World City Guide

Culture

Vancouver is a young city and it shows in the city’s cultural scene. While there are established companies in the traditional forms of classical music, opera, dance and theatre, none stand out in particular. It is the smaller outfits and the up-and-comers that make the cultural scene interesting and give a bit of an edge to things. Vancouver’s performing arts season generally runs from October to April. In summer, there are special concerts and numerous festivals.

Information on performing arts can be found in The Georgia Straight (website: www.straight.com), a free weekly newspaper, and the Thursday editions of the daily newspapers, The Vancouver Sun and The Province (website: www.vancouversun.com). The Alliance for Arts and Culture, 938 Howe Street (tel: (604) 681 3535; website: www.allianceforarts.com), is a good source of information for drop-in visitors (Monday to Friday 0900-1700).

Tickets can be purchased directly from the venues or from Ticketmaster’s Artsline (tel: (604) 280 3311; website: www.ticketmaster.ca) or Show Time Tickets (tel: (604) 688 5000 or (800) 480 7469; website: www.showtimetickets.com). Half-price tickets are available on the day of the performance from Tickets Tonight, at the booth in the tourist information centre, 200 Burrard Street (tel: (604) 684 2787; website: www.ticketstonight.ca).

Music: Vancouver offers the full range of classical music, from large symphony and opera productions to intimate chamber groups and choral societies – notably the Vancouver Recital Society (tel: (604) 602 0363; website: www.vanrecital.com) and the Vancouver Cantata Singers (tel: (604) 730 8856; website: www.cantata.org). The Chan Centre for the Performing Arts, on the University of British Columbia campus (tel: (604) 822 2697/9197; website: www.chancentre.com), has three stages, including the 1,400-seat Chan Shun Concert Hall. The Orpheum Theatre, 601 Smithe Street (tel: (604) 665 3050; website: www.city.vancouver.bc.ca/theatres), hosts choral concerts and is the residence of the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra (tel: (604) 876 3434; website: www.vancouversymphony.ca). The Queen Elizabeth Theatre, 649 Cambie Street (tel: (604) 665 3050; website: www.city.vancouver.bc.ca/theatres), stages a variety of performances from classical to contemporary. It is also the home of Ballet BC (see below) and the Vancouver Opera (tel: (604) 683 0222; website: www.vanopera.bc.ca), the third largest opera company in Canada.

Theatre: Vancouver has a lively theatre scene, with numerous community and student productions supplementing more than 30 permanent fixtures. Granville Island (tel: (604) 666 5784; website: www.granvilleisland.com) is home to the Arts Club Theatre’s Granville Island Stage, 1585 Johnston Street (tel: (604) 687 1644; website: www.artsclub.com). The Granville Island Cultural Society (tel: (604) 687 3005; website: www.giculturalsociety.org) manages the 240-seat Waterfront Theatre, 1412 Cartwright Street, and Performance Works, a black box studio at number 1218. Elsewhere on the island, the antics of the comedy improvisation troupe TheatreSports (tel: (604) 738 7013; website: www.vtsl.com) enliven the New Revue Stage, 1601 Johnston Street.

The larger venues Downtown include the Queen Elizabeth Theatre (see Music above), and the adjacent Vancouver Playhouse, Hamilton Street and Dunsmuir Street, home of the Vancouver Playhouse Theatre Company (tel: (604) 873 3311; website: www.vancouverplayhouse.com), the largest regional theatre company in the province. Nearby, The Centre in Vancouver for Performing Arts, 777 Homer Street (tel: (604) 602 0616; website: www.centreinvancouver.com), hosts large-scale theatrical productions and other events. Avant-garde theatre and dance can be seen at the Firehall Arts Centre, 280 East Cordova Street (tel: (604) 689 0926; website: www.firehallartscentre.ca), to the east of Gastown.

The annual Bard on the Beach Shakespeare festival (tel: (604) 739 0559; website: www.bardonthebeach.org) is a summer fixture in Vanier Park that runs from June through September.

The Greater Vancouver Professional Theatre Alliance (website: www.theatre.ubc.ca/gvpta) publishes a seasonal Theatre Guide (tel: (604) 608 6799; website: http://communicopia.net/app/services/calendar1/index.cfm).

Dance: Vancouver is one of Canada’s most important dance centres, with around two dozen professional dance companies operating in the area, performing both classical and modern dance, as well as traditional Japanese and Chinese dance. The Scotiabank Dance Centre, 677 Davie Street (tel: (604) 606 6400; website: www.thedancecentre.ca), is a useful resource and also hosts performances. In July, the Dancing on the Edge festival (website: www.mcsquared.com/edge) gives dozens of independent choreographers from Canada and abroad a chance to show their stuff. Ballet British Columbia (tel: (604) 732 5003; website: www.balletbc.com) performs at the Queen Elizabeth Theatre (see Music above). The Vancouver East Cultural Centre, 1895 Venables Street (tel: (604) 251 1363; website: www.vecc.bc.ca), known locally as ‘the Cultch’, is located in a former church and showcases contemporary dance, in addition to theatre and live music. The innovative Kokoro Dance Company (tel: (604) 662 7441; website: www.kokoro.ca), inspired by butoh (a modern Japanese dance form) performs at various venues.

Film: Vancouver is one of the largest centres for film and television production in North America. In 2003, there were 169 productions, of which 47 were feature films. The city has stood in for many US cities in celluloid (including the first five seasons of The X-Files) but there have been no well known films that actually portray the city as itself.

Both the industry and filmgoers attend the Vancouver International Film Festival (tel: (604) 683 3456 (information line, September-October only) or 685 0260; website: www.viff.org) in the autumn, when more than 300 films from some 50 countries are screened. The Out on Screen gay and lesbian film festival (tel: (604) 844 1615; website: www.outonscreen.com) takes place in August.
Mainstream cinemas once lined Granville Street’s ‘theatre row’, but with expected closures, only one will remain after 2005: the Granville Cineplex Odeon, at number 855 (tel: (604) 684 4000; website: www.cineplex.ca). Instead, Downtown’s eastern fringes host the main blockbuster: the Cinemark Tinseltown, 88 West Pender Street (tel: (604) 806 0799; website: www.cinemark.com), has 12 screens and stadium seating. The Pacific Cinematheque, 1131 Howe Street (tel: (604) 688 3456; website: www.cinematheque.bc.ca), is the city’s main repertory cinema and offers numerous cross-cultural and multimedia events in addition to a wide range of film programming. The city is notable for having a relatively large number of single-screen independent movie houses, including The Ridge, 3131 Arbutus (tel: (604) 738 6311; website: www.ridgetheatre.com).

Cultural Events: Vancouver has a year-round programme of special events, festivals and sporting events. The year kicks off in January with the Polar Bear Swim, when hundreds of brave/foolish swimmers dash into the chilly waters of English Bay. The influence of the city’s Chinese community is felt during the Chinese New Year celebrations, generally in early February, and again with the Dragon Boat Festival in June, when teams of rowers compete in fiercely decorated boats. The summer sees events and festivals showcasing a variety of media, from jazz and chamber music to comedy and theatre, although two of the best festivals, the International Film Festival and International Writers’ (and Readers’) Festival, hold off until the cooler months of September and October.

Literary Notes: Some 1,500 authors live in the province, including such popular authors as Douglas Coupland and the science-fiction writer William Gibson. Both men captured a certain zeitgeist with their works. Coupland’s novel Generation X (1991), about disaffected 20-somethings, gave birth to the moniker for the post-babyboom generation. Gibson, who produced Neuromancer (1984), was at the forefront of defining the cyberpunk ethos and envisioning a dystopian future based on where technology appears to be taking society.

Evelyn Lau captured the city’s seamier side in her autobiographical Runaway: Diary of a Street Kid (1989). Nick Bantock of Griffin & Sabine (1991) fame lives on nearby Bowen Island, while WP Kinsella, whose Shoeless Joe (1982) was the basis for the film Field of Dreams (1989), lives just south of Vancouver. Other famous local writers include Bill Bisset, George Bowering and George Woodcock. One of the area’s earliest writers was the Native poet and performer Pauline Johnson (also known as Tekahionwake), who settled in Vancouver in 1909 and published Legends of Vancouver (1911) two years later. Many of the city’s authors (as well as big-name authors from elsewhere) attend the Vancouver International Writers (& Readers) Festival (tel: (604) 681 6330; website: www.writersfest.bc.ca) in October.