Last night, at the Roundhouse Performance Centre, as part of the Vancouver International Dance Festival, Vancouver-based acclaimed choreographer and dancer Barbara Bourget (of Kokoro Dance) performed a very personal, transcendent expression of not just her fifty year creative life in dance, but also of life itself, called A Simple Way. Photo credit: Peter Eastwood Accompanied […]

I think I may have seen the most exquisite vision of my life: Tight little rows of ballerina swans in flat feathered tutus moving into different formations, tilting their hips like feathers ruffling, tapping their toes on the floor like feathers fluttering, sometimes in unison, and always purposefully perfect. Photo courtesy of Ballet BC. This […]

Founded by the Vancouver Aquarium, Ocean Wise is a conservation program created to educate and empower consumers about the issues surrounding sustainable seafood. You’ve most likely spotted the Ocean Wise logo in local restaurant menus and last month, Vancouver’s Szechuan Chongqing restaurant on West Broadway became Canada’s first Ocean Wise restaurant. Now to make your […]

Last night I went to the season opener of BC Ballet’s In/verse, showcasing works choreographed by Italian-born Jacopo Godani and New York-born Nicolo Fonte, as well as a work choreographed by the company’s very own Artistic Director, Emily Molnar. Photographer: Michael Slobodian. By Nicolo Fonte. Dancers: Darren Devaney, Alexis Fletcher, Connor Gnam, Dario Dinuzzi, Peter […]

The first romantic film I ever saw was Moonstruck, starring Cher and Nicolas Cage. One of my all-time favourite scenes in that film is when Cage’s character takes Cher’s character to her first operatic experience, La Bohème, at the glorious Metropolitan Opera and how Cage’s hand inches toward Cher’s, while a woman sings heartbreakingly, and […]

The City of Surrey has launched an iPhone application that will help residents find things to do around town. The landing page of the application, which is a free iTunes download shows a map with pins marking the locations of community recreation centres and listing their upcoming events. iTunes Download Link By default, my application […]

The Vancouver Park Board launched a park-finding app for iPhone earlier this year. This free application allows you to locate a park on a map and click to see its amenities and facilities. One feature I would love to see is a search by amenity. For example you could click on an icon and see […]

A few years ago I began a “Before and After” series where I would compare photos from the Vancouver Archives with Google Map locations today. It featured old buildings that were still standing, stores that used to be hotels in Vancouver’s formative years, and glass towers in the place of old theatres. Vancouver is a […]

Bard on the Beach opened last week with The Taming of the Shrew, which is probably my least favourite Shakespearean play, considering the misogynistic plot — Petruchio (John Murphy), who wants to marry for money, weds Kate (Lois Anderson), a wealthy and independent-minded “shrew”. After marrying her, Petruchio “tames” her by starving her, sleep depriving […]

The Vancouver Opera ends it season with a new production of Giuseppe Verdi’s Aida, which is possibly the best production I’ve seen put on by the Vancouver Opera to date. Talk about ending with bang. Every single moment of this opera is absolutely riveting. Aida tells the story of Aida, an Ethiopian princess, who is […]