photo by Dixon Tam
Vancouver, the Cultural Capital of Canada for 2011, is celebrating its 125th birthday all year long with hundreds of events taking place across the city. As we promised in one of our earlier posts, we bring you another instalment of our monthly lists of the most interesting events in Vancouver, this time for March.
Remarkable Women: Honouring Women From Our Vancouver Communities
International Women’s Day, March 8, 2011
Remarkable Women Posters
The Vancouver Park Board presents a Remarkable Women poster annually to honour exceptional women and their contributions to the communities of Vancouver. This year, 12 posters will be presented depicting local women who are, or were, “community builders.” You can view the posters at the official site as well as at community centres. These women represent a commitment to improving their local communities through hard work, volunteerism and a dedicated passion for everyone’s good. To celebrate their achievements, the Creekside Community Centre holds a reception open to the public on March 8, 2011, from 7:00 P.M. to 9:00 P.M. Leading up to the event, poster making workshops will be held at various Vancouver community centres to let the members of the public make posters of remarkable women in their own lives.
Vancouver International Dance Festival
March 1 – 19, 2011
Khambatta Dance Company by Raul P
The Vancouver International Dance Festival has been around since the year 2000, bringing exceptional talent from all over the world to Vancouver’s venues. This year, it will be hosted in the Roundhouse Centre and in the Shadbolt Centre for the Arts. This modern dance festival features high-quality performances by culturally diverse contemporary dancers like the Khambatta Dance Company, Battery Opera, The Source, Arts Umbrella, EDAM, Yvonne Puget and more. Surprisingly, the popular festival has its roots in a mistake in booking: the post-Butoh fusion dance company Kokoro and the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra ended up performing in the Roundhouse the same night, creating a new piece combining dance and chamber music. This collaboration led them to establish the annual festival. During the festival, the Roundhouse Centre’s large Exhibition Hall will display 30 of photographer Chris Randle’s archival photos documenting significant contributors to Vancouver’s dance history over the past three decades.
Yippies In Love
March 16 – 27, 2011
Yippies in Love poster
The Yippies were a cultural movement in the early 1970s famous for their theatricality and a wide-ranging social critique which had a significant impact on the grass-roots popular political activity in Canada and the U.S. “The Yippies In Love” by Bob Sarti is an original staged musical showing the turbulent counter-culture days of the movement in Vancouver. The musical borrows from the true story of two revolutionaries pitting their ideals, human desires and frailties against the establishment and the status quo. The show will be proudly presented by the Theatre in The Raw at The Woodwards Sky Room, 131 West Hastings Street.
Places That Matter
Nominations: February 1 – March 15, 2011
Voting: March 16 – April 6, 2011
If you can think of people, places or events that shaped Vancouver then The Vancouver Heritage Foundation needs your help! The foundation is asking Vancouverites to identify 125 sites commemorating historic people, places and events that have shaped the city as a way to celebrate Vancouver’s 125th anniversary. You can add your own suggestions at the official site until March 15. After that, a public vote will take place until April 6. Eventually, an expert committee will pick the winning sites, which will then be researched during the summer. In fall, plaques — which will animate public spaces, create points of interaction for pedestrians, and provide education to locals and tourists — will be manufactured locally and installed. Additionally, a new web page mapping the locations and text of the plaques will be launched by the Foundation.
Birthday Blossoms
Orders: until March 29, 2011
Collection: April 1 – 2, 2011
Festival: March 26 – April 22, 2011
photo by kaspercarissa
The annual Vancouver Cherry Blossom Festival is a popular tradition in the city. People of all ages are brought together to celebrate the symbol of spring, and renew the heritage of Vancouver’s blossoming cherry trees. You can also contribute by buying and planting one of the 3,000 Birthday Blossom cherry trees that are available through the Vancouver Cherry Blossom Festival on your property. If you make the purchase before March 29th, while supplies last, the one year old, approximately six foot tall tree, contained in a five gallon pot, will be ready for collection on the first weekend of April — just in time for Vancouver’s 125th birthday on April 6, 2011. For more information, check out the festival’s website.