The Vancouver Sun - What`s On

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BREAKING NEWS: VANCOUVERSUN.COM
| THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 4, 2016
THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 4, 2016
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| BREAKING NEWS: VANCOUVERSUN.COM
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WHAT’S ON
SATURDAY
INTERVIEW | CYNTHIA HOPKINS
YAMATO DRUMMERS OF JAPAN: BAKUON
After wowing millions around the world, one of the world’s top taiko
ensembles makes its Vancouver debut. This is drumming as martial art
— seven members, both athletes and musicians, combine sheer physical
stamina and astonishing musical chops. The group preserves taiko’s ancient
foundation — sounds of the drums represent the heartbeat, the energy of
life, from body-vibrating thunder to the most delicate flutter — but it also
revels in contemporary takes on the instrument, showing off balletic grace
and infectious humour.
Feb. 6, 8 p.m. | Queen Elizabeth Theatre
Tickets: From $33 to $115, showoneproductions.ca
SATURDAY
24 HOURS OF WINTER AND
SNOWSHOE GRIND
MOUNTAIN RUN
Show those circadian rhythms who’s boss and rock round-the-clock outdoor
adventure. Skiing as the sun rises has to be the highlight, but other starlit activities abound, including tube-sliding, zip-line treks, sleigh rides, snowshoe tours and
a dance skate party (with a live DJ). (Grounded? Look up the mountain at 10 p.m.,
when a glowing torchlight procession descends the main run.) As all-nighters head
home, scores of fitness enthusiasts arrive for the annual Snowshoe Grind race, an
intense Grouse Grind-like workout up hilly trails atop the mountain with prizes for
the fastest grinder in various age categories.
Feb. 6 and 7 | Grouse Mountain
Info: grousemountain.com
FRIDAY
SATURDAY
The Taboo Naughty
but Nice Sex Show
Snowed In
Comedy Tour
Your sleep, blood pressure and stress
levels can be improved by having sex.
Aiming to assist, upscale exhibitors at
this sex show peddle everything from
lingerie to erotic cruise vacations, to
sex-toy shopping parties. Sideshows
include burlesque and all-male dance
revues, Tantra fitness and bondage
demos. Now in its 15th year, more
than 30,000 people are expected;
people-watching is one of the show’s
best aspects, according to Yelp.
After snowboarding and joking
around all day, four Canadian comedians take the best of the day’s
gags, share them onstage that evening, and do it all again the next
day in another ski hill city: Presto,
the Snowed in Comedy Tour. This
show features Paul Myrehaug, Pete
Zedlacher, Craig Campbell and Dan
Quinn (the Vancouver comedian
who masterminds it all). Now in its
eighth year, the tour has snowballed from nine shows to 41.
Feb. 5 to 7 | Vancouver Convention Centre East
Tickets: $20 (19+ only), tabooshow.com
Feb. 6, 8 p.m. | Vogue Theatre
Tickets: $20 to $35, voguetheatre.com
Cynthia Hopkins performs her one-woman show A Living Documentary on Friday night at the Fox Cabaret.
Comedian throws
caution to the wind
A Living Documentary
Feb. 5 at 8 p.m. | Fox Cabaret
Tickets: $27, at ticketfly.com
SHAWN CONNER
SPECIAL TO THE SUN
TODAY
Logic
The Wet Secrets will play the Cobalt on Saturday night, along with Vancouver’s Sex With Strangers.
Young Maryland rapper Logic has achieved the distinction of being an underground hero and mainstream star at the same time. His latest space adventurethemed album The Incredible True Story hit No. 1 on Billboard’s hip-hop chart,
yet his tunes, evocative and lyrical, receive zero radio play. Last year, promoters
underestimated the word whiz’s huge cult following: His Rio Theatre concert was
moved to the Vogue, which quickly sold out. Rabid fans at that performance witnessed an MC with an affinity for colourful ’90s-style rap tracks, who took great
pleasure engaging his audience. “This is our show, not my show,” he declared to
raucous applause. Now Logic launches his world tour, back at the Vogue.
5 REASONS TO SEE | THE WET SECRETS
Edmonton band pops
into The Cobalt
The Wet Secrets
Feb 6, 8 p.m. | The Cobalt
Tickets: $10 at the door
SHAWN CONNER
SPECIAL TO THE SUN
Hold onto your hats! Edmonton’s Wet Secrets are in town,
and we’ve got five reasons to
check them out:
Furry hats! The Edmonton
1
six-piece has been known to
wear marching band uniforms.
Whether the outfits make it past
Fernie on this tour remains to
be seen.
2
Pop music with dance genes.
The Wet Secrets’ songs are
heavy on vocal harmonies, bass
and horns. Their most recent
release is an EP, I Can Live Forever, which includes the supercatchy song I Can Swing a Hammer. A new full-length album,
the band’s fourth, is expected in
the spring.
3
Werner Herzog is a fan.
Well, maybe not of The Wet
Secrets as such, but of the band’s
drummer Trevor Anderson.
Anderson is an award-winning
filmmaker whose shorts have
been screened at Sundance and
other film festivals. According to Anderson’s dirtcityfilms.
com website, German director
Herzog once said Anderson’s
film The High Level Bridge
was a demonstration of “very
Feb. 4 and 5, 9 p.m. | Vogue Theatre
Tickets: Both shows sold out
accomplished filmmaking.”
Count Floyd! For their short
4
film music video for Nightlife, the band was able to cajole
TODAY
Closer Than Ever
SCTV alumnus Joe Flaherty into
reprising one of his most famous
roles.
Sex With Strangers. No,
5
this isn’t one of the fringe
benefits of attending this show
(or of simply stepping through
the doors of the Cobalt, once an
exotic dance bar and still missing doors to its bathrooms).
However, you can expect to go
home humming a tune from Sex
With Strangers, a Vancouver
post-punk band also appearing
that packs a propensity for dystopian lyrics, sugary hooks and a
hot and sweaty live show.
TODAY
L’IMMEDIAT
Cirque performance usually requires a wide, empty stage. Not this one. A muchtoured favourite on the European circuit, L’Immediat tosses seven acrobats in a
dense, tool-shed pile of junk and bric-a-brac. Their movement between elements that continuously fall and break is a madcap homage to destruction. The
Chaplin-esque work is by Association Immediat, whose founder Camille Boitel
won France’s highest circus award in 2002.
Feb. 4 to 6, 8 p.m. | Vancouver Playhouse
Tickets: $31 to $45, pushfestival.ca
There is no plot, and every word is sung,
yet the unfiltered, Woody Allen-like sentiments and rants in David Shire and Richard Maltby’s musical made it a hit when it
premiered in 1989. Four singers cut loose
on topics we don’t often want to talk
about: one-way love, sex, parenthood, aging, regret. Gateway Theatre’s cast includes
Ma-Anne Dionisio (Miss Saigon, original
Toronto production) and Danny Balkwill
(Mamma Mia!, North American premiere
cast), and Vancouver powerhouses Chris D.
King and Caitriona Murphy.
Feb. 4-20 | Gateway Theatre
Tickets: $20 to $45, gatewaytheatre.com
If you’ve ever wondered how,
and if, theatre performers can
afford to eat, Cynthia Hopkins’ A
Living Documentary is for you.
The one-woman show, which
comes to Vancouver as part of
this year’s PuSh Festival, combines musical comedy, autobiography and fiction. Hopkins, who
wrote the piece, is a New Yorkbased performance artist who
also plays A Living Documentary’s multiple eclectic semi-fictional characters.
We talked to her about her
work, and her worst-ever money
gig.
you been to VancouQ Have
ver before?
The only thing I know
A
about Vancouver is that it’s
the home of one of my favourite
comedy podcasts, Stop Podcasting Yourself. I love those guys.
Their podcast is featured on the
Maximum Fun website, and I’d
been to a Maximum Fun conference, and I saw them do it live.
long have you been at
Q How
the performing arts game?
I started performing when
A
I was 12, so 30 years, 31
years. I’ve been making my own
work for about 20. As long as
I’ve been here, right out of college, I started making work.
How do you see your work
Q
evolving over the years?
Has it become more political,
more personal?
Hmmm. Probably there
A
have been increasing layers
of truth. Or maybe it’s just gotten more extreme in both directions, truth and fiction. Like in
A Living Documentary, there’s
quite a bit of extreme truth in
my struggle to earn a living in
performing arts. There’s also a
couple of wildly fictional characters — although even those are
more like clown versions of parts
of myself, I’d say.
Do you see A Living DocuQ
mentary as being part of
the spectrum of your work or
a bit more self-conscious compared to other pieces?
It’s a big departure. What
A
the show is about is getting
burnt out on producing large-
scale works. One of my missions
with was not to spend any money on it and free myself from
the role of producer, essentially.
What that meant, stylistically, in
terms of design, it’s extremely
pared-down. I came to a turning point in my life where I
wanted to do a show that wasn’t
a sacrifice for me, financially or
otherwise.
Also, there had always been an
element of comedy in my work
leading up to this one. There’s
some dark comedy to this piece
that is more extreme. It’s more
funny than the previous pieces
because it’s throwing caution to
the wind. The previous shows
were trying to integrate a lot of
different elements, like other
people. In a way it’s an abandoning of self-consciousness, where
I feel like the previous work
was extremely careful, almost
too careful to be truly comedic.
There’s kind of a wild abandon
with this one, I feel.
You’re on the East Coast, in
Q
New York, where it seems
there is at least a built-in audi-
ence for the performing arts.
What do you hear from other
performing artists in other parts
of the country?
When I first started perA
forming it outside of New
York, I was concerned about that
issue because it felt to me like
there might have been a danger
in it being too particular to New
York. In fact, and I find this over
and over again with what I make
because everything I make has
been semi-autobiographical, the
more personal and kind of truthful in detail I get in the stories
I’m telling, the more people are
able to relate to it.
the worst moneyQ What’s
gig you’ve ever taken on?
Catering was pretty bad.
A
I was a cater-waiter. I
worked in a role-play sex shop
in New York actually for a day.
It was so depressing. I didn’t go
back after the first day.
sounds like it could have
Q Itprovided
a lot of material.
That’s the advantage of
A
being a creative artist. No
matter how bad things get, you
can use it for material.