If the recently-concluded Vancouver/Whistler Olympic Winter Games© were the equivalent of a gigantic reality TV show, then they had an ending so improbable it had to be scripted . . . I mean, come on: it’s the last event of the Games, Team Canada is on the verge of sending millions of delirious Canadians into the streets to celebrate Canada’s record-breaking 14th gold medal when the Americans tie it with 24 seconds to go, sending the entire nation into a state of shock and then we come back to win it off the stick of NHL poster-boy Sydney Crosby eight minutes into overtime, sending millions of delirious (and relieved) Canadians into the streets . . .

If this was a TV movie, we would all be rolling our eyes. Instead, we were high-fiving each other with a giddiness made all the more delicious by the near disaster. Seldom has hockey felt less like a game and more like a shared cultural/religious experience. For those few moments, we could forget that Team Canada was a group of pampered, over-paid athletes who mostly play for American NHL teams, and cheer them on as Canadian boys representing their country for a prize that could, unlike the Stanley Cup, be shared by all Canadians.

That none of the Canadian hockey players bothered showing up at the closing ceremonies removed some of the lustre and reinforced the difference between the professional athletes and their poorer but no-less-worthy amateur cousins (including the gold-medal-winning women’s hockey team). Still, it was a game and outcome for the ages.

Gold medal hockey games aside, there were enough compelling stories over the past few weeks to fill newscast after newscast. Far be it for me to repeat them here. Instead, allow me to share a few closing thoughts and observations on the Games.

The Good
The Canadian public (or ordinary Canadians, as politicians are fond of calling us). It was extraordinary, really, to witness the sense of communal pride that the Games ignited across the country. There’s a fine line between patriotism and nationalism, and I think for the most part we stayed on the right side of the line. Even the Olympic organizers were stunned at the level of patriotic fervour that swept the nation.

The Bad
Seeing speed skater Cindy Klaasen and other athletes shilling for McDonalds is just wrong. As Vancouver Sun columnist Dan Gardiner wrote in an opinion piece, “Governments give public money to the Olympics, in part to encourage healthy lifestyles, and this money helps make the Olympics a brand so powerful that McDonald’s and Coca-Cola pay to associate themselves with it in order to strengthen their own brands and improve sales of junk that contributes to the spiralling rates of obesity and obesity-related diseases which governments are fighting by spending large and growing amounts of money on, among other things, the Olympics.” It’s bad enough that McDonalds, Coke and GM are key sponsors of the world’s largest sporting event, but to have respected athletes plugging their artery-clogging products is truly depressing. And c’mon – Wonder Bread??

The Ugly
The reader comments that were posted on online news coverage of the Olympic Games. Many of them made those vapid “man-on-the-street” interviews that run on TV news stories look like PhD dissertations. Anyone who thinks Canadians are tolerant, well-educated, fair-minded people hasn’t spent much time online. To be sure, the people posting these jingoistic, racist, misspelled rants are not a true cross-section of Canadians, but they’re ugly just the same.

Lips in Synch
Despite the assertion by David Atkins, executive producer of the Vancouver opening ceremonies, that lip-synching is done at virtually all live events, it takes away much of the authenticity as far as I’m concerned. If I want to hear Nelly Furtado and Bryan Adams sing pitch-perfect renditions of their songs I’ll buy their CDs. On second thought, I won’t. At least they didn’t follow the lead of the Chinese in Beijing and have a cuter slam poet lip-synch Shane Koyczan’s moving ode to Canada.

Diversity-be-damned
Anyone watching the opening ceremonies would be forgiven for thinking that Canada is a nation of English-speaking, fiddle-playing white people who get along well with the First Nations minority and, oh yeah, have some happy Francophones in their midst as well. There were a fair number of comments following the ceremonies expressing disappointment that our country’s diversity wasn’t better represented. Hopefully, they said, this would be rectified in the closing ceremonies. Silly people. Instead, in a strange attempt at self-deprecating humour, we were treated to a larger-than-life display of every Canadian stereotype in the book, from Mounties (what, no turbans? no tasers?), to hockey players, lumberjacks (where was Monty Python when you needed them?), moose, beavers and canoes. I’m not sure, but I bet the self-referential humour was lost on most out-of-town viewers. The bizarre monologues by  Captain Kirk (sorry, William Shatner), Catherine O’Hara and Michael J. Fox did nothing to dispel the oddness of it all. And then the bands were trotted out: Neil Young (no lip-synching there!), Nickelback, Avril Lavigne, Alanis Morissette, Simple Plan and Hedley. Oh, yeah, and that black rapper fellow, what’s his name? K-OS. We’re diverse all right . . . as diverse as a shopping mall in Prince George at Christmas . . .

Snarky comments aside, the Games were exciting, with the athletes’ performances and class outshining all else. We threw the best Winter Games in history. and were near-perfect hosts while doing it. Here’s hoping the benefits are long-lasting and the hangover not too severe.

See you next month!

The current exhibit of photographs by Ansel Adams and Leonard Frank at the Japanese Canadian National Museum raises intriguing questions. The juxtaposition of those two sets of images is a powerful statement about how the same type of event can be represented so differently, depending on what perspective one is taking. This is particularly relevant for me right now, because I am one of a group of researchers who has been looking for historical photographs to include in a computer software program that is designed to support reminiscence-based conversations for people with dementia who grew up in BC.

A bit of background here: in my work as a researcher and, before that, as a speech-language pathologist working with people with dementia and their families, I learned how difficult it can be to keep conversations going with someone with dementia. It can be a major challenge for families, but it is even more difficult for those less familiar with the person with dementia, including, for instance, those who work with that person in day programs or long-term care facilities. Far too often, the consequence of conversational difficulty is that people with dementia become even more socially isolated from others in their community.

In Dundee, Scotland, a team of researchers developed a computer software program called CIRCA (Computer Interactive Reminiscence Conversation Aid) to support conversations between people with dementia and those who care for them. The program incorporates different media including photos, music, and video clips, primarily from the 1940s and 1950s, that are familiar to people who grew up in the Dundee area. The program is very easy to use, with touchscreen technology so that either conversation partner, even someone with dementia, can just touch the screen to choose the media that appears. The Dundee researchers learned that the program is very engaging, both for people with dementia and for their conversation partners, prompting long-term memories and occasional stories from people with dementia in ways that other types of reminiscence-based activities do not.

We are a team of researchers in BC who are customizing the CIRCA program so that it can be used with BC seniors with dementia. The program that we build as CIRCA-BC will, we hope, support people with dementia by helping those who care for them to involve them in conversations. But we hope it will do more than that. We hope that it will also help to keep people with dementia as part of their community longer, by creating opportunities for them to talk about their part in the shared history that defines that community. However, for CIRCA-BC to highlight that shared history well, it needs to capture the regional and cultural diversity of people living in the province, particularly during the1940s and the 1950s. In particular, it should represent that diversity through the images and voices of different communities themselves, and so we are looking for guidance from seniors from these different communities about which memories, which images, which stories, we should include.

This brings me back to the point about the Leonard Frank-Ansel Adams exhibit. I found myself asking as I explored these photographs: how, if at all, should the BC internment of Japanese-Canadians be represented in the CIRCA-BC program? This is just one of many questions for which community input is so important. Therefore, we are inviting seniors from the Japanese-Canadian community who are long-time residents of BC to participate in our project to create CIRCA-BC. We will be holding an information session at the National Nikkei Museum & Heritage Centre on Wednesday March 17 at 2pm. Please come if you are interested in learning more about the project.

Barbara Purves
Assistant Professor,
School of Audiology & Speech Sciences
University of British Columbia

Every edition of the Vancouver International Dance Festival has something for everybody, i.e., there is a wide variety of dance expression. But every VIDF also has works by artists who work outside of the focus of mainstream arts. These are the artists that are often the unknown treasures of our programming. In this year’s VIDF, there are two solo dancers, both accompanied by musicians, one from California and one from Denmark, that are well worth checking out. Kitt Johnson from Copenhagen, accompanied by Swedish composer/musician Sture Ericson explores the primordial memory that we carry in our skin and bones as she undergoes a metamorphosis from a formless body to one that we recognize as our own in Rankefod (8pm, March 16-17, Roundhouse). Michael Sakamoto from Los Angeles, accompanied by composer /musician Amy Knoles, also transforms in a kinetic commentary on the sacred and the profance in Sacred Cow (7pm, March 20 & 5pm March 21, Roundhouse). For patrons who enjoyed the butoh performances of Taketeru Kudo and Yoshito Ohno in past festivals, these are two artists that will also take you on memorable journeys.

What compels us to program artists like Kitt Johnson and Michael Sakamoto is that both provide audiences with a journey to follow. Dance is not like movies or plays. There is usually no linear narrative, no complicated plot. Dance is more like experiencing a dream, but a dream driven by the physical and musical poetry of the performers. Rankefod is a journey of transformation where Kitt’s body seems initially a confused jumble of limbs and torso without a head. The body slowly reveals and composes itself and by the piece’s end, we have followed a path of astonishing physical transformation that interacts with the live mixing of Sure Ericson’s computer generated atmospheric ambient sounds.
Michael Sakamoto’s transformations are like constantly changing identities aided by ingenious costume changes where tearing off one layer exposes a new character. Like Rankefod, Sacred Cow is also very much a conversation with a musician. Amy Knoles shares the stage with Michael and creates electronic variations of koto, shakuhachi, tsuzumi, conch shell, and other traditional instruments mixed with contemporary synthesizer textures. Her music energizes and animates Michael’s idiosyncratic popping butoh style to great effect.

Kokoro Dance’s contribution to the VIDF will be a piece entitled L.S.D. (Love, Sex & Death) that will be performed at the Roundhouse at 7pm on March 12th and 13th. This work shares the same title with the offerings of Flamenco Rosario (March 16th and 18th at 7pm) and Out Innerspace (March 17th and 19th at 7pm). Each company will address one or more of these themes which should provide some interesting contrasts from butoh to flamenco to contemporary and how each aesthetic paints a different picture of the same universal experiences. Revisiting the music of Robert J. Rosen and the choreography from 1994’s Dance of the Dead, Kokoro Dance’s version of L.S.D. features Carolyn Chan, Ziyian Kwan, Ellen Luchkow, Molly McDermott, and Jennifer McKinley performing Artistic Director Barbara Bourget’s choreography. Barbara works with motion to create emotion. She subtly alters physical textures and dancers’ relationships. Barbara’s choreography fuses her strong technical ballet training with the more organic sensibilities of butoh. Kokoro’s L.S.D. is performed to a CD recording  of Robert J. Rosen’s music featuring cellist Shauna Rolston, trumpeter Jens Lindeman, pianist/vocalist Adrienne Park, and Robert himself on bowed guitar. In 2011, Flamenco Rosario and Kokoro Dance will premiere a full evening collaboration that will build on these initial 2010 essays and then blend and confuse butoh with flamenco. The 7pm performances at the Roundhouse are free with a $3 VIDF membership. The membership charge is also included in the cost of the tickets to the 8pm performances so patrons can experience two different shows each evening for the price of one. Tickets are available on the VIDF website (http://vidf.ca) or by calling the VIDF Box Office at 604.662.4966.

Recently voted “Best Place to Whip up some Art” in the Georgia Straight reader’s poll, Blim is an independent  community-based art resource center that has been operating for the past seven years out of a small storefront on Main Street. The multi-use space is used for any number of creative activities including screen-printing, button making, drawing, knitting, local underground audio, film screenings, animation, video, dance, spoken word, visual art, creative workshops, and crafts, in fact, just about anything you can think of that fits into the independent, creative field.

Blim has outgrown its current space at 197 east 17th Avenue and is in the process of relocating to a new, larger premises at 115 E Pender, with the grand reopening schedule for May 1.

I spoke with Blim’s founder, Yuriko Iga, via e-mail.

What does Blim mean?
Blim blim was the name of my imaginary animal kingdom when I was four. It was a place where my animals would be immune from pain. I just shortened it to Blim.

What made you start Blim?
I started Blim with  my friend Richard Farand of United Congress.  At the time, Blinding Light and The Sugar Refinery had just shut down, so there was a need for experimental film and music venues.  First Blim was more of this. When we moved to Main Street we became more of a day venue with craft events and retail.

What is Blim’s mandate?
We are a community art space open to artists, and non artists, or just people with creative needs. We are a business with grass roots ideals.  We strive to be a business with integrity and ethical intentions. We’re used by artists, non artists, crafters, non crafters, musicians, non musicians, self employed people, film people, kids, graphic designers, photographers, moms, etc, etc.

You’re moving to a new location in a few months . . .
We need more space. We need to replant Blim in a larger pot so its roots  can expand and grow.  We also want more people to get involved with Blim on an ongoing basis and a larger space would help us achieve this goal.  We’re going to have a big party, some food, my friend Daniel will dj. And hopefully many folks will come out to check out the new space. I’m excited to be back downtown, I look forward to working with Chinatown BIA. And local surrounding art organizations. It will be nice to be in a place with more like minded folk working and being creatively active. I like that we are closer to Japantown too.

You have chosen to operate independently, without government funding – why is that?
I like to be more organic with my business practice. I like to make decisions right away. I don’t have time for extra paper work, I barely have enough time to run Blim. Funding is a full time job separate from running a business, if I sought funding than I would have to change too many things. So we rely solely on retail, workshop, sales and service.

If someone was interested in getting involved in Blim, how do they go about it?
Contact info@blim.ca check out the website www.blim.ca, come visit us, attend and event, volunteer, buy a shirt, have a show, take a workshop, etc, etc.

Blim Art and Craft Facility, 197 East 17th Ave, Vancouver, BC
www.blim.ca

Hours
Monday – Thursday 2:00-10:00pm
Fridays 2:00-6:00pm (except for special events)
Saturdays 12:00 – 6:00pm (except for special events)
Sundays CLOSED

I remember she came down hard on me one time about a statement I made in a piece I had written about the internment. I don’t recall exactly what I said—it was something about the conditions in the camps, I believe—but she let me know in no uncertain terms that having not been there, I had no business making sweeping generalizations. It is something I never forgot and have since made an effort to be more careful in my writing.
Lois took issue with much that was written in The Bulletin over the years—particularly when it came to the Internment—but I respected her for her determination to speak her mind, even when I didn’t agree with her point of view or her approach sometimes. I always knew when an article or letter was going to draw her ire and I remember waiting for the ensuing indignant e-mail with a degree of trepidation.

Several years ago, her son Gordon, who goes by the name Hashimoto, released a CD and Lois was tickled when I gave it a positive review. It made me smile to receive an e-mail a few weeks later, thanking me for it.
My sincere condolences to Lois’s family on their loss.

This month, as we head into the Olympics and the 2010 Cultural Olympiad, we focus on the performing arts, with a look at some of the many performances on offer over the coming months. In tandem with our look at upcoming shows, we also focus on the recently-announced cuts to arts and culture funding by the provincial government and their affect on artist and organizations. These are devastating cuts that will have a profound effect not only on working artists, but on non-profit organizations like the Powell Street Festival, National Nikkei Museum & Heritage Centre and Tonari Gumi, to name just a few.  If you believe that arts and culture are crucial to a society that you want to be a part of, and that organizations like those listed above deserve support, please lend your voice to those who are protesting the Liberal Government’s move to hamstring arts and culture organizations across the province.

Recent cuts to arts funding in BC have had a terrible effect, threatening community arts organizations that have few other sources of funding to support their public programs and activities.

One such group is Katari Taiko, started 30 years ago by a group of young Asian Canadians eager to reclaim part of their cultural heritage lost during the war and the subsequent largely unconscious drive to assimilate.
Members volunteer their time, attending up to three weekly sessions to rehearse and develop original taiko music. Almost all of the group’s repertoire has been composed by former or current members and is performed in public at a professional level. Over the years, some Katari Taiko members have become professional musicians and composers. But becoming professional was not the intention of Katari Taiko as its music is firmly rooted in community development and outreach.

Community-based arts organizations like Katari Taiko must cover considerable costs including studio rental and storage, liability and instrument insurance, drum purchase and maintenance, costuming, venue and production costs. These organizations are largely volunteer-based. Existing grants tend to support new projects that are directed by paid, professional artists and do not fit the mandate of community arts groups.
Direct Access to Charitable Gaming, a funding program which was suspended last year, covered 30-40 percent of Katari Taiko’s expenses. The rest has been covered through earned revenue from festival, community and corporate performances and donations. In the performing arts, whether taiko, theatre, dance or chamber music, earned revenue seldom covers more than 30 per cent of the costs to create and present new work to the public. These costs continue to increase.

Funds through Direct Access are not guaranteed and although the department will be accepting applications for funding this year, there are questions regarding the level of funding that will be available, the increased competition for funds after a year of cutbacks and how applications will be assessed. Arts organizations have been encouraged to develop long term strategic plans through special infrastructure and organizational development programs but these seem bound to fail without a more stable financial environment and without greater support for and recognition of the value of the arts by federal and provincial leaders.

Arts and cultural organizations contribute enormously to the quality of life in British Columbia, not just for the wealthy who can afford to attend ticketed events but also to those who attend free events and festivals such as at the Heart of the City and Powell Street Festivals. Images, recorded music and live performances have been used to promote tourism and to launch major events, skytrains and businesses as well as to draw attention to issues of first nations, women, injustice and poverty.

Collaboration with other community-based artists helps overcome linguistic and cultural barriers, nurturing greater understanding of both our neighbours and our visitors. With major cutbacks to a community that is already stretched and overly dependent on the passion and the kindness of others, much of BC’s vibrant cultural life will be lost to residents, tourists and businesses alike.

The cuts to Arts and Culture are short-sighted and punishing to those who have been efficient, resourceful and responsible in contributing to the life and well being of communities in BC. We might well be entering another Dark Age. The light at the end of tunnel will be those of us living throughout BC who protest loudly that our music, our dance, our theatre and our visual arts be able to continue to nourish our minds, our bodies and our spirits and to reach across our borders.

Funding the Arts . . .

by Jay Hirabayashi

The BC Government has slashed funding to the arts by 80 to 90 percent over the next two years. 40% of those cuts will be to the BC Arts Council, which funds companies like Kokoro Dance. Gaming funds through Direct Access grants will be cut completely by next year. We will lose $50,000 in funding support from Gaming alone. We will taxed further, when the HST is implemented in July, for things that previously were not taxed such as tickets to arts events. This will also have an impact on our revenues.

In a BC government fact sheet of September 22, 2008, deputy ministers were given an average salary increase of just over 7% to bring their average salary to $217,758; assistant deputy ministers now average $157,608/yr representing a 21% increase in salary. The average salary for artists is about 26% below the average salary for all workers according to a study compiled by Hill Strategies Research Inc. In May, 2009, the average wage was $790.22/wk or $41,091.44/yr or $19.76/hr. The average salary for artists, therefore, can be estimated to be $663.78/wk or $34,516.81/yr or $16.59/hr. If we are to take 40% off of that salary because of BCAC cuts to our funding, we will leave the artist with an annual salary of $20,710.09 or $517.75/wk or $8.77/hr. After thirty-two years as a professional artist, I earn $20/hr for 40 hours per week, $0.24/hr better than the average. My job, however, requires that I donate another 20 to 30 hours a week without compensation. If I take a 40% cut in my salary, I can look forward to earning $12/hr for those hours that I am paid, and unfortunately, I do not have the time to get another job to supplement my artist’s salary because I am already working evenings and weekends as a volunteer in service to the organization that I started. I do not have mortgage payments because I do not own a home. I do not have RRSP’s either, however, so I cannot really afford to retire. I am sixty-two years old and these cuts come at a point when I should be thinking about retirement. If I have to retire because of these cuts, I have nothing to look forward to except social assistance. Kokoro Dance Theatre Society is a nonprofit charitable organization that produces the annual Vancouver International Dance Festival. We annually pay wages and fees to over a hundred artists, technicians, and administrators. Every dollar that we receive from the BCAC is multiplied sixteen times in terms of the amount of funds that we return to BC’s economy. However, every dollar that we are short in balancing our budget can come from nowhere other than my salary. I cannot ask the already impoverished dancers that we hire to take a wage cut. Unlike BC Government politicians, we lead by example so when we are hit by obscene and heinous cuts to our grants from the BCAC, we will take the hit personally.

. . . and Culture

by John Endo Greenaway

Miko Hoffman has been involved in the arts and culture sector for much of her life, with deep roots within Vancouver’s Nikkei community. Her mother, Linda Uyehara Hoffman, is a founding member of Katari Taiko, Canada’s first taiko group, and has been involved with the Asian and arts communities in many capacities over the years. Miko’s father, Avron, is a retired library worker and published poet.

Miko served as General Manager and Programming Director of the Powell Street Festival for six years (and before that was Festival Coordinator for two years) and is currently the Executive Director of the National Nikkei Museum & Heritage Centre in Burnaby where she oversees the operations of the Centre including programs and finances. Having  had so much experience with both the curatorial and funding aspects of running a non-profit society, Miko is keenly aware of the fine line that non-profit organizations tread every day – balancing the ever-present need to raise funds with their mandate to create programming that is meaningful and innovative.

The recent funding cuts by the BC government have affected not only arts groups but sports and community organizations like the Powell Street Festival, Tonari Gumi and the NNM&HC.

I spoke to Miko Hoffman about the potential impact of the cuts on non-profit community organizations.

In all the furor over the cuts to the arts, other parts of the equation, like cultural and sports groups, were almost pushed to the back. How have the cuts affected the NNM&HC?
We relied on the Gaming grant to help sustain our basic operations. Because we are such a unique organization, being a museum, cultural centre and community centre all in one, we have had some difficulty accessing funding from various government sources. It has been quite discouraging because in recent years we feel we have gained a lot in terms of capacity — we are strengthening our programs, building our infrastructure, and creating a vision for growth and expansion – but now we have lost one of the few government grants we have been able to count on.

The government has justified their slashing of funding, framing it as food for hungry children vs. funding for arts and culture. How do you respond to arguments like that?
Arts and culture is integral to the development of society, especially for children’s development, growth and education.

Given the fact that the Society has lost this funding, how will you make up for the shortfall?
Our staff and volunteer finance and fundraising committees have been hard at work developing plans for diversifying revenues and increasing some of the earned revenues we already receive, such as private rentals. We are planning to apply for many different grants this year. We are working closely with the Nikkei Place Foundation (an endowment fund set up to support the operations of the National Nikkei Museum and Heritage Centre and the Nikkei Seniors Healthcare and Housing Society) to run our annual fundraising campaigns. We also have a slew of fundraising events planned for this year, including the 2nd annual Asian Canadian art auction on April 24, golf tournament on June 27, and our 10th Anniversary Gala in September.

People often feel powerless in cases like this, faced with government edicts. Is there anything that people can do to help?
There are several ways that people can help their favourite charitable organization. They can show their support by donating, or by signing up to be a new member or volunteer. There are also ways to let the government know how you feel. The Alliance for Arts and Culture administers an advocacy group called Creativity Counts, and the mandate is to restore funding for the arts (and I would hope, for culture as well). They have a blog, found here: creativitycounts.wordpress.com/

The Bingo Council of BC has also set up an online petition to reinstate all charitable gaming grants in BC: www.petitiononline.com/VCBS2010/petition.html

We started the VIDF to strategically develop a sustaining audience for dance and to put Vancouver on the international map of dance. Our company, Kokoro Dance, had developed its own audience but its numbers had peaked with the 1,848 people that came to see Sunyata in 1997. Audiences for dance were dwindling after that high water mark. Part of the reason was that there were increasingly infrequent occasions when touring companies would pass through Vancouver. Vancouver audiences and dance artists needed to be stimulated by seeing what the rest of the dance world was doing. We thought an international dance festival would remedy this diminishing interest in our chosen art form, and we thought that it would take no more than a few years to establish the VIDF as a self-sustaining organization. In 2003, however, paid attendance was 1,848 people, the same as our attendance record in 1997, but this was for six companies instead of just us. It seemed that we were sliding backwards. There was also virtually no funding support for the festival. We had started it and paid for it with our own resources and three years later, we had one $7,000 grant from the Department of Canadian Heritage and the rest of the $181,000 in costs still came out of our own pockets.

My wife, Barbara Bourget, and I have constant conversations about keeping the VIDF as it sometimes seems just a drain on our lives. We have made progress, however. Attendance last year was up to 6,364 people and we presented 22 companies. We have more funding for the festival, but it impacts on Kokoro’s resources by over a hundred thousand dollars a year. We remain hopeful.

In the 2010 VIDF that runs from March 12 – 21 at the Roundhouse and Playhouse theatres, we will be presenting dance artists from across Canada, and from Denmark, Taiwan, New Zealand, and the United States. Coinciding with the Paralympic Games, the 2010 VIDF will be part of the 2010 Vancouver Cultural Olympiad. The line-up at the Roundhouse starts March 12 – 13 with Vancouver’s Mascall Dance premiering a work featuring a set by renowned public art sculptor Alan Storey (he did the swinging pendulum in the HSBC building). Come early at 7pm and you can see a 30 minute premiere by Kokoro Dance of a new work called L.S.D. (Love, Sex & Death). On March 16 – 17, butoh fans will appreciate the performance of Denmark’s Kitt Johnson, who promises to undergo a metamorphosis from primordial creature to human. The free 7pm shows those evenings are Vancouver’s Flamenco Rosario and Out Innerspace who each will also address L.S.D. (Love, Sex & Death). Next up on March 18 – 19, is Taiwan’s LAFA & Artists, who are proclaimed as the best new contemporary dance ensemble from that country. The final Roundhouse shows feature Bill Shannon, an extraordinary hip hop dancer who performs on crutches as he has been disabled since childhood. On the same program is work by the renowned Canadian dance icon, Peggy Baker. Preceding those shows, at 7pm on Saturday and 5pm on Sunday, is butoh artist Michael Sakamoto from Los Angeles performing with musician Amy Knoles. At the Playhouse, on March 16 – 17, Toronto Dance Theatre brings their fine assemble of dancers in Artistic Director Christopher House’s Dis/(sol/ve)r— a work, built on the theory of quantum mechanics, that accumulates moving images of profound human relationships. On March 18 – 19, New Zealand’s acclaimed Black Grace brings their Samoan/Maori influenced contemporary dance to the Playhouse stage—highly physical and energetic together with aboriginal spirituality. The Playhouse series ends March 20 – 21 with Ronald K. Brown’s Afro-American Evidence Dance Company that includes a performance of Grace, originally choreographed for the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theatre.

We hope you will help us celebrate our 10th anniversary (and help keep us going) by attending these shows. www.vidf.ca

When we examine the arts, we generally talk in terms of vision, of creativity, even entertainment value. Sometimes the arts thrill us. Sometimes they infuriate us. Hopefully they make us feel. What we don’t often talk about, or even think about, is arts and culture as a component of the business sector and the economy. If we do stop to think in terms of dollars and cents, the image of the starving artist comes readily to mind. Indeed, many artists live close to the bone, often supplementing their art-derived income with low-wage menial jobs. Few embark on a career in the artistic realm with visions of wealth dancing in their heads.

Yet recent cuts by the provincial government have brought the financial aspect of the arts to the fore. Arts groups, galleries, festivals and arts-related organizations across the province are mired in uncertainly and despair over massive cuts to their operating budgets. Some have folded already, others are considering whether they can continue on in the current financial climate.

It is ironic, then, that this sudden crisis and focus on arts funding is taking place in the midst of a cultural explosion. The 2010 Cultural Olympiad, the cultural component of the 2010 Winter Game, is underway, bringing with it a mouth-watering feast of performances and events for every taste.

The question is, what will this explosion leave behind once the dust has settled . . . a legacy of increased audiences and funding for the arts for locals arts groups? Or a blackened wasteland devoid of life, with the current wealth of performances, exhibitions and events but a distant memory?

With budgets to be drawn up and grants to be applied for, arts organizations are not passively sitting by, waiting to find out what their futures hold. Instead, they are actively lobbying the government, forming advocacy groups, and urging audiences and members of the public to contact their government representatives to restore funding. They are not looking for charity. Rather, they are trying to drive home the fact that the cuts to the arts are both short-sighted and misguided, ignoring the reality that arts and culture, rather than sucking money from the provincial coffers, generate much-needed dollars for the economy and the government.

In an August 2009 letter to Plank Magazine (www.plankmagazine.com), Jann LM Bailey, Executive Director Kamloops Art Gallery, writes about the financial benefits of a funded arts community: “Like any business, the arts sector is fundamental to a robust economy. It is a large, labour-intensive, cost-efficient, high-growth industry representing approximately 2.4 per cent of the gross domestic product. Government of Canada statistics indicate that Canada’s heritage institutions, including historic sites, art galleries and museums, zoos, planetariums, observatories and botanical gardens, attracted 35 million visitors in 2004, while not-for-profit performing arts companies attracted 12.9 million visitors in 2006 (2 million in British Columbia alone) and earned $1.2 billion dollars the same year. The arts in Canada represents the fourth largest industry in terms of employment, supporting over 260,000 core jobs (2001 statistics) and are a source of pride in communities from coast to coast to coast.”*
Artists are a resilient lot. Given a lifetime of scraping by, most are experts at turning a sows ear into a silk purse, if not an entire evening gown. Still, the current cuts are a deep blow that threaten the livelihood of many working artists. As Jay Hirabayashi points out on page 5, for some artists the alternative will be unemployment and social assistance.

It is amidst both this financial uncertainty and the bounty that is the Cultural Olympiad, that we present our Spring Arts Preview, showcasing some of the performances coming up over the coming months.

These artists and their creations are just the tip of the iceberg in terms of the incredible creative forces at work in studios and rehearsal halls, galleries and workshops across the province. They are part of an enormous and dedicated workforce that work endless hours out of love for what they do, and we are all the richer for it.

* to read the complete article, visit: www.plankmagazine.com/feature/bc-arts-cuts-gaming-money-evaporates-effective-immediately

Other related websites:
www.stopbcartscuts.ca
www.allianceforarts.com
creativitycounts.wordpress.com
www.petitiononline.com/VCBS2010/petition.html

File under Cover-up
Finally, keen-eyed readers will notice that we’re kicking off the new decade with a colour cover. A minor miracle you say? Not at all, we’ve simply switched printers, moving over to the good folks at International Web Express, and thought we’d offer up a splash of colour to mark the new year and what will hopefully be a long and fruitful partnership with IWE. We will be printing colour covers now and then throughout the year.