Ballet B.C. on its toes for another strong season
FEET FORWARD: Ballet dancers need only a split second to turn on a dime. Not so professional dance companies that can land flat on their tutus when funding dries up. That happened to then23-year-old Ballet B.C. in 2009, when everyone was laid off. Former Ballet B.C., National Ballet of Canada and Frankfurt Ballet dancer Emily Molnar stepped in as artistic director to pick up the pieces. Fast forwarding, 2017-18 has been “a transformative year,” board chair Kevin Leslie said during a penthouse-patio reception at the Scotiabank Dance Centre. Breaking sales records, a May staging of Romeo and Juliet had to run an extra night. A threeweek European tour got standing applauses from sold-out audiences at Sadler’s Wells Theatre in London. And executive director John Clark reported record fundraising: $840,000. Dancers are rehearsing for November’s Canadian premiere of William Forsythe’s Enemy In The Figure followed by December and January tours to Spain, Luxembourg, Germany and Israel. Not quite on a dime, then, but a turnaround nonetheless.
FUN ON TOP: Sunshine flooded Joe Fortes restaurant’s rooftop patio when general manager Chris Meyer and executive chef Wayne Sych opened it for summer. There would be more al fresco space atop the Thurlow-off-Robson joint had city hall accepted founder Bud Kanke’s bids to seat customers there. Sych served opening-night guests the lobster-oyster-clam-mussel-scallop-tuna-prawn Seafood Tower that normally goes for $77.95 a tier. Singer-guitarist Dani le Rose accompanied it with The Tide which she’ll release at month’s end. Equally fitting, her I’ve Told Lies song echoed earlier Joe Fortes clients’ words to fellow bar patrons they planned to awaken with the following morning.
AIDING BABIES: “For 100 euros ($154), you can save a baby,” Baba Sylla claims. At a Vancouver Club reception staged by impresario Vernard Goud, Senegal-born Amsterdam resident Sylla recalled 1999. That’s when he and two others founded Orange Babies South Africa to combat natal HIV transmission in that country, Namibia and Zambia. “The biggest problem is that people are HIV positive, but they don’t know it,” Sylla said. When identified in hard-to-reach remote villages, “We give them medication, and in eight weeks, they can’t infect anyone else.” Increasing Orange Babies’ pair of three-staff mobile units to 10 would be a boon. But they cost 100,000 euros ($154,000) each and a further 30,000 euros ($46,000) annually. “It is very possible to end HIV, but it needs a strong will,” said Sylla, who doubtless hopes for that from the 22nd annual International AIDS Conference in Amsterdam July 23-27.
MUCH ADO: Executive director Claire Sakaki welcomed many Vancouver stage actors to Bard on The Beach’s tent this week. Not to perform, but to applaud colleagues and companies accepting Jessie Richardson Theatre Awards. The Arts Club Theatre Company scored seven, including large-theatre male and female winners, Andrew McNee and Lucia Frangione, for the same show, Misery. Ingenue actor Tai Amy Grauman and director Genevieve Fleming received most-promising awards.
BELL KEEPS RINGING: Tracey Bell wrung out a performance at Celebrities nightclub concert recently by impersonating such long-deceased entertainers as Michael Jackson, Janis Joplin and Marilyn Monroe. Her quickchange act also portrayed Lady Gaga, Katy Perry, Dolly Parton and others and, as Bell often does, benefited A Loving Spoonful. She is an honorary director of that HIV/AIDS home-meals agency. In a feat as remarkable as her act, Bell personally looks pretty much as she did while impersonating Tina Turner 22 years ago.
POT LUCKY: Government could spend a fraction of their marijuana windfalls on a Greyhound replacement called Canabus.
FREE ART: The Vancouver International Sculpture Biennale has named Moscow-born Natalia Lebedinskaia its director of public projects and programs. Founded and headed by Barrie Mowatt without taxpayer funding, the Biennale installs spectacular pieces of public art. Some that stayed here include Yue Minjun’s A-maze-ing Laughter at English Bay’s Morton Park for which Chip and Shannon Wilson donated $1.5 million. On her first working day, Lebedinskaia opened Chilean Alfredo Jaar’s 1987 electronic billboard This Is Not America as part of the 20182020 Biennale’s reIMAGE-n program. Due soon are works by Yoko Ono, who will also be cited as an artist of distinction.
TWENTY YEARS AGO: 500 guests witnessed Hindu Robin Dhir and Sikh Rena Chatha’s July 25, 1998 wedding at North Burnaby’s Vishva Hindu Parishad Temple. Traditional trappings included the bride’s gold-embroidered silk lehenga (gown) and gifted currency bills pinned to the groom’s achkan jacket. Reflecting the construction-and-development Dhir family’s political affiliations, the ten-spots featured founding Tory prime minister Sir John A. Macdonald. That wedding-day wad was peanuts beside the charitable sums the subsequent parents-ofthree helped realize later. They included $4.7 million that the South Asian community’s Night of Miracles gala raised for B.C. Children’s Hospital Foundation during founding chair Robin’s eight-year incumbency.
DOWN PARRYSCOPE: Maybe Tweeter The Great “misspoke” his marriage vows, too.