LATIN AND INDIAN SUMMERTIME FESTIVITIES FILL THE ROUNDHOUSE
LATIN PRIMER: The Roundhouse community centre hosted international events on two consecutive evenings recently. During the first, Latincouver business-and-culture organization founder-director Paola Murillo premiered a flamenco-and-tango soirée. It was part of Latin American Week that preceded the ninth annual Carnaval del Sol celebration. Mexican-born Rosario Ancer, who presented three members of her 28-yearold Flamenco Rosario troupe, had trained and performed professionally in Spain. But her non-Hispanic dancers, schoolteacher Sula Boxall, student social worker Yurie Kaneko and biotech firm executive Michelle Zaharik, who has a PhD in molecular biology, are of English, German, Italian, Japanese, Lithuanian, Polish and Ukrainian background. Soirée attendees also applauded Spanish-trained Mozaico Flamenco’s co-founder Kasandra Lea, whose stage name, La China, reflects her birth. And that’s multiculturalism. As for our Latin community’s own makeup, “There’s been a huge wave of Brazilians,” Colombia-born Murillo said. “More than ever before — and young.”
GIVING INDIAN: Evening sunshine gilded the Roundhouse concourse when Laura Byspalko and husband Sirish Rao launched their seventh- annual Indian Summer Festival. At the rain-swept 2016 gala, Byspalko was full-term pregnant with daughter Teodora, who considerately arrived six days later. Her and Sirish’s baby this time was the festival’s diverse performance schedule ranging from Bengal-born author Arundhati Roy to Virginia-native jazz sax player Ernie Watts. Two days before his and violinist L Subramaniam’s festival concert, Watts played a short set for gala-goers feasting at international food stations organized by chefrestaurateur Vikram Vij. Among them, five traditionally dressed Syrian women from the Tayybeh organization served rice-beef-eggplant-and-almond makloubeh they’d prepared along with tableh, a dish of bulgur wheat, peppers, onion and pomegranate molasses. Boat-shaped cheese-and-parsley-stuffed pies represented Syrian refugees’ sometimes-fatal means of escape while reflecting the festival’s war-and-peace theme. Native Egyptian international-development professional Nihal Elwan founded Tayybeh (@ tayybeh) last year to help Syria’s “amazing women cooks” assimilate in Canada. It’s working — deliciously, too.
MORE POWER: Although as spare as many of his kiln-fired creations, Guangzhou-born potter Wayne Ngan is a giant in his field. Not so his budget in 1958, when he enrolled in the lowest-priced course, ceramics, at Vancouver School of Art, now Emily Carr University of Art + Design. His current $5,000-to-$9,000 creations, along with fellow Hornby Islander Gordon Payne’s paintings, debuted recently at Sarah Macaulay’s gallery. Now sole owner, Macaulay co-founded the facility in 2005 after years as a Europe-based fashion model appearing in most of the big magazines. Located in the east-of-Main arts district, with a satellite in San Francisco, her gallery will participate in Saturday afternoon’s Flats Block Party with Brad Chernoff’s, Monte Clark’s and Jennifer Winsor’s operations and Gallery Jones and Gallery 295. At his exhibition opening, Ngan said: “Some potters go to sleep after two or three phases.” Wide awake at age 80, he is busily undertaking the painting and bronze sculpting he couldn’t afford to study 60 years ago. “All my work is moving very quickly into the world,” Ngan said.
FEATS OF CLAY: Another former fashion model is exhibiting ceramic works at a Vancouver gallery. In Anyuta Gusakova’s case, though, she actually makes them — 120 or so individual pieces annually, and up to 300 each of the 15 designs in her Anyuta Porcelain Collection. Recent works are displayed at Granville Island’s Gallery of B.C. Ceramics. Depicting amusingly fanciful animals, they contrast sharply with a Gusakova work at the Sculptors’ Society of B.C.’s 2015 exhibition. That impossibly slender female nude with coif resembling a dandelion seed pod likely echoed Vladivostok-born Gusakova’s career on Moscow’s fashion-show catwalks and in photo studios. Meanwhile, a contemporary piece titled Wings of Inspiration won her a commission for the Canadian College of Performing Arts’ inaugural Legend Award. The college presented it to Victoria-raised David Foster June 30 to recognize his musical accomplishments and his support and fostering of young Canadian artists.
THE BLOOM ROOM: Instructional sessions at Niels and Nancy Bendtsen’s Inform Interiors store can involve architects and other grand-design specialists. But when Stephen Kuo presented recently, the design components he brought from West Broadway’s Interior Flori store were far more ephemeral than steel, concrete, wood and suchlike. They were sprays of aspidistra, eryngium, lisianthus and alchemilla with which Kuo introduced attendees to Ikebana flower arranging. He’s a whiz, too, and holds the highest Riji level of Sogetsu Ikebana certification. Having artistically filled their vases, sunny-afternoon students had the option of bartenders doing much the same for them at the steps-away Lamplighter pub.
GONE TOO SOON: Tom Rowe’s recent death meant the film-and-television industry lost a topdrawer producer and broadcaster Vicki Gabereau lost a devoted husband. A quick-witted and gently self-deprecating one, too. When Vancouver Mycological Society member Rowe was asked if his interest in mushrooms included farmed as well as wild ones, he smilingly replied: “I have nothing to do with culture. I’m in the movie business.”
DOWN PARRYSCOPE: B.C. Culture Days will launch at Whistler’s Audain Art Museum Sept. 28.