Josh Hite and Flick Harrison mentored some volunteer photographers at the Vancouver Drawdown this past weekend – if you don’t know the event, it’s the first one ever, and the photos should explain it all.

There was a Chalk Drop at community centres around the city, and various free public drawing stations to draw dancers, paint with your bike (!) and draw on the sidewalk!

Join in next year!!!

Random Acts of Chalk

I’m mentoring photographers and shooting stills at the Vancouver Drawdown event this weekend with my main man Josh Hite! If you’re interested in learning to shoot photos and capture the moment, draw on the sidewalk with a bunch of cool artists, or draw live dancers, come on down!

Check this one out from Ignite by Emily Molnar.

This promo is from Brief Encounters 12 and has clips from the collaborations between:

Hank Mann
Jill Barber

Tiffany Tregarthen
Dominic Fontaine

Raakhi Sinha
Andrea Young

Ziyian Kwan
David Kang

Susan Bertoia
Richard O’Sullivan

C.R. Avery
Amy Lynn Kazymerchyk

It’s a wacky, unpredictable and absurd piece – but don’t let me go on talking, you should watch it yourself…

VANCOUVER, BC: Theatre Terrific is pleased to present its new work, The Glass Box, a voyeuristic glimpse into the secret lives of people and their passions. Fresh from its debut in Victoria, The Glass Box opens in Vancouver Feb 18 – 28.

The Glass Box follows a 54-year-old wife and mother, a 23-year-old woman living with quadriplegia and a 32-year-old man with Down Syndrome who find themselves trapped in off-beat talk show. They are given the chance to be the iconic figure of their fantasies. The icons answer dangerous questions with hilarious abandon, as Cleopatra unrolls from her carpet, Sophia Loren sways through her famous striptease and Brad Pit lands the big fish.

The trick was to capture live video projections, two dj’s, and a dancer.

And FYI, the HD fullscreen settings on Vimeo look AWESOME.

Live from a Bush of Ghosts demo from Flick Harrison.

A ghost story for the digital age Feb. 4 – 15

Presented with the PuSh International Performing Arts Festival

Co-created by Tim Carlson, Richard Wolfe, Tara Cheyenne Friedenberg, No Luck Club and Candelario Andrade | Directed by Richard Wolfe

Feb. 4 – 15, 2009, 7pm
Studio 16, Vancouver, 1555 W. 7th Ave @ Granville St.
4pm Sunday matinees Feb. 8 and 15 (no evening show)

Spirits arise from the toxic smoke of First World electronic trash dumped in the developing world. A boy lured by an internet predator, a suicidal stockbroker, a heavy metal televangelist — these are a few of the ghosts haunting a woman who melts down computer components to retrieve precious metals for pennies a day.

With music inspired by Brian Eno and David Byrne’s seminal recording My Life in the Bush of Ghosts, Theatre Conspiracy delves into the fallout of digital culture. Electronic band No Luck Club performs along with live video mixes by Candelario Andrade as dancer/actor Tara Cheyenne Friedenberg creates multiple roles to conjure a ghostworld that is a physical, visual, sonic feast for the senses.

The show puts pairs of artists together for the first time, with two weeks to create a live performance for a 3-night show at the Anza club. I did one with Take 5 and it was the most challenging creative thing I’ve ever done.

Launched in November
2005, Brief Encounters is
an ongoing performance
series designed to push
boundaries and fuse
artistic practices.

The Tomorrow Collective
is
Jennifer McLeish-Lewis,
Mara Branscombe and
Katy Harris-McLeod.

the artists:

Cris Derkson
(cellist)
+
Norman Lalonde
(hair dresser)

Stephana Arnolds
(ballet dancer)
+
Alex Usow
(graphic designer)

Timothy Wisdom
(d-jay)
+
Heather Pawsey
(opera singer)

Jen Oleksiuk
(hip-hop dancer)
+
Duane Howard
(plains grass dancer)

Vin Arora
(potter)
+
Alex Ferguson
(theatre artist)

Jay Hirabayashi
(butoh dancer)
+
Sylvia DeTar
(bagpipe player)

Dianna David
(dance artist)
+
Jacob Richmond
(playwrite)

Patricia Kim
(filmmaker)
+
Hilary Peach
(Audio Poet)

Marta Jaciubek McKeever
(musician)
+
Jessica de Haas
(fashion designer)

Todd Baiden
(chef)
+
Tanya Marquardt
(actor/dancer)

Namchi Bazar
(Indo-fusion dancer)
+
Brendan McLeod
(spoken word artist)

Skeena Reece
(ceremonialist performer)
+
Jesse Scott
(video artist)

Anne Cooper
(contemporary dancer)
+
Ndidi Onukuwulu
(singer/songwriter)

Amber Funk-Barton
(Contemporary Dancer)
+
Alf Hunter
(Chemical Engineer)

Bonnie Soon
(Taiko Drummer)
+
Emotionz
(Beat Boxer)

Cameron Latimer
(Singer / Songwriter)
+
Stephen Wichuk
(Animation Artist)

Chengxin Wei
(Contemporary / Classical
Chinese Dancer)
+
Tarun Nayar
(Tabla Player / DJ)

Josh Beamish
(Ballet / Jazz Dancer)
+
John Korsurd
(Trumpet Player)

Graham Clarke
(Comedian)
+
Jennifer Bishop
(Tap Dancer)

Vanessa Richards
(Interdisciplinary Artist)
+
Prophecy Sun
(Performance Artist)

Jackie Essombe
(African Dancer)
+
Tal Iozef
(Hip-Hop Dancer)

Flick Harrison
(Filmmaker)
+
Take 5
(Graffiti Artist)

Antoine Joseph
(Hip-Hop Dancer)
+
Yvette Narlock
(Singer / Songwwriter)

Delia Brett
(Contemporary Dancer)
+
Tamara Unroe
(Puppeteer)

Marc Generoso
(Hip-Hop Dancer)
+
Mark Brennan
(Photographer)

Call for submissions

Digital Shrine at
Parade of the Lost Souls 2008
Oct 25th, 2008,
Grandview Park,
Vancouver, BC
Time: 6.30 PM, procession at 7:00 PM

The Parade of the Lost Souls is a lively commemoration of the cycle of life and death, and of facing fears in order to live life to its fullest. Costumed stilt walkers, jugglers, dancers, skeletal brides, blessed witches, ghastly ghouls, and prancing pixies lead a walking procession through the neighbourhood to honour the dead, wake the living and celebrate.

The Digital Shrine at Parade of the Lost Souls is an installation where hand-made / solid shrine objects are placed, notes of remembrance can be written and posted on paper or video, and a projection screen mixes text, pictures and video. The Digital Shrine is a way to pay tribute to friends and loved ones who have DIED or things that have PASSED.

Send your text, images, video up to 10mb to Shrine08 curator Flick Harrison: shrine08@publicdreams.org

OR post to YOUTUBE send the link to shrine08@publicdreams.org and we’ll find it!

OR upload to flickr and submit to group

http://www.flickr.com/groups/shrine08/

Deadline for youtube / flickr / email content: Oct 24th

Text / SMS messages: During Parade only.

text / pic to: 778-320-6673

or TWITTER #shrine08

Or come to Shrine Making Workshops:
http://www.publicdreams.org/section_details.html?trunk_id=1&branch_id=13&page_no=3

and SEE THE DIGITAL SHRINE at Grandview Park at Parade of Lost Souls

Digital Shrine Website, including submission instruction sheet / handbill:
http://tinyurl.com/3nqzro

Terms of Use: All submissions will be licensed to Public Dreams Society under Creative Commons Attribution 2.5, Canada terms.

Public Dreams society thanks Fearless City Mobile and the DTES Community Arts Network for their help in creating the Digital Shrine and Mobile Souls. http://www.fearlesscity.ca

____
(        ) digital shrine
( 0 0 ) http://tinyurl.com/3nqzro
( ^   ) shrine08@publicdreams.org
0000

I must say, when you see one of your favourite acts perform with a partner you’ve never heard, there is a deep fear that they will ruin everything you love about them.

But Man Oh Man, that DID NOT happen.

Amy actually blew Eric away into the dust once in a while, from whence he would re-emerge to blow her away in turn. When they did “Raising the Bar,” with Amy singing, I actually started feeling high just off the rock’n-out. The two of them leaning back to back, he grinning like a schoolboy in the girls’ locker room, her eyes closed, head at a bizarre angle – it was fucking cool. It looked, from the expressions on their faces, like this was the music they’d been waiting all their lives to play. New. Favourite. Song.

Album out on Stiff Records (yes, Stiff is back!) any moment now.

Eric and Amy were well worth the trip down, all by themselves. I crashed on a cot with the Smoking Lily crew at a euro-style hotel in downtown Seattle, and amazed myself with the awesome indie culture there (i.e Fancy, Schmancy and Nancy). I went to Capitol Hill and as the scene absorbed me, I admitted to myself that much of what I like about Vancouver (the landscape, the styles, the progressive attitudes, the music, and the, um, local flora) is actually a wider Pacific Northwest phenomenon, spreading from San Francisco all the way to BC.

Either that or it’s wider Canadian things, like the social programs, arts funding and human rights. Vancouver has a unique blend of this stuff, and the in-your-face Chinese and East Indian culture adds a definite Cultural Mosaic element to it. There’s TWO CHINESE DAILY PAPERS in Vancouver, for Pete’s sake. What would I do without All India Sweets or cheap-arse Hindi DVD’s?

As for Seattle, I don’t like the armed guards in the drugstores, but I do like the dozens of live music venues. Terrifying poverty, with no way out, always looks worse in American cities.

Also, Americans say their secret thoughts out loud. If you see two people having loud conversation in the street, usually shouting at half a block’s distance from one another, they turn away afterwards and exclaim to no one, “Dude needs to get his shit in gear!” or whatever. Just so we know their last word on the subject.

As for the rest of Bumbershoot, it was great even when it was bad like T.I. at the stadium stage – BOOOOOring: “Hey Ladies, if your man can’t give you what you want, come on over to T.I.” At the end of T.I.’s show, he wandered over to the fence near his trailer, where girls were threatening riot by climbing the unsteady fence to get at him. The main crowd shoved through a narrow stairway to get out of the venue as T.I. kept re-appearing, raising the energy and causing waves of girl-scream. Skinny legs kicked backwards near pimpled faces and finally T.I. came right to the fence, ordered the guards to yank one section open. He then hand-picked a bunch of girls to come through this breach.

“Pick me! Pick me!” they screamed. He led them into a trailer with a bunch of other dudes in his entourage, then, anticlimactically, he wandered off alone less than five minutes later.

The Tripwires played (with a Wreckless Eric cameo) at the EMP stage, which was part of some bizarre music museum connected to the Science Fiction Hall of Fame (?!). Vertical strips of giant TV screen as a backdrop. The venue was otherwise comparable to Richards on Richards if you’re a Vancouverite.

I really dug the Saturday Knights, a wicked hip-hop group that had a whole band onstage in addition to their DJ: guitar, drums, horn section. Any tough guys who can sing “Nobody can fuck with us” in total falsetto are OK by me. They were kind of silly and tuneful like Beastie Boys, maybe. “I party like a dog star, so sirius.”

I saw the Weakerthans who were pretty fun, they were actually the kind of music I was most likely to see in Vancouver so it didn’t blow my mind.

What I liked better was wandering around hitting the shows I new nothing about. To my surprise, I saw a country-western guy named Dale Watson, who was polite and charming, well-dressed and skilled. His music was fun, he thanked all the Canadians for coming down to the show and he played some Johnny Cash. It inspired me to listen to the Tennessee Twin album that’s pining away in a folder on my phone like a melancholy cowgirl in a dark corner booth. That made the bus ride home pass a lot faster.

I also caught Orgone as background music to the amazing Flatstock show. It was like a zine fair of concert poster prints. All the artists had booths with their silk-screened posters for gigs, incredible stuff with all kinds of different styles even for the same bands. One thing I learned was that the labels commission different artists in each town to make these posters, so there’s a whole different poster in each city. The DJ was terrible, however, and I got increasingly angry as I neared his booth that I couldn’t hear Orgone. The fucking guy played “Ghostbusters,” for jesus christ’s sake! All the worst of the 80′s. I think he was just trying to taunt Stainboy in the booth next door. Stainboy seemed to be taking the bait, repeatedly giving the DJ the finger. My Canadian manners prevented me from joining in.

There was a disturbing photo exhibit in the visual arts section called Purple Hearts, about wounded american soldiers. The one I stared at the most was called Marine Wedding (my drawing from memory is at left).

I loved Bumbershoot, it was a super blast. There was a giant fountain in the center of the grounds, so big that dozens of people were wandering around in it. If it had been actually hot, instead of just mediocre Northwest b.s. weather, I would have jumped in myself.

The only tragic note came from the hippy-emo kids who were wandering around with earnestly home-painted signs for “free hugs.” All weekend, they grew increasingly despondent as the crowds drifted by, flatly refusing the proferred warm fuzzy embraces. As I handed off my mainstage pass (I was heading out of town and couldn’t use it), one guy turned to me with hang-dog face, arms spread in desperation.

“Dude, how can you not want a hug?”

Getting in the spirit of Seattle, I walked away, and said out as loud as I could, to no one in particular: “I’d feel like a pervert getting a hug from a teenager!”