Cascading sand and warbling strings: A few standout moments from 2023's stage and gallery scene
Random memorable scenes from the year in arts span 50 dancers swirling in BOLERO X, an electric Julius Caesar speech, and a cello star’s finale with local string students
Clockwise from top: Otto Tausk conducting the VSO; Jennifer Lines in Julius Caesar (photo by Tim Matheson), and the dancers of Ballet BC and Arts Umbrella in BOLERO X (photo by Michael Slobodian)
AS THE CURTAIN closes on 2023, we’re left with no shortage of great arts moments.
In an impressive year when Vancouver’s cultural scene came back with a postpandemic vengeance, we were gifted with memories from the big and bombastic to the movingly quiet. Think epic-scaled dance works and cellos conjuring gentle birdsong; an iconic Shakespearean speech given new flourish, and a flamenco dancer holding an audience rapt in silent stillness.
Here are just a few random scenes that stood out on stage and in galleries.
BOLERO X
Presented by Ballet BC at the Queen Elizabeth Theatre
In this new work at Ballet BC’s season-opening program HERE, 50 dancers built to a dizzying crescendo, swirling to the exhilarating finale of Maurice Ravel’s Bolero—bringing audience members instantly to their feet for a loud and extended ovation. Part of the thrill of the epic work—Ballet BC’s largest ever (boosted by dancers from Arts Umbrella)—was that its choreographer Shahar Binyamini had caught a last plane out of war-torn Israel to complete the piece. Its climax was not just a celebration of the joy and power of dance, but of connection and humanity in a painfully divided world.
JULIUS CAESAR
Presented by Bard on the Beach at the Main Stage Tent
What a thrill to see celebrated Vancouver actor Jennifer Lines bite into the role of one of Shakespeare’s meatiest male parts. As this production’s nuanced Mark Antony, her “Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears” speech was riveting. You could feel her grief at Caesar’s death as she turned the Romans against the insurrection, making for a compelling study in the emotional power of rhetoric.
SHEKU
Presented by Vancouver Recital Society at the Orpheum
To wrap up his epic display of musicianship and endurance with Vancouver Recital Society, cello icon Sheku Kanneh-Mason invited 12 local school-aged cellists and a double bassist to accompany him in Pau Casals’s haunting Catalan folk song, “Song of the Birds”. In an unforgettable performance, the group filled the hall with the mesmerizing, hymn-like music, at Kanneh-Mason’s gentle encouragement. The warbling strings were spine-tingling.
Rocío Molina in Caída del Cielo.
ROCÍO MOLINA
Presented by DanceHouse, Vancouver International Flamenco Festival, and SFU Woodward’s Cultural Programs at the Fei and Milton Wong Experimental Theatre
There were endless fiery moments in reigning flamenco queen Rocío Molina’s Caida del Cielo at SFU Woodward’s, the Spanish star pummelling the floor into submission as she unleashed a flurry of emotions and personas. But it was in the silent early section, as she stood almost still in an ethereal, white-ruffled gown with a long bata de cola, when her power over a crowd was most evident. Molina could command attention with the swirl of a wrist or a fierce stare. At the same time, she created imagery that was rivetingly surreal, leaning slowly, impossibly off-axis, or lifting her skirt like some kind of ghostly mermaid tail.
VANCOUVER SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA SEASON OPENER
Presented by the VSO at the Orpheum
The VSO launched the 2023-24 season with a whimper and a bang. Gustav Mahler’s Symphony No. 6 in A minor expressed all the essential romance and bombast. But it was the quieter piece on the two-part program—Icelandic composer Anna Thorvaldsdóttir’s spellbinding Catamorphosis—that was the true revelation. The extraordinary textural work spoke directly to the climate crisis, inspired by “the fragile relationship we have to our planet [and] the fact that if things do not change it is going to be too late, risking utter destruction—catastrophe”. Cue the symphony players evoking nature’s beauty—splintering icebergs, streaming light, scuttling forest creatures—with an undercurrent of deep fear and unease. Think chains and fingernails scraping across drums, paper raking over harp strings, and then insistent horns and fluttering flutes warning of impending doom. Maestro Otto Tausk led the orchestra through this landscape with thoughtful care, leaving the audience utterly entranced.
Jeremy Shaw, Phase Shifting Index, installation view, Centre Pompidou. Photo by Timo
JEREMY SHAW: PHASE SHIFTING INDEX
Presented by the Polygon Gallery
Talk about mind-altering. While you took in the Berlin-based, Vancouver-raised artist’s range of pseudo mini-documentaries spread across seven screens, something profoundly weird happened. As far-flung films showed everything from body-mind centring to popping-and-locking, their rhythms started to synch up across the screens, warping time and space—then glitching, via digital effects, into an ecstatic climax before settling into a cosmic calm. It felt like a mix of drug high, hypnosis, and transcendent spiritual experience.
STUPID FUCKING BIRD
Presented by The Search Party and The Cultch at the Historic Theatre
In this true ensemble piece with some of the best acting of the year, the most powerful sequence came when all the screwed-up characters stood onstage, speaking to the audience. They expressed a looping litany of desires, some ridiculously trivial, some heart-aching, some impossible. “I just want to be loved.” “I want a bottomless bowl of ice cream—with a variety of esoterically twisted long-handled metal spoons.” “I want to be 27 again. I think I’m ready to do my late 20s really well now.” In Aaron Posner’s cheeky The Seagull update, this was an endlessly relatable moment—one of many that reminded the audience we were watching a play, but that we were all hopelessly human, as well.
Samsara. Photo by Nirvair Singh
SAMSARA
Presented by Vancouver International Dance Festival at the Vancouver Playhouse
Aakash Odedra Company’s mesmerizing duo at this year’s VIDF expertly wove together components of ballet, contemporary, Chinese folk dance, and classical Indian kathak. Performers Odedra and Hu Shenyuan were perfectly controlled powerhouses, showing superhuman strength and partnership at every turn. What really set Samsara apart, though, were the streams of sand that cascaded down from the rafters throughout the piece, forming little piles on the stage floor. The creative concept came to a head when Odedra stood directly under one of the sand showers and spun around quickly with sweeping open arms, letting the granules whirl around him mesmerizingly. What a breathtaking moment of release.
MATILDA
Presented by Theatre Under The Stars at the Malkin Bowl
Young Siggi Kaldestad was remarkable in the titular role of Matilda at Stanley Park’s Malkin Bowl this summer, impressively poised and well spoken, with a gift for singing and storytelling—a true triple-threat performer. The peak moment came late in the show: she was so captivating in “Quiet” that it was as if she stopped time. You could hear a pine needle drop among the 2,000-odd audience members when she paused during the number on opening night. Or as Matilda would say, “You could hear a fly burp.”
BROKEN CHORD
Presented by DanceHouse and Vancouver New Music at the Vancouver Playhouse
Broken Chord, by South African choreographer-performer Gregory Maqoma and composer Thuthuka Sibisi, featured Black characters pitted against white ones, the latter portrayed by members of Vancouver Chamber Choir. In one standout scene, South African performers erupted into a joyous rhythm pounding out dough on a table under bright white light, flour flying. Soon they were drumming on set pieces in an infectious romp, a relief from the tension that the work—based on the true story of The African Native Choir—created between “us versus them”.
Assembly Hall. Photo by Michael Slobodian
ASSEMBLY HALL
Presented by Kidd Pivot and DanceHouse at the Vancouver Playhouse
Chalk it up to dance artist Crystal Pite and theatre artist Jonathon Young’s magic that they can turn a mundane gymnasium into something stunningly beautiful. In one striking section of this world premiere, the tired red curtains on the auditorium stage opened to knights in gleaming armour, battling to the death against a misty forest straight out of an Arthurian legend. Lit with the precision of a Caravaggio, the scene became an elaborate, living oil painting. Above the tableau’s “frame”? An old basketball hoop. The trick of the eye illustrated how ambitiously Assembly Hall played with the juxtapositions of the everyday and the mythical.
GRAVEYARDS & GARDENS
Presented by Music on Main at SFU Woodward’s
For those lucky enough to be sitting in the round for Caroline Shaw and Vanessa Goodman’s long-awaited live rendition of this interdisciplinary work, the first rising “ahhhhhh” of the two gorgeous, vocoder-torqued voices, echoing through the vintage-lamp-lit space, was electrifying. The Pulitzer Prize-winning musician-composer and the Vancouver dance artist went on to play with the back-and-forth of human and mechanical sounds, Shaw often stationed behind her soundboard, Goodman whirling with a microphone and long, orange cable in the centre of the circle.
QUEEN OF CARTHAGE
Presented by Early Music Vancouver and re:Naissance Opera
Aching Baroque beauty: that’s the only way to describe this interdisciplinary, early-music opera’s performance of John Dowland’s exquisite four-century-old Lachrimae Antiquae. Catalina Vicens’s otherworldly portative organ sighed, and the strings, including Adrienne Hyde’s gorgeous lirone—a carved artwork in itself—built restrained melancholy. Adding to the atmosphere were projection designer Camilla Tassi’s timeless, hallucinatory images of galaxies, eclipses, and glowing fire.
Sense and Sensibility. Photo by Moonrider Productions
SENSE AND SENSIBILITY
Presented by the Arts Club Theatre Company at the Stanley Industrial Alliance Stage
The inventive highlight of this production of Kate Hamill’s witty new take on the classic was its Greek-chorus-like gossips. Clad in Jacqueline Firkins’s striking white costumes emblazoned with black writing, they kept the action moving, commenting on all the hearts being wrenched onstage—and underlining the role of rumours in Jane Austen’s story.
TRUTH AND LIES
Presented by Pi Theatre at the Vancouver Opera Rehearsal Space
Capturing the chaotic, boundless expanse of the virtual world in theatre demands ingenuity. Truth and Lies banked on stellar lighting, projection, and sound design to pull it off, plunging the audience in a room without a stage or seats, anchored solely by floating mesh screens. Exploring our complex relationships with technology, the show’s three short stories (and accompanying VR piece) reached a sensory crescendo during the final moments. Scattered around the Vancouver Opera rehearsal space and swinging between excitement, hesitation, and a hint of dizziness, audience members turned their heads at breakneck speed as scenes unfolded from various directions. Live-feed video footage proved essential to the storytelling as screens filled with an avalanche of TikTok, Instagram, and news feeds, while skin-tingling ASMR flowed straight into the ears via a special microphone. The visual and auditory onslaught were just a couple of the tools in the show’s arsenal of disorienting effects, offering poignant commentary on the perils of the online sphere.
ACCUMULATION
Presented by Co.ERASGA at Performance Works
By the end of Co.ERASGA’s solo work Accumulation, the audience was no longer looking at dancer Alvin Erasga Tolentino onstage—instead, all we could see was a mound of trash. Scrunched-up swaths of plastic and paper, twisted metal wires, and gnarled tree branches were all attached to Tolentino’s body throughout the piece by French visual artist Marc Gerenton. Eventually the accumulation of junk became so big that Tolentino was completely overtaken. He collapsed beneath it, remaining still for minutes on end as Emmanuel Mailly’s eerie live score faded out. Words like “distress”, “anxiety”, and “helplessness” don’t even begin to describe the sinking feeling Co.ERASGA conveyed here. It was a striking—and necessary—portrayal of how human consumption is affecting the environment.
Gregory Dahl and his ghost-ship crew in Vancouver Opera’s The Flying Dutchman. Photo by Tim Matheson
THE FLYING DUTCHMAN
Presented by Vancouver Opera at the Queen Elizabeth Theatre
Sporting tattoos inked across his bald head, Gregory Dahl cut an indelibly sinister swath as the titular character in Richard Wagner’s legendary opera. But for sheer daring spectacle, count yourself lucky if you witnessed stage director Brian Deedrick’s eerie zombie re-animation of the ghost-ship crew, enhanced by red- and green-glowing projections—and, of course, by Wagner’s stormy music.
A CHORUS LINE
Presented by Studio 58 at the Waterfront Theatre
Studio 58’s production of A Chorus Line celebrated the one singular sensation that every performer is, and did so with an inclusive, sincere spirit. The show’s final number, a grand reprise of “One”, was simply a joy. The cast did such a great job of bringing the characters to life throughout the show that it was fun to celebrate them all at the end. Dressed up in glittery gold costumes and performing Shelley Stewart Hunt’s top-notch choreography, the students sparkled with Broadway pizazz, leaving the audience cheering.
Left to right: Ronald van der Kemp’s Overcoat, from The Mind Vaccine collection, Fall 2021. Courtesy of RVDK Ronald van der Kemp, Photo by Marijke Aerden; Karin Jones’s Worn; Gathie Falk’s The Problem with Wedding Veils, collection of the artist. Photo courtesy of Equinox Gallery/Scott Massey ©Gathie Falk.
DRESSES AND VEILS AS GALLERY ART
At the Vancouver Art Gallery’s Fashion Fictions, Burnaby Art Gallery’s Karin Jones: Ornament and Instrument, and the Audain Art Museum’s Gathie Falk: Revelations
Divine dresses and veils took on socio-political weight at stunning exhibitions throughout 2024. At the Vancouver Art Gallery’s massive Fashion Fictions, Ronald van der Kemp’s Overcoat stood out, a swingy, chain-looped gown of felt made from textile trash—and a gorgeously couture statement on waste and recycling in the fashion industry. Over at the Burnaby Art Gallery, we were blown away by a firsthand look at artist Karin Jones’s Worn, on loan from the Royal Ontario Museum, in the Ornament and Instrument exhibition devoted to her work. The black Victorian mourning dress was meticulously crafted from synthetic extensions and the artist’s own hair, braiding together profound ideas about the invisible labour of Black women behind the wealth of the British empire with themes of African identity, colonial displacement, slavery, and oppression. And in Revelations at Whistler’s Audain Art Museum, you still have the chance to see Gathie Falk’s haunting, papier-mâché The Problem with Wedding Veils up close, with its flowing train weighed down by rocks—unoccupied and ghostlike. The messages around marriage are left up to the viewer.
WE LOVE ARABS
Presented by The Dance Centre at Scotiabank Dance Centre
Israeli choreographer-dancer Hillel Kogan is also a comedian, as he proved when he brought his cuttingly hilarious We Love Arabs to Vancouver for its Western Canadian premiere. Teaming up with Arab dancer-actor Mourad Bouayad, Kogan pulled out a bowl of chickpea dip as a prop, the food becoming a metaphor for everything from identity to world peace.
PIÑA
Presented by SFU Woodward’s Cultural Programs and The Dance Centre at the Fei and Milton Wong Experimental Theatre
Just a few moments into PIÑA, a work by Ralph Escamillan named after the national textile of his native Philippines, the choreographer and three other performers broke into a folk dance, each one wearing what looked like enormous butterfly wings made of the fabric. There was a kind of geometry to their steps, tracing square patterns on the floor, but what was most striking was the sheer sense of palpable joy. You could feel the dancers’ pride as they crisscrossed their way around and between each other. A simple and lasting image.
THE PIGEON & THE DOVE
Presented by the Vancouver Fringe Festival at the Revue Stage
Substance and gambling addiction, LGBTQ youth being shunned by their parents, low wages, domestic abuse, and the challenges that Indigenous people—especially Indigenous women—face. Each of Carolyn Victoria Mill and Reid Jamieson’s songs at this timely Fringe show traced the various roads that lead from being housed to living on the streets. But what brought it all affectingly home was Mill bravely sharing her own true story of housing insecurity, while dressed in a delicately beautiful pair of grey pigeon wings—a metaphor for those we judge to be “lesser”.
EAST VAN PANTO: BEAUTY AND THE BEAST
Presented by Theatre Replacement and The Cultch at the York Theatre
There are many memorable laughs in this love letter to East Van and all of its charming quirks—continuing to January 8, and ranking as one of the best in 11 whacked-out years of the holiday tradition. But the absolute stinky standout was the twistedly funny skunk weapon that had audiences laughing till they cried at this year’s East Van Panto. Comedy veteran Mark Chavez, decked out as the gothy-fascist Skunk King, revved up a fog-spewing stink machine as revenge on the humans who refused to stop startling his “skunklings”.
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