There’s a new outdoor animation exhibition coming to Surrey’s city centre. Flavourcel animation collective presents “I Spy A City” which will be featured at UrbanScreen at the Chuck Bailey Recreation Centre September 25, 2021−January 2, 2022. Ahead of the exhibition launch, Flavourcel artists will give a free talk at the Surrey Art Gallery on September 18th.
Flavourcel, I Spy a City at UrbanScreen, 2021. Photo by Brian Giebelhaus.
Flavourcel’s I Spy a City in Surrey
When: September 25, 2021−January 2, 2022 Where: Chuck Bailey Recreation Centre (13458 107A Ave, Surrey) Admission: No registration is required for the talk. No admission required for the outdoor exhibition.
For the talk at the gallery, masks are required for those over 12 years old. There will be a vaccination screening prior to entry. Space is limited to ensure physical distancing.
UrbanScreen is Surrey Art Gallery’s outdoor art projection venue located on the west wall of Chuck Bailey Recreation Centre. Riffing on the classic children’s game “I spy,” Flavourcel’s project captures different sights from across Whalley and the broader Surrey region in animated form. Each member of the collective specializes in a different form of animation, including hand-drawn, digital, and even clay. The result is an eclectic mix of moving artworks with a mesmerizing effect, starring flying cars, swimming salmon, and dancing street furniture.
During the talk on September 18th, Alia Hijaab, Lana Connors, and Josh Neu will speak about how the project came together, as well as their unique approach to animation. Visitors will learn more about how each member interpreted their own experience of Surrey to inform their artistic process and how the collective has come to forge their own distinctive identity in the local contemporary art community.
In conjunction with the exhibition and the talk, Surrey Art Gallery has released a new video in its Art Togetherseries of online programming. Flavourcel member Alia Hijaab instructs viewers on how to make their own pencil and paper animations at home. This video joins two other tutorials from Flavourcel members available on the Gallery’s’ YouTube channel, including Introductions to 1-Page Animation Loops with Joshua Neu and Wire-Frame Animation with Julia Song. A new essay by writer and cultural worker Madison Mayhew in the Surrey Art Gallery Presents publication will complement the exhibition. It will be available for free on Surrey Art Gallery’s website in October.
Visitors are encouraged to remain after the artist talk to attend the drop-in launch of the Gallery’s fall exhibitions:q̓ʷɑti̓cɑ: k̓ʷam̓k̓ʷəm̓ tə šxʷhəliʔ / Phyllis Atkins: Divine Connection, paintings and sculptures drawn from Coast Salish tradition that celebrate the artist’s connection to life and spirit and Sandeep Johal: What If?, multimedia artworks that uplift resilient South Asian women.
About the Artists
Flavourcel is an animation collective based in the unceded Coast Salish territories. Born out of a desire to break down the institutional barriers that limit animators and introduce play into their work, Flavourcel produces experimental animations in a variety of styles. From hand-drawn cell-shading to digital doodles, music videos, and gifs, each artist pushes the boundaries of the medium and challenges the preconceptions of how animated art should be made. Flavourcel includes Harlo Martens, Kat Morris, Josh Neu, Julia Song, Alia Hijaab, Chhaya Naran, Gil Goletski, Laurel Pucker, Lana Connors, and Chris Strickler.
The 39th annual Women of Distinction Awards presented by Scotiabank will take place on May 26, 2022 and this is your opportunity to recognize an outstanding woman or business operating in the Lower Mainland by nominating them for an award.
2019 Nominees
2022 YWCA Women of Distinction Awards
Award categories are:
Arts, Culture & Design
Business & the Professions
Community Champion
Education, Training & Development
Entrepreneurship & Innovation
Environmental Sustainability
Health & Wellness
Non-Profit
Reconciliation in Action – this award honours two unique women; an Indigenous leader and an ally, working independently and committed to finding a new way forward.
*Does your organization care about diversity and inclusion? Does it support and respond to the diverse needs of its employees? Does it proactively support the success and advancement of women? If you answered yes to all these questions, consider nominating your organization for the Outstanding Workplace award.
The YWCA strongly encourage nominations that recognize the contributions of Black, Indigenous and People of Colour, as well as LGBTQ2S+ individuals.
Nominations will close on Friday, December 3, 2021 at 5:00pm PST.
YWCA Metro Vancouver
YWCA Metro Vancouver is dedicated to achieving women’s equality. Their mission is to touch lives help build bright futures for women and their families through advocacy and integrated services that foster economic independence, wellness and equal opportunities.
Miss604 is a proud sponsor of the YWCA Women of Distinction Awards, since 2010.
The Learning Disabilities Society of Greater Vancouver (“LDS”) has launched a new mobile outreach program, LDS Access, intended to work as a ‘classroom on wheels’ which will ensure access to critically needed learning support services in the Greater Vancouver region.
LDS Launches Mobile Classroom Service
As a registered non-profit, LDS has supported children and youth with suspected or diagnosed learning differences for over 50 years. They offer financially accessible, high-quality learning support for students. Hitting the road this summer, the mobile classroom enables access to LDS specialized support for children and youth with diverse abilities, in their own neighbourhood, eliminating barriers such as transportation access or financial circumstances.
“Our new LDS Access initiative furthers our commitment to provide accessible and inclusive support to all children and youth in our region with diverse abilities and to transform their lives through learning,” said Dr. Jennifer Fane, LDS Director of Education. “Our mobile classroom service will ensure that students with access challenges can receive our one-to-one instruction from our highly skilled instructors and support from our comprehensive LDS assistive technology suite in locations close to where they live.”
The mobile classroom, housed in a clean-energy electric mini-bus, is the first of its kind in BC and its design reflects public health guidelines for the pandemic. Special care has been taken in the mobile classroom design, including the addition of barriers between instruction units and modification of windows to ensure maximum airflow, to ensure compliance with all COVID-19 related safety protocols.
The exterior of the bus is wrapped in an original mural by the award-winning local artist, Carson Ting (whose work you may recognize from the Vancouver Mural Festival or Whitecaps FC’s It Takes a Village). Ting created the beautiful, colourful graphic to illustrate the nonprofit’s mission to empower children and youth, and to help further inspire creativity.
Award-winning artist Carson Ting was inspired by the LDS Access initiative. Along with his art and design firm, @Chairman_Ting , Carson created a bright and colourful external mural that wraps capturing the essence of LDS’s mission, vision, and values.
Many families have been severely challenged through the COVID-19 pandemic, especially those with children with special needs, and the LDS Access program will provide them with the same high-quality, one-to-one RISE (research-informed individualized student education) instruction provided at its leaning centers and in supported schools.
“We were overjoyed to learn about the new LDS Access mobile classroom service,” said Lauren, whose son struggles with a diagnosed learning difference. “We have experienced challenges accessing specific services for our son and LDS Access will be able to provide local support for our son previously unavailable to us.”
Thanks to financial and in-kind donations from community of supporters, LDS was able to develop LDS Access and will continue its push for excellence in all areas providing accessible and inclusive support for children and youth in our region.
Those interested in making a financial contribution to help vulnerable students with learning and related disabilities are encouraged to visit LDS’s Giving page. If you’re looking for support, LDS offers 16 programs for for children, youth, and families at school, in the home, and with the new mobile classroom. Follow on Facebook for more info.
DanceHouse, in partnership with Digidance, announces the Canadian digital broadcast of celebrated Brazilian choreographer Deborah Colker’s Dog Without Feathers, streaming September 29th to October 11th – and you can enter to win streaming access.
Inspired by a poem by João Cabral of the same name, Colker crafts a mesmerizing vision of mud-and-dust-covered dancers shown as emergent from the animal and elemental worlds, yet at the same time destructive of them. In creating the work, Colker’s 14-member company explored the beauty as well as the cultural and environmental impact of Northeast Brazil’s Capibaribe River; the work is saturated with the sounds, landscape, animals, plants and people of the region.
Deborah Colker’s Dog Without Feathers – Image by CAFI
The broadcast of Dog Without Feathers is due to the coordinated effort of Digidance, a national initiative formed in response to COVID-19 in 2020 between four of Canada’s leading dance presenters: DanceHouse (Vancouver), Harbourfront Centre (Toronto), the National Arts Centre (Ottawa), and Danse Danse (Montreal).
Based in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil’s Companhia de Dança Deborah Colker is a company well-known for combining “death-defying feats on giant hamster wheels, vogueing, hip-hop, acrobatics and anything else that suits Colker’s eclectic sensibility,” (NYT). The work’s title, Dog Without Feathers, speaks to the sluggish Capibaribe River and the people who live by and depend upon it. Speaking to its message and intentions Colker explained, “It conveys the soul of Brazil from the rich and miserable to the mud and mangroves.”
Following its premiere in 2017, the work quickly received international acclaim and attention. In 2018, in recognition of Dog Without Feathers, Colker was honoured as the choreography recipient of the International Dance Association’s Prix Benois de la Danse – otherwise known as the ‘Oscars of dance’ – joining the ranks of such luminaries as Crystal Pite, Christopher Wheeldon, Jiří Kylián, among others.
Dog Without Feathers welcomes audiences into its world with voiceovers of Cabral’s poem, accompanied by Cláudio Assis’ black and white film projections and photography of the Capibaribe River, which include startling images of a dry river bed, of a burning crop field, rugged terrain, lush forests, and a shanty town. The lithe and intensely athletic dance artists enter the space in mud-coloured tights and coated with fine dust that plumes into clouds as they move through Colker’s mercurial, dynamic, and acrobatic choreography.
Over the course of eight movements, the artists come to embody not only the landscape of the Capibaribe region, but also the frogs, birds, and fauna that call the region home. Ultimately, they evolve to represent humanity itself – and explore how our species are simultaneously dependent upon and destructive of the natural world.
Colker has risen to become one of Brazil’s most prominent and influential cultural figures since founding her company in 1994. Her works have toured to four continents and been seen on some of the world’s greatest stages. In addition to the Prix Benois de la Danse, the international community has recognized her achievements when she became the first Brazilian to win a Laurence Olivier Award in 2001 for ‘Outstanding Achievement in Dance’. Beyond the work she has created for her own company, Colker served as Cirque du Soleil’s first-ever female choreographer for 2009’s Ovo and as the Movement Director and Choreographer for the 2016 Olympics in her hometown of Rio de Janeiro.
Digidance’s presentation of Dog Without Feathers will also include a 20-minute pre-show documentary.
Enter to Win
I have a streaming pass available for this production that provides timely, artful commentary on the impact of human beings on nature and the resulting climate crisis. Here’s how you can enter to win:
The Firehall Arts Centre has announced its 39th season, which Artistic Producer Donna Spencer has proudly programmed as a Reunion Season. It will open with the world premiere of Raven Spirit Dance’s Chapter 21 from September 29 to October 3, 2021 and closing out with R.A. Shiomi’s Yellow Fever from May 14 to 28, 2022.
Firehall Arts Centre 2021-22 Season
Choreographed by Starr Muranko and directed by Yvette Nolan, Chapter 21explores what happens when a vibrant, powerful artist comes face to face with a crippling collision of events. A dance/theatre piece, Chapter 21 is a reflection on the days that have come to pass and the art of becoming.
Paddle Song, running November 9-21, tells the story of Mohawk poet, Pauline Johnson, in this energetic and humorous one-woman musical starring Cheri Maracle, and created by Dinah Christie and Tom Hill. Published and hailed by the literati of England at a time when it was ruled by white men, Pauline Johnson toured for over 30 years across Canada, the U.S., and Great Britain during the late 1800s.
