#push fest

I was really hoping to catch the closing weekend PuSh Assembly roundtable led by Forest Fringe, a UK artist-led organization co-directed by Andy Field and Deborah Pearson. Together, they support the work of a diverse community of writers, theatre makers, musicians, dancers and live artists that started out as an alternative, artist-driven platform amidst the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. As a past attendee of the Edinburgh Fringe, one of the largest of its kind in Europe, and a former resident of Edmonton, the host of the largest Fringe in North America, I was curious to know how they developed and processed anything amidst the total saturation of the "fringe" festival model.

From its event blurb, "Forest Fringe has used its adventurous and award-winning programs to explore what a festival is and what it could be. What is the relationship to art-making and curation? How has the growth and development of artist-driven networks over the past decade changed performing arts infrastructures for dissemination? What if we committed to developing, rather than performing, work?" I unfortunately could not make it to the panel, but in using these questions to reflect on PuSh 2014, how does the festival stack up in terms of what a live arts festival could be?

This is only the third PuSh Fest I've covered, and looking back at some earlier ruminations, I am reminded by how surprising and unique I found this festival to be in 2012. Then, I could only grapple with comparing PuSh to other live arts festivals (and not Fringes) in Montreal and in Europe where there are networks of practicing interdisciplinary artists. Three years on, I am still slightly thrilled to live in a city that can pull off an international festival of this artistic caliber and fill the seats with a diverse local audience.

Because as an addendum from my first recap, the context for a festival like PuSh, if only spatially, is so vastly different from its European counterparts in terms of maintaining artist networks and curatorial reach. If I have learned anything about Vancouver in the past three years, is that it is a very isolating place, geographically and otherwise, in terms of staying within the flow of an international exchange of networks, resources, and ideas. Eventually things make it over here, and PuSh appears to be establishing itself as the premiere festival to partner with for presenting a touring show like Night or Nanook of the North/Tanya Tagaq.

After three festivals, I can only surmise that the artistic direction of the festival is firmly rooted in an appreciation of traditional theatre, but with a healthy appetite for experimentation of form. The slightly edgier content work falls into the late evening Club events and the critical reflections into daytime Assembly events. While certainly I don't feel like I have seen anything at the cutting edge of contemporary performing arts, I am really impressed by the number of great performing arts spaces available in this city, including the two latest spaces, The York and the Fox, as well as finally getting a glimpse into The Chan Centre at UBC, which is just an insane space for not being somewhere more central.

As a remount of a work that premiered in 2012 at the Canada Dance Festival, the current manifestation of Inheritor Album carries forward three out of the original cast of six, namely Laura Avery, Lisa Gelley, and Josh Martin. I feel it is important to note this change of cast, however typical it may be for the dance world. Replacing Shay Kuebler, Justine Chambers, and David Raymond with Hayden Fong, Waldean Nelson, and Renee Sigouin, Inheritor Album may as well have been a new work, as the original six worked as dancers and choreographers, and their bodies lived that work in an entirely different way.

In some ways, this manifestation is a response to the original, re-working portions and adjusting to the new scale of bodies and stage. Keeping an original score by Kristen Roos with set design/animations by Miwa Matreyek, the piece begins in usual 605 high octane energy, literally creating a vortex on stage to draw us in.

Matreyek's animation is best used in the vortex, as the abstraction of line and movement creates a visual extension and complement to the choreographed notion of an "inheritor." In other moments when the animation imagery becomes too literal in the form of hands and human silhouettes, it is a direct clash to the abstraction of the dancers' bodies.

The most compelling sequences were the more subdued group sets after the two main solos. As solo pieces on their own, they only served to reignite the reverence for group dynamics as no one dancer seemed able to capture my attention in comparison to the chain gang precision of the group. Creating some very strong imagery that alluded to organic forms of an inheritor from shells to pollination, 605 proved they were consistently confident in using every part of the stage for angles and momentum.

Conceived as a 65 minute choreographic "concept" album, Inheritor Album overall read as a disjointed series of short pieces or "tracks" that do not ever cohere together. As the performance progressed and the "tracks" moved from one to the next, I felt myself actually falling further out of synch with the flow of this "album." The image of 605 mainstay Martin carrying all other five dancers and dropping them off one by one as he left the stage was also far too heavy handed, though consistent with the collective's presentation of physical strength over concept. The majority of the performance remains entertaining though surface, with two real moments of perfect group choreography. Carrying on with the metaphor, I wouldn't bother with the whole album, but I would love to experience those two tracks again. 

Half the audience stayed for the talk back after the premiere of Night in Vancouver. I think there some of us who were just not ready to move. We had just watched Night, a play written and directed by Christopher Morris, based on his research and his experience of being a Southern Canadian experiencing the North. Beginning from his teenage days of hearing that people who live in the North are more likely to commit suicide during periods of complete darkness, to his eventual visits, mistakes, and assumptions made through the years of research and creation of a play that would eventually become Night, the play in its current manifestation is a haunting confrontation of colonial legacies.

Focusing on the lives of two teenage Inuk girls, Piuyuq and Gloria, and their relationship to their past, present, and future, the narrative catalyst of the show is the arrival of a white anthropologist, Danielle, who aims to right the wrongs of the past by delivering the bones of Piuyuq's grandfather back to Pond Inlet from an unnamed Toronto museum. Danielle's arrival in town sets off a chain reaction of traumas and actions, echoing the arrival of past Southerners who also came with good intentions. 

With a strong script including a good portion performed in Inuktitut with subtitles, the performance intensity of Gloria (Reneltta Arluk) and the multiple characters embodied by Jonathan Fisher continue to reverberate as some of the finest stage performances I can recall in recent memory.

As a play that is at once difficult and graceful, Night attempts to tell a story about self-empowerment in the context of generational trauma. Not everyone succeeds, in fact, it is antithetical to systematize success and failure rates. As audiences, we are asked not to help, or judge, but to listen.

Probably the most exciting dance presentation happening anywhere in Canada, Movent's Dances For A Small Stage reached its 25th presentation with a theme on the Fairy Tale Fable in collaboration with PuSh Festival.

Described as the pulse of the dance scene, I would wager to say these showcases by Movent is the blood of the dance scene, coursing through every vein and genre and supporting the presentation of local works in progress. Professional where it counts on the technical while remaining casual and relaxed in front of house, this is where dance gets nurtured outside of the private studio and before the big premiere, and where live art really out shines other forms in terms of process building with their audience.

Image from Dances For a Small Stage 23

The crowded cabaret seated audience was a real mix with huddles of dancers from all over the country and just regular folks who liked this or that or were entertained by MC Patrick Pennefather. It became almost immediately clear why Dances for a Small Stage is such a favorite, as its Artistic Director, Julie-anne Saroyan, set a tone that is accessible to everybody.

The evening's line-up varied, as it should, with the stronger performances leaning towards solo work (as it is a small stage, afterall), with Noam Gagnon being the obvious highlight as he previews his newest full length work before it premieres at Chutzpah! Festival later this month. A raw force of presence and expression, Gagnon's latest work, Thank You, You're Not Welcome takes on the format of an anti-hero/personal narrative without losing a shred of that animalistic numinousness.

Their matching titles aside, Joshua Beamish of MOVE also went for it with a serious solo work that is the most expressive of anything I've seen him do, but his faux bad-ass red tattoo skin shirt was rather distracting as the wrinkles did not complement his fluidity and the reptilian designs overpowered any contours he may have been striving towards. And Lina Fitzner's performance of a work she created with Caroline Liffmann used the space the best, with a show-stealing costume by Alice Mansell that seemed to carry the dancer rather than the other way around.

Of the other works, I do have to admit there was something spectacular in the potential story boarding of Kim Sato's hip-hop narrative of Hansel and Gretel. The work exists just outside the realm of film with moments of close-up slow motion action, but for the stage, if she worked with a new media dramaturge and some lighting and sound designers, that piece could be epic.

The premise is simple and the premise is social: go to a designated restaurant and dine with grade school children who have been empowered to critique. Illuminating questionnaires are provided as social ice breakers between strangers, and conversations are sparked between people who would never have a reason otherwise to interact.

The result: I can honestly say I've never had a dinner outing that ended with a tickle fight in the middle of the restaurant . . .  and I can only praise Mammalian Diving Reflex for re-arranging contexts to let this happen for one of the most memorable meals I have ever shared.

Image from Mammalian Diving Reflex from Vancouver Sun's "Stranger Danger with a meal" article

I first heard of Mammalian Diving Reflex when I visited ANTI-Fest in Kuopio, Finland, even though they are a sprawling Toronto-based performance and research collective. For ANTI's 10th anniversary in 2011, MDR put on The Children's Choice Awards, an event that culminates the entire scope of the festival's programming through the tastes and perspectives of children who are chauffeured around the town of Kuopio to experience the array of the festival's (other) socially engaged events. Encouraged to share their honest and uncensored opinions on the festival's line-up through a finale of an awards ceremony, the shared experience becomes most transformative for those who have been toting the baggage of culturally instilled connotations (ie. adults who have lost their sense of fun).

Backed by what the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child has called “a new social contract” wherein children are invited to be present as children, the projects, or "social acupunctures" by MDR are basically live experimentations on social behavior -- and they are brilliant.

For Push Festival's 2012 Eat the Street series, children in grades 5 and 6 from Bridgeview Elementary in Surrey have been appearing in restaurants throughout Gastown, taking notes of their dining experiences from the decor of the washrooms to new foods tried. Seated at my table was a 12 year old by the name of Anthony, who in his own words, "had a fetish for fries." A pretty good game of "I Spy" took place as well as digressions on Jesus, the preference for eating cute animals, and weird innuendos were traded between courses.

The underlying principle of the event was in the trust and communication between the children and the working members of MDR, who instilled agency into the children's hands and let them set the tone in a social situation where their opinions and wants are often ignored. Facilitated by Darren O'Donnell, Artistic and Research Director, Eat the Street was one of the best socially engaged practices I have ever encountered and participated in. The event worked for the sheer simplicity and transparency of the project's ability to inspire genuine connections and generosity between loosely connected strangers.

I must admit that I have been feeling more social disengagement than not with the minefield that is "socially engaged art." I spent six months last year working in the UK for a socially engaged arts organization that functioned on the premise: "the town is the venue." I walked away feeling that socially engaged art operates more from the funds available to produce events that cuts to community centres, local health clinics, and other basic amenities have all but eliminated from the lives of citizens. Art kept taking the form of events, but events are not always art. Events are the easiest way to get people together for connections and participation, but the preciousness of art can get in the way of what could be just a fun event. Again, not mutually exclusive, but it does appear to be a slippery slope for the art world that keeps confusing things like sensationalism and populism with social reflection.