questions by eight dancers on an interdisciplinary journey. (The dance artists’ UNIVERSUS double bill is presented in partnership with the Vancouver International Dance Festival and New Works.) Then there’s the Yamma Ensemble, which blends ancient traditions, tribal singing, and sacred and secular Jewish chants with world instrumentation for a one-of-a-kind sound; and City Birds, a family concert in the tradition of Americana by Tamar Eisenman and Sagit Shir. Need to Know: The Yamma Ensemble is offering an intergenerational matinee concert and workshop exploring Middle Eastern instruments on March 21 at 10 am; it aims to bring young people and seniors together through music.
Sakura Days. Photo by Lung Liu
Vancouver Cherry Blossom Festival
March 28 to April 23 at various venues
The festival celebrates the time of year when some 43,000 cherry trees burst into bloom throughout Vancouver with more than 20 cherry-blossom-themed events. Blossoms After Dark takes place March 28 to 30 at David Lam Park, giving people the chance to stroll among illuminated trees while taking in bubble performances and graceful flow dancers. The Big Picnic happens at the same venue on March 29, an event complete with origami, felt crafts, block printing, a haiku exhibition, and more. On April 12 and 13, it’s the Sakura Days Japan Fair at VanDusen Botanical Garden. There will be a traditional tea ceremony, Japanese food, sake, Japanese games, taiko drumming, and theatre performances, among other highlights. Need to Know: Serena Chu’s Cherry Blossom Pottery Workshops take place on March 18 and 25. The founder of Chu Chu Ceramics will teach people how to make a variety of dishes with a sakura theme, from cherry blossom-shaped trinket plates to embossed blooms and painting with underglazes.
Jorian Charlton’s Out of Many, Nyabel & Nevine (In standing embrace), 2021, part of Capture Photography Festival’s billboard program in East Vancouver. Photo courtesy of the artist and Cooper Cole
APRIL
Capture Photography Festival
April 1 to 30 at various venues
Exhibitions, public art, and curatorial tours and talks: the annual photo fest covers vast ground. Among the highlights: Corner Stores and Collective Memory, which pairs photographs from MONOVA: Museum of North Vancouver’s archival collection of one-time corner stores alongside present-day images by MONOVA archivist Rebecca Pasch of the same sites; Spinner and the Spindle: Tuning Meaning & Threading Ideas, which presents a sampling of computer montages by Fatimah Tuggar from the 1990s and an augmented reality diptych from 2019; and The Failed Life of a Cowboy, in which Charlie Mahoney-Volk explores Westernized masculine archetypes in relation to queer identity. Need to Know: The BC Hydro Dal Grauer Substation Public Art Project for 2025 features Métis artist Maria-Margaretta’s Aansaamb, which is the Michif word for “among”. The piece depicts the artist’s young daughter holding a bundle of beaded clothing on her ancestral homelands of St. Louis, Saskatchewan, along the South Saskatchewan River. She holds an infant shirt embellished with traditional Michif floral motifs that her mom made, which is wrapped around a stone axe head that was gifted to Maria-Margaretta by her father. The objects, carrying stories and histories, tie the three generations together.
Tea Creek at the Sundar Prize Film Festival.
Sundar Prize Film Festival
April 10 to 13 at the SFU Surrey Campus and Landmark Cinemas Guildford
The festival highlights films that use impactful and informative storytelling to raise awareness and inspire action on critical social causes and issues. Opening the fest is Paper Flowers, which won Best of Fest at the Palm Springs International Film Festival. There’s a Vaisakhi Special Screening of Mareya Shot, Keetha Goal: (Make the Shot), a documentary about South Asian hockey hopefuls that profiles a handful of West Coast athletes, each of them working to make it to the NHL. Centrepiece—Indigenous Spotlight is Tea Creek, Ryan David Lee Dickie’s documentary about Indigenous entrepreneur Jacob Beaton, who sets out to turn his family farm into a centre for food sovereignty, resilience, and healing for his remote northern community and beyond. There are two films in the 2SLGBTQIA+ Spotlight: Bulletproof: A Lesbian’s Guide to Surviving the Plot, filmmaker Regan Latimer’s look at queer representation on television; and Leilani’s Fortune, Loveleen Kaur’s study on queer Ethiopian-Eritrean artist Witch Prophet. Need to Know: The second-annual fest features 54 films made up of 70 percent Canadian content, 57 percent of which are films originating from B.C. Fifty-four percent of films are directed by women and 67 percent are by IBPOC filmmakers.
The Leonids sing at Chor Leoni’s Big Roar. Photo by David Cooper
MAY
The Big Roar
May 3 at Chan Centre for the Performing Arts
Chor Leoni’s signature community choral festival sees the 65-member ensemble teaming up with its MYVoice educational choirs, the young singers of its PRÉLUDE program, its Emerging Choral Artist Program, and super-stars The Leonids. The spectacular singing extravaganza features more than 250 voices. Need to Know: New this year is a chance for audiences to get to know the members of The Leonids at an exclusive reception after The Big Roar performance.
DOXA Documentary Film Festival
May 1 to 11 at various venues
Look for more than 70 titles by leading local and international filmmakers at the 24th-annual festival. For 15 years, the Justice Forum has been one of DOXA’s cornerstone programs. This year it’s featuring films covering everything from global warming to fostering activism in communities. Each film is paired with a panel of speakers, including filmmakers, experts in the field, and community activists. Need to Know: This year, DOXA is launching a new program featuring experimental films that push the boundaries of documentary form and style. Each film will be followed by a discussion and Q&A hosted by local cinema collectives.
Stave Falls Artist Group at Maple Ridge Pitt Meadows Art Studio Tour.
Maple Ridge Pitt Meadows Art Studio Tour
May 10 and 11 at various venues
With more than 100 artists across 31 locations, the 2025 Maple Ridge Pitt Meadows Art Studio Tour is the largest in the organization’s 25-year history. The journey winds through urban neighbourhoods and rural landscapes, including blueberry fields nestled against the Golden Ears mountains. The mediums on offer span stained glass, photography, sculpture, pottery, painting, comic-book storytelling, textiles, woodwork, and jewellery. Need to Know: Participating artists provide demonstrations, talk about their processes, and offer the opportunity to purchase artworks directly. The group likes to be thought of as “the little country cousin to the Culture Crawl”.
rEvolver Festival
May 21 to June 1 at various venues
Upintheair Theatre shines a light on emerging artists and Indigenous and equity-deserving individuals. This year, watch for five national works by artists from across Canada (including Creepy Boys by So.Glad Arts), six new creations by local performance makers (including Camp Goneaway by Ragamuffin Productions and WROL [Without Rule of Law] by Rough Magic Theatre), and six works-in-progress at The Cultch, totalling over 60 individual performances. Need to Know: Two satellite performances are taking place in other venues across the city, at What Lab and Morrow.
Tremors Festival.
Tremors Festival
May 24 to June 8 at Progress Lab 1422
Rumble Theatre’s fest aims to create a platform for the realization of new and experimental theatre work. This year’s Tremors continues to bring together local and national artists, including fresh work from New Harlem Productions by Donna-Michelle St. Bernard (who most recently performed Sound of the Beast at the PuSh International Performing Arts Festival in 2024) and Kern Albert. Another national presentation comes from Nakai Theatre in Whitehorse. Need to Know: The festival is thematically linked together with the idea of “other sides”, with projects spanning sci-fi, fantasy, surrealism, and hip hop.
Vancouver International Children’s Festival
May 26 to June 1 on Granville Island
Boasting music, theatre, dance, puppetry, acrobatics, and storytelling, the kids’ fest is the longest-running professional performing arts festival for young audiences and the first of its kind in North America and Europe. Among this year’s highlights are Won’Ma Africa by Kalabanté Productions, which features a handful of daring acrobats performing to the pulsating rhythm of Guinean djembes; circus act Luminarium; Axis Theatre’s Where Have All the Buffalo Gone?, a powerful Métis story; and Club Origami, which is an immersive and interactive dance show in a magical world made up entirely of paper. Need to Know: The Activity Village is where kids can do hands-on activities like circus arts, face painting, Indigenous and African arts, spin art, and more. 
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