Vancouver TheatreSports Presents Canadian Comedy Icon Colin Mochrie in Vancouver

Add a Comment by Rebecca Bollwitt
Disclosure: Sponsored Post — Sponsored by Vancouver TheatreSports Please review the Policy & Disclosure section for further information.

Canadian comedy icon Colin Mochrie returns to Vancouver TheatreSports (“VTS”) this month for three benefit performances May 30th to June 1st. Join the VTS alumnus and star of Whose Line Is It Anyway on Granville Island and in Downtown Vancouver for a side-splitting good time.

Vancouver TheatreSports™ Presents Canadian Comedy Icon Colin Mochrie

Colin Mochrie in Vancouver

Don’t miss out on this rare opportunity to catch one of the world’s greatest improvisers at his best!

COLIN UP CLOSE AND PERSONAL
Where: Improv Centre, Granville Island (502 Duranleau St, Vancouver)
When: Thursday, May 30, 2019 at 7:30pm
Tickets: Tickets range from $99 (theatre seats) to $109 (tables/banquette seats) buy online now »
Details: Your chance to see Colin up close and catch every expressive comedic nuance in an intimate space! This very special evening includes a full 90-minute improv performance starring Colin along with VTS ensemble members, and a Q&A session where audience members ask the questions. VTS patrons who arrive early for a drink at The Improv Centre’s Neil Macrae Bar & Lounge might even get lucky and snag a selfie with Colin Mochrie before the show.

COLIN AND FRIENDS
Where: Improv Centre, Granville Island (502 Duranleau St, Vancouver)
When: Friday, May 31, 2019 at 7:30pm
Tickets: Tickets range from $89 (theatre seats) to $99 (tables/banquette seats) buy online now »
Details: On Friday, Colin returns to The Improv Centre, VTS’ home on Granville Island, to perform with some of his improv friends from the VTS ensemble. With only 186 seats available, the setting is intimate and provides a welcoming experience where every seat is a great seat. This is a wonderful opportunity to catch an improv master at work in an evening that is sure to tickle your funny bone. The Improv Centre is fully-licensed and guests are welcome to take their beverages with them into the theatre to enjoy during the show.

THE COLIN MOCHRIE EXPERIENCE
Where: Vogue Theatre (918 Granville St, Vancouver)
When: Saturday, June 1, 2019 at 7:30pm
Tickets: Tickets range from $29 to $65, buy online now »
Details: Saturday night sees Colin take the stage at The Vogue Theatre, located in the heart of Vancouver’s Entertainment District. This performance once again features the improv master with some of your favourite VTS improvisers in a free-wheeling improv laugh-fest.

All performances benefit Vancouver TheatreSports™, a registered non-profit charity, and the Colin Mochrie Scholarship Fund at VTS’ theatre school, The Improv Comedy Institute. Established in 2014, this scholarship provides assistance to those wishing to study improv but are unable to do so because of financial barriers.

Colin Mochrie’s return to VTS and Vancouver is sure to be one of the hottest comedy tickets this spring, get your tickets today!

Richmond Night Market 2019

Add a Comment by Rebecca Bollwitt

The Richmond Night Market is open for the season, featuring an international food fair with over a hundred vendors with over five hundred food items from all over the world.

Richmond Night Market

Richmond Night Market

  • Location: 8351 River Road, Richmond
    • 1 block from Bridgeport Canada Line station)
  • Dates/Hours: May 10, 2018 to October 15, 2019
    • Fridays and Saturdays 7:00pm to 12:00am; Sundays & Holidays 7:00pm to 11:00pm
  • Admission & Details: $4.75, free for children 10 and under, free for seniors 60+.

Skip the long lines with an Express Pass. Fast, easy and transferrable, for just $28 you get 6 visits, front of the line access, and you can share it with friends or family.

The night market is the best place to find unique culinary creations, from steaming liquid nitrogen ice cream cups topped with churros to potato tornadoes, bubble waffles, grilled octopus, ramen spam burgers, takoyaki, and so much more.

Richmond Night Market Food

New This Year

  • A Summer Chill Party theme
  • Slushies in the Angle Duck Cafe
  • Non-alcoholic Champagne and Ginger Beer – served in Party LED Cups
  • Hershey’s Cookies n Creme and Hi-Rev Mocha – served in signature Ducky Cups

Follow the Richmond Night Market on Facebook for the latest updates.

BC Highland Games and Scottish Festival

Add a Comment by Rebecca Bollwitt

The BC Highland Games answer the questions:  Who is the strongest?  Who can flip a huge log (caber) to land perfectly at the 12 o’clock position? Who is the best piper or drummer, dancer or pipe band?  Taking place in BC for more than 100 years, and in Scotland for centuries, these games complete with a full festival with delicious food, concerts, and fun for the whole family.

BC Highland Games

BC Highland Games and Scottish Festival

Look for stock dog demonstrations, performances from pipe bands, live music, vendors, cultural talks, haggis-hunting, beer garden and whisky school, all taking place at one time, on one day in one place: Lafarge Lake Park

BC Highland Games Pipes

View the full schedule of events here »

Enjoy Scottish delicacies, like haggis and Irn Bru while the kids get their faces painted. Pop into the beer garden, and enjoy live Celtic music from The Paperboys and other bands on Lew Ross Field North.  In the northwest section of the park, some of the world’s best highland dancers will be competing. 

Competitions

As the name suggest, the BC Highland Games are all about the competitions. From pipes, drums, bands and dancing, to stone putt, hammer toss, caber toss and more.

Highland Games Collage

Tartan Run

The inaugural Tartan Run will take place on Friday, June 14th. It’s the first ever BC Highland Games 5 & 10k Tartan Run (and walk) at 6:30pm. The run finishes at the new Games site for a free concert-in-the-park with a beer garden, vendors, bagpipers, whisky school and The Paperboys on the Ceilidh Stage (bring lawn chairs).

Follow the BC Highland Games on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram for more information about this festival and its amazing tradition.

Miss604 is proud to be the Social Media Sponsor of the 2019 BC Highland Games.

Arts Umbrella’s Season Finale BE MOVED

Comments 19 by Rebecca Bollwitt

Cherry blossom petals pirouetted in the entranceway of Arts Umbrella’s East 7th location when I rang the bell to meet up with Artemis Gordon, Artistic Director of the Arts Umbrella Dance Company (“AUDC”). Inside, graduate students were rehearsing for the season finale show, BE MOVED.

Arts Umbrella Be Moved

There are two studios at this location, with three more on Granville Island. The new permanent Arts Umbrella space will be the refurbished Emily Carr University building on Granville Island once renovations are complete. “I would say that I foresaw this growth my first day,” Gordon told me as rehearsals continued. “I came here from Toronto and it was with a bit of a mission to develop and understand and research and create a community for contemporary dance.”

Season Finale is Just the Beginning

“This was always a goal, to have more studios, to be able to offer more programming, and to have the flexibility to be able to do multiple things that further the art form, and further the education in the program.”

Arts Umbrella’s growth is attributed to its world-class programming, and the reputation of its staff, choreographers, and dancers. In fact, more than half of Ballet BC dancers are Arts Umbrella graduates and many grads are dancing all over the world. “There’s a real ripple of what’s happening in the dance world right now because of what we’ve been doing at Arts Umbrella.”

For BE MOVED, the production will include pieces by Crystal Pite, Emily Molnar, Johan Inger, Lesley Telford, James Kudelka, Mats Ek, and Amos Ben-Tal.

“If you are a human being that has listened to music and walked, you know dance. Whether or not you are able to do what they do on stage, that’s another thing, but you know it. We all know what dance is.” – Artemis Gordon

Gordon tells the dancers: “The reason we have these amazing choreographers is on the reputation of what people have already done. It’s your responsibility to do the work, then I get these choreographers for the future. It’s uncanny to have the roster that we have, of professional choreographers and dance artists.”

From the ground up, Gordon says it’s the Arts Umbrella work ethic that also makes a difference.

“We do a lot of new creations which means there’s an entire skillset that is identified, and worked on, and articulated, and developed. We have a great work ethic and respect for the work in the studio and that we have these amazing choreographers really makes my job easy. I think it’s really a testament to the work that’s being done in the program.”

Arts Umbrella’s Season Finale BE MOVED

Where: Vancouver Playhouse (600 Hamilton, Vancouver)
When: May 23-25, 2019
Tickets: Available online now

Arts Umbrella Dance Company’s Season Finale: BE MOVED will be the culmination of months of exploration and rehearsal of bold and innovative works created for AUDC dancers by leading International and Canadian choreographers.

As someone whose only on-stage dance experience has been watching The Nutcracker at Christmas, I asked Gordon what someone like me could expect from BE MOVED.

“A divergence, a great diversity of music, a diversity of ideas, you’ll see everyone’s vision of what they think dance is. You’re going to see some extraordinary commitment of young people on stage, a real virtuosity of the ability to create new movement – not movement that is programmed or has been done before – but a new way of approaching movement vocabulary. You’ll see what is the human potential.”

We popped in on the class one more time as she whispered and pointed at all of the international students who sought out Arts Umbrella. “I just wish that it didn’t have an elitist connotation,” Gordon added as we walked back into the hallway. “Doing it is elite, it’s hard! It is a 12 year rigorous study to be able to do what these kids do and then you can only do it until your body says no more, but watching it is a lifelong thing.”

“I hear other people say I don’t get it. But why would you expect to get it? Nobody asks you to explain music, and somehow we feel it’s ok to just feel music. But why is it with dance, we feel we need to know it or get it?” That’s what Gordon really wants to break down. “We’re all the same. Everyone feels that urge to express themselves physically, through what we wear, how we do our hair, the choices of what we say or where we go. It’s all the dance of our lives.”

Win Tickets

I have a pair of tickets to give away to the opening night performance on May 23rd, thanks to Arts Umbrella. Here’s how you can enter to win:

Here’s how you can enter to win:

  • Leave a comment on this post (1 entry)
  • Click below to post an entry on Twitter
[clickToTweet tweet=”RT to enter to win tickets to #BEMOVED the season finale of the @ArtsUmbrella Dance Company http://ow.ly/4dD330oIKQd” quote=” Click to enter via Twitter” theme=”style6″]

Follow Arts Umbrella on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram for more information about the Dance Company, and their programs. I will draw one winner at random from all entries at 12:00pm on Friday, May 17, 2019.

UPDATE The winner is Jessica!

West End Summer Art Market

Add a Comment by Rebecca Bollwitt

Jim Deva Plaza, in the heart of Davie Village, will be home to the West End Summer Art Market this summer, hosted by a group of West End artists, artisans and neighbours working towards a more vibrant community.

West End Summer Art Market

West End Summer Art Market

Where: Jim Deva Plaza (1200 Bute Street, Vancouver)
When: Every Saturday, June 1 to September 28, 2019 (except August 2nd)

The West End Arts Collective (“WE Arts”) hopes that this will be more than just a market, they want it to be a gathering space for West Enders to support local artists, enjoy local music, participate in community art projects and workshops and meet neighbours.

Jim Deva Plaza
Jim Deva Plaza on Facebook

There will be one workshop per month during the market, and residents can sign up to be a host here. You can also volunteer to move in tents and tables, or apply to be a vendor.

WE Arts was born in looking forward at the role of the arts in the West End. They partnered with the City of Vancouver in creating the West End Art Plan. Through several public consultations they learned what arts and culture priorities our neighbours have, and they adopted them as goals for WE Arts. So far they have been able to deliver on a weekly art market and West End music and arts festival. Every year they seek to move closer to reaching their goal of seeing all these ideals become reality.

Follow WE Arts on Facebook and Twitter for more information.