Hot Brown Honey smashes stereotypes and remixes the system.| Photo by Dylan Evans.
Welcome everyone to 2018. I hope this year finds all of you well! Start your new year off right by attending some of the many events and activities taking place around the city. Don’t let the chilly, cold weather keep you from attending an art gallery opening, a theatre play, a documentary screening or a food expo. Make sure to drink a steaming hot cup of hot chocolate at the hot chocolate festival happening later this month – you deserve it!
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Hot Brown Honey
Jan. 9–27
York Theatre, Vancouver
Hot Brown Honey turns up the heat, delivering lashings of sass and a hot pinch of empowerment in the smash-hit that took the Edinburgh Fringe by storm. Packing a punch of hip hop politics, the Honeys will make you laugh, cry, clap and shake what your mama gave you. This stellar posse of phenomenal women make noise as they defiantly smash stereotypes and remix the system. Fighting the power never tasted so sweet. Check out The Cultch website for tickets and more information.
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Edward Luce: The Unravelling of the Liberal Order
Jan. 11, 6–7:30 p.m.
Old Auditorium, University of British Columbia, Vancouver
The world is undergoing a wrenching process of geopolitical transformation. The liberal order that dominated for the past half century is unravelling. Multilateral institutions developed in the mid-twentieth century are coming under assault by some of the very countries that were central to their formation. Digital connectivity and new technologies are accelerating political, economic and social transformation and literally changing the rules of the game, pulling at the seams of global stability. Will the liberal order hold, or is its disassembling inevitable? What kinds of global order(s) does the future hold? Join The Financial Times journalist Edward Luce as he discusses the weakening of western hegemony and the crisis of democratic liberalism.
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January Exhibitions at Place des Arts
Jan. 12–Feb. 10
Place des Arts, Coquitlam
The Place des Arts Gallery is currently showcasing three new exhibits this month. Check out fibre art by artists Lesley Turner and Sarah McLaren, which explores emotional responses to colour. Artist Mardell Rampton creates contemporary abstract textile paintings showing the influence of a long-standing love of the oceans, skies and forests of the West Coast of Vancouver Island. Finally, painter Jane Appleby showcases acrylic and oil works inspired by the Group of Seven, moving from recognizable landscapes to abstract expressions of the experience.
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Cloverdale Antique and Collectible Show
Jan. 13, 9 a.m.–3 p.m.
Agriplex Cloverdale Fairgrounds, Surrey
The Canadian Antique and Collectible Club will be coming to the Agriplex Cloverdale Fairgrounds in Surrey, featuring over 160 tables full of vintage treasures. Many new and out of town vendors will be revealing fresh finds for the antique collector. Find unique and historical Canadian coins and paper money, postcards, militaria, stamps, signs, toys and much more.
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Gluten Free Expo
Jan. 13–14
Canada Place, Vancouver
The Vancouver Convention Centre at Canada Place will be hosting the Gluten Free Expo on the weekend of Jan. 13, featuring numerous exhibitors, cooking demonstrations, dietitian presenters and, of course, plenty of tasty gluten free culinary dishes to sample. Listen to presentations from registered dietitians helping you to create healthier diets, and watch chefs create healthy gluten free versions of pizza dough, cinnamon buns, feta rolls, perogies and more. For tickets and further information, please check out their website.
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Transference
Jan. 13–March 18
Richmond Art Gallery
Richmond Art Gallery will be exhibiting Transference, featuring the works of five artists – Aimée Henny Brown, Saskia Jetten, Ross Kelly, Colin Lyons and Kathleen Ritter – until March 18. The exhibition investigates the aesthetic and formal criteria specific to contemporary print media, while highlighting challenges and opportunities digital technology presents to the function and process of the medium and its contribution to the conceptual construction of artworks. Underlying the works is the notion of image transfer as well as the transference of meaning supported and sometimes led by digital technologies.
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PuSh International Performing Arts Festival
Jan. 16–Feb. 4
Various venues
For the 14th time, the PuSh Festival returns to Vancouver to showcase innovative and transformative art from artists representing 11 countries. There will be 28 performance works spread over three weeks, featuring staggering spectacles, immersive encounters, theatrical adaptations and more. Catch an Irish performance piece about surviving a traumatic brain injury and a medically induced coma, an Australian work dissecting morality, culture and the politics of intervention, a raucous and visceral Italian dance party filled with contemplation and ecstasy, and more at PuSh. For more shows and event details, please visit their website.
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Eighth Annual Hot Chocolate Festival
Jan. 20–Feb. 14
Various stores
Warm up this cold winter with a cup of delicious hot chocolate at the Hot Chocolate Festival, returning to Vancouver for the eighth year. Local chocolate makers will come together to create some of the most unique, flavourful and delicious hot chocolate beverages for your drinking pleasure. Previous years’ concoctions have included 60 different flavours including hibiscus infused Mexican hot chocolate, hazelnut Crown Royal whiskey marshmallows and butternut squash almond milk with a smoked oyster on the side. For this year’s menu, visit the festival website.
Dive into a luscious cup of hot chocolate.| Photo by Kesara Rathnayake.
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L’Elisir d’amore (The Elixir of Love)
Jan 21, 25, 27
Queen Elizabeth Theatre, Vancouver
L’Elisir d’amore is a romantic comedy in which a poor and hapless young man eventually wins the hand of the rich and educated town beauty. The love potion of the title unlocks the secret desires of all the main characters, and along the way the plot takes many amusing twists and turns. This whimsical production is set in a small Canadian town, complete with ice cream truck and gazebo, which perfectly captures the innocence of the story. For tickets and more information, check out the website.
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Birth of a Family
Jan. 24, 7 p.m.
Djavad Mowafaghian Cinema, Vancouver
Three sisters and a brother, adopted as infants into separate families across North America, meet for the first time in this deeply moving documentary by director Tasha Hubbard being shown at the Djavad Mowafaghian Cinema at SFU Woodwards on Jan. 24. Removed from their young Dene mother’s care as part of Canada’s infamous Sixties Scoop, Betty Ann, Esther, Rosalie and Ben were four of the 20,000 Indigenous children taken from their families between 1955 and 1985, to be either adopted into white families or to live in foster care. As the four siblings piece together their shared history, their connection deepens, bringing laughter with it, and their family begins to take shape. The screening will be followed by a conversation with director Tasha Hubbard and two of the siblings featured in the documentary.
