One of the many exciting events to cap this year’s Sechelt Arts Festival (SAF) was the performance from iconic Canadian dancer Margie Gillis who put on a show of innovation and beauty at the Raven’s Cry Theatre on Oct. 24. Local dancer Katherine Denham shone at the forefront of a Gillis choreographed piece, Loon. Gillis’s own performance was creative on a spoken word/dance piece titled Bloom excerpted from the James Joyce novel Ulysses. Throughout the show, the movement of the dance costumes added another visual layer to the overall effect, particularly in Holly Bright’s signature piece, At the Hem of My Northern Coastal Clouds, choreographed by Gillis.
After the show Gillis spoke with the audience in a friendly and unpretentious way to say that dancing comes from a person’s soul. She has clearly been inspirational to the six dancers who shared the stage with her.
This special night wasn’t the only highlight of the 10-day festival that wrapped up on Oct. 25. SAF co-producer Diana Robertson said that they easily surpassed attendance from last year.
“We hosted seven school groups from Gibsons and Sechelt schools,” she said, “and upwards of 300-plus children through the Heritage Exhibit and the Art Exhibition.”
The Sechelt Arts Festival and the Sunshine Coast Art Crawl have joined forces for the past few years and the Crawl kicked off on the Oct. 16 to 18 weekend. A Crawl wrap-up report shows that 125 venues on the Coast represented 350 artists with more group shows than before.
Coast Cultural Alliance organizer Linda Williams was happy to see many Vancouver visitors showing their international guests this part of the province.
“We had people from Saskatchewan come specifically for the Crawl when they found it online,” she said. “The duo from Islamabad, Pakistan, seemed to show up all three days. The Australian couple arranged their cross-Canada trip to end up on the Sunshine Coast for the Art Crawl ... all pretty cool.”
Over the three days 28,000 venue visits were recorded, up from 21,000 in 2014. The visits generated $218,000 in sales, up from $162,000 last year. The Crawl also offered possibilities to artists for future commissions or participants for future workshops. Visitors came from all over – local and out of province, the U.S., Japan, U.K. and Mexico.
