The Vancouver 2010 Cultural Olympiad:

 Genre-Defying, Cutting Edge and Very West Coast

by Sue Kernaghan

In February and March 2010, Vancouver and Whistler will see some of the most inspired performances in the world – and not just on the slopes and rinks.

Audiences can also expect to be wowed in the theatres and galleries and even on the streets as the Vancouver 2010 Cultural Olympiad shows what it means to make art and culture a pillar of the Vancouver 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games.

Besides being the first Winter Games in history to run a multi-year cultural event, with festivals running since 2008, Vancouver will also host one of the biggest Cultural Olympiads yet, with more than 600 performances and exhibits in every imaginable genre – from dance to digital arts, improv to opera -- at 60 venues in and around Vancouver and Whistler.

It's also affordable: ticket prices for the January 22 to March 21 festival range from $5 to just under $100, and more than a third of the events are free.

Robert Kerr, the Cultural Olympiad's program director, explains that a multi-year festival has helped prepare the region for the big event: "Over three years we were able to build awareness and understanding among audiences, the media and the community that culture really is the second pillar of the Olympic Games. You can't do that overnight. A three-year time frame also gave us an opportunity to build relationships with the arts and cultural community."

And those relationships have been critical. Besides joining forces with festivals that normally take place in winter, including the PuSH International Performing Arts Festival, the Talking Stick Festival, and Granville Island's Winterruption Festival, Kerr estimates his team has worked with more than 150 cultural organizations over the years – reflecting a vast cross-section of BC's arts community.

The result is a Cultural Olympiad that organizers hope will reflect Vancouver's unique cultural vibe. The city, observes Kerr, is young, diverse, and multi-cultural; it's also a crossroads, open to ideas from around the world. Ironically, only a truly international festival could reflect Vancouver's local scene, where Bhangra festivals, blues bands, digital art, and Chinese classical music are all part of the everyday mosaic.

Another very west coast aspect of this Cultural Olympiad is its willingness to experiment. Says Kerr: "The festival has a strong contemporary edge to it; one that ignores boundaries and transgresses genres -- crossing over between art forms and cultural reference points, and bringing together artists and ideas from many different backgrounds. Cultural fusion and pushing the boundaries is part of who we are."

"Of course these are also Canada's Games and representing the country fully has been one of our more exciting challenges," he adds. "We've had great support from all the provinces and territories; Aboriginal participation is also a critical component of the Olympiad." Watch for wide ranging Canadian content which includes Inuit throat singer Tanya Tagaq, Nunavut-based circus troupe Artcirq, Quebec-born chanteuse Florence K, Royal Winnipeg Ballet, pop idol Fiest and much, much, more.

"We didn't have to do it this way," admits Kerr. "We could have pulled in a few blockbusters from out of town, but we didn't feel that would reflect the unique nature of BC's cultural community. We wanted and needed to engage with the community so that what we are presenting is authentic."

There's another challenge: even with most of the region's conventional theatres and galleries pressed into service, finding space for everything has been tricky -- but that's part of the artistry. To stage The Candahar, an interactive play set in a Belfast bar, designers simply built a temporary pub on Granville Island. The play Nix: the Only Animal appears in a theatre of ice and snow on the shore of Whistler's Lost Lake, while a life-sized snow globe is the setting for the multi-media work The Road Forward. And what's a festival without a gig in a cement plant? Ocean Concrete's Granville Island compound is the setting for Quebec artist Gwenaël Bélanger's video-based work, Le Tournis.

Even the exterior walls of the Vancouver Art Gallery will morph into canvases. Michael Lin's A Modest Veil will cover the gallery's Georgia Street exterior wall with a traditional hand-painted Taiwanese mural for the duration of the Games. Meanwhile the gallery's Robson Street side will become a massive screen for CUE: Artists' Videos, with cutting edge work by some of the world's top video artists on display each evening.

And is the sky the limit? Hardly. Each night through most of February, 20 massive searchlights will form constantly changing light patterns over Vancouver's English Bay. Visible from 15 kilometres away, Montreal-based electronic artist Rafael Lozano-Hemmer's Vectorial Elevation will illuminate the night sky with a series of patterns, designed by anyone and everyone who logs onto the project's website.

This kind of interactive work permeates the festival, with new media at the forefront of much the programming. A key element of it all is CODE, the Cultural Olympiad Digital Edition. Through CODE, Canadians from across the country have been involved, since 2009, in a massive collaborative online art project about, among other things, what it means to be Canadian. During the 2010 Cultural Olympiad the Centre for Digital Media in Vancouver will be the setting for CODE Live, a cutting edge digital arts project.

Even the most hardened culture vulture may find a 600-item playbill, representing 200 distinct shows, a tad overwhelming (especially with some sporting events to fit in). Kerr suggests that audiences do a bit of exploring. "The Cultural Olympiad is a great opportunity to see such major companies as the National Ballet of Canada or the Cloud Gate Dance Theatre of Taiwan, but it's also a chance to check out some of the new artists and genres you may not be familiar with."

Kerr's personal picks? "Being a big jazz fan, I'm really excited about Anthony Braxton's Sonic Genome. It's a one of a kind event, with Anthony and his 13 piece ensemble leading about 100 local musicians, including students, in an eight-hour interactive musical feast that will explore all kinds of sonic possibilities in a roving, wide open format that people can engage with. And the Neil Young Project. Neil Young is near and dear to my heart, and I know this tribute will be truly remarkable. Also, plays like Robert Lepage's The Blue Dragon and Laurie Anderson's Delusion represent what we stand for in terms of interdisciplinary, forward thinking, cutting edge works."

His top tip? "Just get out and enjoy it - your Olympic experience is not complete without Cultural Olympiad 2010."

Tickets and information are available now at www.vancouver2010.com/culturalolympiad.

For more information on how to catch the Olympic spirit, or for more on British Columbia's destinations and travel information, call 1-800 HELLO BC® (North America) or visit www.HelloBC.com.