Among the highlights of the ongoing Fluid Festival the national première of House by Tel Aviv’s L-E-V (pictured) is sure to stand out. The performance features 10 dancers wearing the company’s signature nude body stockings and moving in unison to a hypnotic beat in a performance that resembles “a fragmented cinematic collage of images that flicker and vanish like a porno film in a dank movie house.” House runs October 22 to 25 at Theatre Junction Grand.
Two new Canadian plays are premièring in Calgary this week. Playwright David van Belle perhaps best known as one-half of the creative duo behind Ghost River Theatre debuts a new play at Theatre Calgary that focuses on Canadian soldiers in the Netherlands following the Second World War. Although it was a period of jubilation Liberation Days also reveals the tension beneath the surface as 200000 young men who had been at war suddenly found themselves with nothing to do. The play was developed as part of FUSE: The Enbridge New Play Development Program at Theatre Calgary (theatrecalgary.com). Down the hall of the Epcor Centre playwright Nicolas Billon’s Butcher premières at Alberta Theatre Projects. The play is the first in the playRites series that replaces the former festival of new Canadian work and its opening night also kicks off the Blitz Weekend previously held in the spring. Described as an “immersive behind-the-scenes event for all theatre lovers” the Blitz Weekend includes discussions with various people involved in play creation workshops readings of works in progress a backstage tour and more (atplive.com). Liberation Days and Butcher both open Friday October 17 and you can read more about them in this issue.
Wordfest continues this week with a non-stop schedule of events that includes opportunities to see three 2014 Governor General literary award finalists up close and personal: Thomas King (The Back of the Turtle — see our review in this issue) Edmund Metatawabin (Up Ghost River) and Michael Crummey (Sweetland). In fact the awards themselves are celebrated at another event that features a selection of festival artists who have received one or more GGs themselves and includes short interviews recorded live by CJSW and Wordfest as part of its annual GG Podcast. Although the festival officially runs until October 19 Wordfest will present Naomi Klein author of This Changes Everything at a special event on October 21 at Knox United Church. Read our interview with Klein in this issue and check out the festival schedule at wordfest.com.
Contemporary Calgary has not one but two exhibitions involving Toronto-based artist and curator Kim Dorland. The main gallery on Stephen Avenue has a solo retrospective titled Homecoming that features highlights of the Alberta-born artist’s career as a painter over the last decade while at C2 in the municipal building Dorland has curated an exhibition titled Voted Most Likely which features works by 14 local artists such as Chris Cran Bradley Harms DaveandJenn Mark Lawes Tiffany Wollman Matthew Mark Jeremy Pavka and Chad VanGaalen among others. Dorland will be in attendance at both openings — or sprinting down the avenue from one to the other — on Thursday October 16.
