Matt Hanson - Page 3

Looking back thirty years ago, the world appears to have been a very different place. Soviet Russia continued to perplex the foundations of western civilization from behind the Iron Curtain, and apartheid South Africa would not see a political resolution for another ten years.

A funnel cloud split the sky in a terrifying twist of darkening wind as the Calgary Folk Festival began under a cold rain that swept over the prairie river valley. At the foothills of the Rocky Mountains, the Bow River embraces the city of Calgary in power and steam, all emptying into dry air under the incredulously spacious Alberta horizons.

Folk people are the People's People. Folk signify kith, kin, family, ancestry, and flesh and blood.

98. Seventeen years ago, Hong Kong became independent. "DEAR HK," a projector blinked to a visceral thump, as the pulsing paroxysm lingered (HK = Hong Kong). Dancers Michelle Lui, Alex Tam, and Milton Lim shook spasmodically under stroboscopic shadows.

For fear of falling into the Eurocentric trap of appreciating East Asian literature through an Anglophone lens, what must be said first is that Korean author O Ch?ngh?i is an incomparable visionary of the heart.

Butoh is a sacred modern art. Originally spawned of postwar Japan, Butoh has since invigorated the world to a new style of movement. Kokoro dances Butoh in the nude. From the lower mainland of British Columbia to the world, this Dancing on the Edge Festival surely lives up to its name.

If art does not make the public more capable of feeling, of seeing the world through other eyes, and wanting positive change for all, then it only perpetuates class division, and in so doing, social strife.

Preeminent dance companies of New York, London, and Winnipeg all collaborated to celebrate the tenth birthday of Move: the company with a world premiere collection of works by company choreographer Joshua Beamish.

The uncanny and ingenious artistic resemblance of human relationships, Misfit Blues performs the tragicomic complex of relative mental states, the interplay of caustic vagaries, and invites onlookers to peek into a womb of loving solidarity.

If the first casualty of war is truth, the first casualty of capitalism is music. Snarky Puppy is a reminder to the American (and thus, global) consciousness that in a culture homogenizing music faster than milk, there are still authentic explosions of human ingenuity in the midst of the seemingly endless mires of tasteless musical capitalism.

It's that awake-and-thinking style of jazz that has become the peerless sonic pulse in the brainwaves of audiophiles around the globe. Unmistakable by name, The Bad Plus has galvanized the musical horizon, armed with nothing more than honest-to-goodness originality. Joshua Redman is the cherry on top.

The symbol of the sun, a perfect yellow disc, shone brilliantly onstage, over red, for the spirit of the land, and black, for Aboriginal Peoples. Likely the only act at the TD Vancouver International Jazz Festival to vocally pay respects to the "traditional custodians of the land," OKA front man Stu Boga Fergie (aka DidgeriduStu) donned his Australian aboriginal flag t-shirt with proud solidarity on Coast Salish territory.

"I am Louis Armstrong," said the man under the spotlight at center stage. "No! You're the great Stanley Clarke!' a festivalgoer called out from the audience. Clarke is one of the few still ticking who has spent the better part of the century among the pantheon of jazz gods and goddesses.

The enviable and rare distinction of selling out a ticketed show at the TD Vancouver Jazz Festival is awarded to a trio that premiered their band in Canada the night before they stepped beneath The Ironworks spotlight.

Over a hundred years ago, in the land now known as Czechoslovakia, a Moravian biologist named Dr. Vladimir Úlehla walked the cemeteries and fields of Stražnice. He composed folk songs, enchanted by a world between the wings of grey doves and the hooves of the hussar's horse.

Ever seen the real Roma, the homegrown flamenco of Spain? It's the kind of harmonic and choreographic precision that leaves a theater breathless, with countless eyes in a daze trying to follow each step of a dancer, pluck of a guitarist and intonation of a singer.

Flamenco Vivo celebrated the inaugural performance of flamenco at BAM with high fashion, and dramatic ingenuity.

"No!" she sings. The first note sailed, as from the ruddy heart of the Seine to the mood indigo of the Hudson. "I regret nothing!"

Cherylyn Lavagnino's choreography is an audacious blend of signatures, absolutely strong in her guidance of the body to fruition through movement and stillness.

It was a sold-out show. That's saying a lot. The Floatones were last seen at La MaMa twenty years ago.