The buzz around this year’s Sechelt Arts Festival is ramping up, particularly from dance fans. That’s because, for one night only on Oct. 24, one of Canada’s celebrated dancers, Margie Gillis, will be coming to the Raven’s Cry Theatre in performance with five others including the Coast’s Katherine Denham. The show is called Florilège, a retrospective journey through Gillis’s 40-year career, and she will also give a workshop in the joy of movement for all levels on Oct. 21.
It’s quite a coup for Festival organizers to bring Gillis to the Coast, though it’s certainly not the only highlight of the 10-day event that runs from Oct. 15 to 25 coinciding with the Coast’s Art Crawl Oct. 16 to 18. A unique performance takes place in the shíshálh Nation longhouse on Oct. 16 and 17 called sacRED. Producers and artists Shain Jackson and Mardi Ahmed along with other Coast artists explore a mystical realm of primordial beauty incorporating art, music, dance and story-telling. The theme is cedar, not a stretch for the Sunshine Coast where old growth trees can still be found and the wood has been harvested for centuries to make everything from bark baskets to handcrafted furniture. Xwu’p’a’lich (Barb Higgins) remembers the traditional uses of cedar and she will tell her stories on Oct. 25.
Last year local Aboriginal artists collaborated with their non-Aboriginal counterparts for an exhibition at the Seaside Centre. This collaboration proved to be unique in Canada.
“We needed to find a way to do that this year,” said Festival organizer Diana Robertson (along with producer Nancy Cottingham Powell). They are working with the staff at tems swiya museum that will be open daily from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. to show a heritage exhibit about téxémay or, as it is also called, cedar. Referred to as the tree of life, cedar is used in every facet of Aboriginal life.
“We want to look at this resource that we take for granted,” Robertson said, “and make it sustainable for the future.”
Cedar continues to inspire today: a group of local artists will use all their senses to touch, hear, see, smell and taste cedar – and invoke its spirit – in a 10-day exhibition at the Seaside Centre with Nadina Tandy acting as associate curator.
One of the artists, Gordon Halloran, has been busy on the site of the Old Sechelt Mine fire and has collected burnt wood to create a 25-foot (7.6 metre) outdoor installation in Spirit Square, called Regeneration, in honour of John Phare who died fighting the fire. Giorgio Magnanensi was challenged to produce a sound installation involving cedar. Using a scan taken from record-thin rounds of cedar and some manipulation, he has unleashed the song of the tree itself. The exhibition opens with a public reception on Thursday, Oct. 15 from 7 to 9 p.m.
On Family Day, Sunday Oct. 25 at the Arts Centre, the Green Man (John Conway) and his friend Black Crow (Jean Pierre Makosso) speak the language of trees while kids can make a cedar birdhouse or watch a forest caper puppet show. Also aimed at youth is an Oct. 23 three-part event at the shíshálh Band Hall involving Steve Weave and his Sound Studio young musicians, a Powell River rock band and Anthony Traynor, an electronic music producer and DJ.
Last year some of the finer musical events got lost in the wealth of activity. This year the Arts Centre will ring out on Oct. 24 with a vocal improv workshop from Viviane Houle, followed by the music of wood from Graham Ord and Budge Schachte. Songs of Cedar features Ord and Houle combining sounds and melodies in a performance – all with free admission.
Ticketed events are listed on the website (secheltartsfestival.com) and can be purchased online or at Sechelt Visitor Centre, Peggy Sue’s in Gibsons or Kalijo Pilates in Davis Bay. You can also register on the website for such events as the vocal workshop or building a birdhouse.
