PuSh International Performing Arts Festival
The multidisciplinary PuSh International Performing Arts Festival is one of Vancouver’s signature events. Produced each January, it’s known for genre-bending work that is startlingly original.
The event was founded in 2003 by Norman Armour and Katrina Dunn, who envisioned a vibrant, mid-winter event series where Vancouver artists could forge connections with the rest of Canada and beyond. In the ensuing years, it’s grown from a small performance series to a citywide event with a strong international and national reputation.
PuSh has also become a hothouse for new creation, and, especially, collaboration: more than just shows, PuSh brokers international partnerships and is known as a meeting place for creative minds.
The festival was a major partner in the 2010 Cultural Olympiad. In 2011, together with the City of Vancouver, PuSh launched the official celebrations of the city’s 125th anniversary with a big outdoor event in Gastown that drew over 7,000 people.
PuSh has opened Vancouver audiences’ eyes to some of the most cutting-edge work being created around the globe. Highlights have included 2016’s Jack Charles v. the Crown, about Australia’s Aboriginal Stolen Generation, and maverick South African troupe Third World Bunfight’s rendition of the opera Macbeth, a co-production with Vancouver Opera. Bold, boundary-pushing, and often immersive or interactive works have come to Vancouver from countries as far-flung as Belgium, Korea, Argentina, and Taiwan.
Locally created milestones have been the massive Queen Elizabeth Theatre dance-concert monumental by The Holy Body Tattoo and Godspeed You Black Emperor and Frontera by Animals of Distinction and Fly Pan Am; the debut of indie theatre hit Winners and Losers by Marcus Youssef and James Long; concert stagings of Veda Hille’s This Riot Life and later Little Volcano; and a Downtown Eastside staging of Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment.
At the same time, professional development opportunities at the festival take many forms, with a standout being the PuSh Industry Series, a series of artist encounters and conversations, international artist presentations, and surprise performances. It is designed to connect artists and industry leaders in Vancouver, across the country, and around the globe.
Beginning in January 2021, the organization and festival as a whole has been reimagined through a JEDI (Justice, Equity, Decolonization, and Inclusion) lens.
Festival celebrates lead-up to 20th-annual edition with fundraising campaign at Hastings Racecourse & Casino that features both a live auction and online bidding
At PuSh Festival, artists play off themes of strength and fragility by using paper for aerial stunts
Through chorus song, live guitar, and more, Haitian director’s Creole-French production navigates experiences of uprooted families, care of Théâtre la Seizième, PuSh Festival, and SFU Woodward’s Cultural Programs
PuSh Festival duet with Camilo Mejía Cortés plays with distortion through a hip-hop music technique, rap-anthem choir, black paint, and more
Free-associative stories and dance stitched loosely together to match ginormous sari tapestry that unfurls in Indian Summer Festival/PuSh Festival/The Cultch show
Artist’s Indian Summer Festival/PuSh Festival solo because i love the diversity (this micro-attitude, we all have it) was a close collaboration with award-winning Vancouver playwright Marcus Youssef
In New Works and PuSh Festival’s world premiere, performers draw upon experiences as immigrants from Brazil and China
In a statement ahead of the festival, director of programming reflects on compiling “works that share a sense of cultural urgency”
Music on Main and PuSh Festival present moving solo concert that began with a surprise envelope of cash and a desire to process loss
The copresentation with Chutzpah! Festival sees paper used as an aerial rope, a dance partner, and more
Ramanenjana takes a witty look back at a real mass-dance event in Madagascar, while BLOT – Body Line of Thought cultivates real bacteria
Basel Zaraa had pledged to withdraw Dear Laila from PuSh if other play stayed on program
Artist Basel Zaraa wants audiences to see how displacement affects people’s everyday lives
As part of PuSh Festival at Scotiabank Dance Centre, performers disassemble clothing items, sew them into ever-shifting sculptural pieces, and then return them to original forms
One piece highlights a dilemma between impulse and socially imposed morals, while the other offers perspective on forced displacement
Gabrielle Martin converses with artists who are pushing boundaries and playing with form ahead of the festival’s run from January 18 to February 4
The founder of the PuSh International Performing Arts Festival and Rumble Theatre is being remembered for his generosity, mentorship, and infectious passion for the arts
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
With mesmerizing live music by Emad Armoush and a small army of toy soldiers, Itai Erdal confronts his past in Israel’s military
Electric Company Theatre’s cinematic-feeling work about a mysterious call centre raises circling questions about existence
The interdisciplinary artist’s performance at PuSh Festival draws on Anishinaabe teachings
In a one-man show that will “piss off both sides”, the theatre artist looks back on time in military with new eyes
Coinciding with Black History Month, the youth-run gallery is participating in the PuSh Festival for the first time, curating a Club PuSh event
Inspired by the myth of Faust, the writer-playwright’s new work features a team of spokespeople representing a mysterious “developer”
Vancouver audiences have never witnessed anything like the way the Cyr wheel turns in works by la Compagnie 7Bis from France
For the founder of Onishka Productions, who is of Anishinaabe-Algonquin and French heritage, the immersive Okinum started as a vivid dream
The artist’s installation here features three, looping video portraits of herself incarnating the spirit of Nehanda, with music from nora chipaumire’s new opera
Quebec City’s Alan Lake Factorie blends dance, theatre, visual art, and cinema in its founder’s interpretation of a grisly 1819 masterpiece
At the PuSh Festival, Smail Kanouté’s thought-provoking new work interweaves spoken testimonials, graffitied bodies, and a mix of street-dance languages
Finland’s Race Horse Company conjures an eerie sci-fi universe, while La Compagnie 7Bis spins the Cyr wheel in metaphorical new ways