Image from The Wide Open
By Alexis Baran
@lextacular
The 2019 Queer Arts Festival has launched, with a week of activism, advocacy, intersectional experiences, celebration and dialogue, all housed in The Roundhouse Community Centre in Yaletown.
This year’s theme is revolution; they are celebrating 50 years since the decriminalization of non-heterosexual sex in Canada (more on that here, there are nuances ). It’s also the 50th anniversary of Stonewall, which was the site of the first major LGBTQ2+ uprising, giving birth to Pride marches and parades of today.
At the same, Artistic Director SD Holman wants to “caution the overuse of milestones,” and is also looking at the revolution theme as a continuing movement. Holman has brought on guest curator Elwood Jimmy, a Two-Spirit artist of the Thunderchild First Nation. Holman says, “Elwood expanded the theme of revolutions to include relational revolutions. He’s talking about new ways of being in the world, inviting us to recalibrate who we are and how we are, how we love and how we relate to the land.”
Here are just a few of the events to mark on your calendars:
A Night of Storytelling
June 19
Danny Ramadan, author of A Clothesline Swing, and grand marshal of the 2016 Vancouver Pride Parade is a true curator of inspiring minds and a brilliant storyteller. His past events have been part outrage, part uplifting and sometimes quite erotic.
Diaspora
June 25
Artistic Director of the Frank Theatre, Fay Nass has brought together immigrant artists to explore gender, perceptions of LGBTQ2+ identities and what it’s like to leave one’s home to look for community. You can expect to hear from playwrights in the audience and to have the opportunity to participate in a very personal dialogue.
The Queen In Me
June 21 & 22
If you’ve ever been to an opera and felt like the femme characters are often a little… underdeveloped, hear this. Teiya Kasahara is a biracial, masculine non-binary female artist and accomplished opera singer who takes the stage to give Queen of the Night from Mozart’s The Magic Flute her own words as she rebels against the narrative expected of her.
Jesse, an ASL Opera Workshop
June 24
Music is weaved throughout this year’s QAF. “We have been working with the VSO and the Vancouver opera on many collaborations,” says Valerie d. Walker, Pride in Art Society Board President, “and we have many musical board members.” Jesse, an ASL opera workshop, is a way of addressing music in a way many of us don’t think of, and Walker says, “there’s a lot of physicality in Jesse” as one man navigates how language is seen and heard.
Queer Songbook Orchestra
June 28
Continuing with the musical theme, the festival concludes with personal stories centered around songs of the past 50 years. Rachel Kiyo Iwaasa of the Queer Arts Festival says, “we were looking for those things that hold us together as a community and that take us back in history. Few things do that like music does. It connects us in a very visceral way to the parts of our lives.” She continues, “Queer Songbook Orchestra is about songs that connect us as queer people. Music awakens that sense of who we are as ourselves and who we are together.”
And after heartfelt stories connected by song, and on the day of the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall riots, a cathartic dance party will erupt.
“I think art is the key to revolution,” says SD Holman, “art changes people and people change the world.”
Check out the Queer Arts Festival page for more details, and for tickets the many events.
If there’s a cat in sight, Alexis will be sitting on the ground petting (and probably talking to) it. She likes to travel as much as possible, and unintentionally collects books, vintage dresses, dead plants, rocks, dust, and unfinished projects.
