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Contributors
Nathan Atnikov
Wil Knoll
Michelle Wood
Victoria Peterson
Fiona Wren
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January 29th, 2010 by Sophy Kors
I was standing in line for a coffee and heard what is by now a familiar refrain, “Calgary has no culture, no art, nothing to do,” from a guy (a Torontonian as it turns out) talking to a friend in line behind me. As I had just spent the better part of a day reading posts about the High Performance Rodeo I couldn’t help but turn around and say (in a non-creepy way) that he should check out hprodeo.ca, a month-long festival that brings together different arts right here in Calgary. He looked a little surprised by my friendliness (being helpful, not creepy I swear) and then … “Thanks”.
There is culture and art and great things to do in Calgary , but sometimes you have to look for them. My Thursday night proved to me the variety you can find even when you’re not looking, just being open to suggestions. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: Flames, Flames Central, Grand, Haiti, High Performance Rodeo, HPR
Posted in Festivals & Fanfare, Stage & Screen | No Comments »
January 26th, 2010 by Wil Knoll
This review might be late, but so was her original date…
There’s a question sometimes about the value of a review for a show that only runs for a week. If you’re able to get a review up of opening night, sometimes the cast have not been able to settle in. If you get the review up a few days in, there’s little chance that the review would be able to influence people to see the show. But sometimes you just have to review a show so that it’s documented somewhere, as a valued piece of our shared history.
Rebecca Northan’s Blind Date is a gem, worthy of documentation and its place in this Year’s High Performance Rodeo. Rebecca Northan is gorgeous, aggressive, coy, heartfelt and sexy all rolled into one. It is balls to the wall theatre, with Northan throwing herself to the wolves every night for about an hour and a half or longer.
Sometimes though, Northan plays the wolf.
Read the rest of this entry »
 Tags: High Performance Rodeo, HPR, Lunchbox Theatre
Posted in Festivals & Fanfare, Stage & Screen | No Comments »
January 26th, 2010 by Connor Turner
During a month filled with avant-garde theatre and exceptional lectures, a national program called Advertising Week is reaching out to our neck of the woods with a very special event. On Wednesday January 27th, the Calgary rendition of Advertising Week will host a special showing of the highly acclaimed documentary Art & Copy at the Uptown Theatres.
In the same vein as the widely popular Helvetica documentary, Art & Copy is an exceptional look into the world of design and inspiration. Directed by Doug Pray (of HYPE and SCRATCH fame), Art & Copy explores the radical advertising campaigns, such as Just Do It, Got Milk? and many others, which have altered the way we ingest the corporate message. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: Advertising Week, Art & Copy, Uptown Cinema
Posted in Festivals & Fanfare, Stage & Screen | No Comments »
January 22nd, 2010 by Derrick Plotsky
Location-based games are becoming more and more popular as smartphones with GPS get in more and more people’s pockets. Foursquare (written about by Wil Knoll very recently) is one of these location based games. Another is geocaching.
Geocaching started in May of 2000 around the time the locks came off of handheld GPS units and their accuracy became increased. Today the accuracy (and relatively low cost) of a handheld GPS unit makes it so this game can be played by almost anyone. You don’t even need to have a smartphone to play this game, it can be played with any handheld GPS device. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: Calgary, downtown, geocaching, GPS, treasure hunt, walking
Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »
January 21st, 2010 by Wil Knoll
Most ears raised on English are able to pick up the subtlety of tone in linguistics, but the mouth is not trained too well to recreate the tones of foreign language due to a lazy tongue and flat accent. Japanese uses changes in pitch on syllables within words, which contrasts some Chinese languages which assign a tone to an entire word. Ask a westerner if there was a downstep on that second syllable or if the tone was a contour overall…
Kawasaki Exit has a design to it that helps reveal to the viewer nuances of tone in language, movement, and emotion that at first are not always clear. One Yellow Rabbit’s Kawasaki Exit at the High Performance Rodeo has done its homework and comes out feeling authentic and detailed. You have three more nights to see it. I recommend you do so.
Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: High Performance Rodeo, HPR, Kawasaki Exit, One Yellow Rabit
Posted in Festivals & Fanfare, Stage & Screen | No Comments »
January 21st, 2010 by Victoria Peterson
As the world comes to grips with the devastating impact of the earthquake that struck Haiti last week, three Calgary women have banded together to mobilize the city’s social media community, as well as the corporate population, to provide aid to the impoverished country.
On Thursday, Jan. 28, YYC4Haiti will be held at Flames Central (219 – 8th Ave SW) during the Calgary Flames PPV game against the Phoenix Coyotes. The Flames, Calgary Stampeders, Calgary Roughnecks and many other businesses and individuals have generously given donations for a silent auction and door prizes.
All proceeds from YYC4Haiti will be forwarded to the Canadian Red Cross. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: Flames Central, Haiti, Red Cross, Twitter, YYC4Haiti
Posted in Festivals & Fanfare | No Comments »
January 16th, 2010 by Lisa Murphy-Lamb
Considering I enjoy both art and walking, I’m looking forward to the 6th Annual Winter Stroll this Saturday, January 16, 2010. Art Stroll is a series of Satellite Art Presentations in conjunction with the Triangle Gallery’s Exhibition Beyond Printmaking: Images in Objects-Experimental Printmaking in Western Canada. That’s where I began on Friday, to get my feet wet, so to speak.
Eight leading contemporary artists from Alberta and Western Canada are featured in this exhibition and each approaches printmaking in a wholly unique way. After looking at the moving human forms on fields of colour by artist Ewa Tarsia, the violence and insects in the fantastic 3-D ‘wounds’ by Jill Ho-You and the cement blocks by artist Marjan Eggermont, I had to go back to the beginning and buy myself an exhibition guide ($10) so I could understand how these diverse and inriguing installations and images relate to each other as a form of printmaking. I continued both floors of the series, enjoying the remaining five artists, with much more appreciation and understanding. For those who prefer listening to reading, catch the curator Jacek Malec at 1:00pm Saturday, January 16 for a gallery talk and tour.
Malec’s talk is one of many events happening throughout the day at a number of galleries between 10:00am and 6:00pm (although each gallery does vary, so check before you stroll).
Triangle Gallery of Visual Arts
#104 Macleod Trail SE (adjacent to the Muncipal Building)
Admission is free.
Intergraphia: Art Stroll
Tags: Art Stroll, Triangle Gallery
Posted in Art & Galleries | 1 Comment »
January 15th, 2010 by Wil Knoll
I’m unsure how to approach a few of the questions that I want to ask Aviva Zimmerman. They all surround her experience working on theatre with the homeless. But the issues seem to be hidden to me. I’m not sure how to start.
Zimmerman breaks the ice by letting me know I’m not alone in that feeling. She herself was not really exposed to it until moving to Toronto to pursue Acting at Ryerson. “It was very visible. Especially where I lived in the east end. I almost became desensitized to it because there was much so much of it.”
You would be hard pressed to describe her as desensitized now. Zimmerman is one of the Artist Mentors of This is Our City, a 12 month municipally funded outreach putting the tools of the theatre into the hands of our homeless population. The goal is to assist them in expressing identity, and creating discussion and awareness of their situation.
The literature that the project circulates is refreshing in it’s honesty. “This is My City does not pretend to be a solution to the homeless crisis. Rather, the project intends to enable homeless citizens the chance to speak on their own behalf.”
Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: High Performance Rodeo, HPR, This is My City
Posted in Stage & Screen | 1 Comment »
January 11th, 2010 by Derrick Plotsky
This was my first time in the Theatre Junction Grand. The theatre, as well as the upstairs lounge, made enough of an impression on me that I am anticipating any chance I get to go there again. The seats are comfortable, the acoustics are good and it’s not too big and not too small. It’s a great little theatre that’s really easy to get to.
The High Performance Rodeo is now 24 years old. That means it has almost been around as long as I have. This unfortunately was my first year attending. I really wish I had gone other years because it was a great night. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: High Performance Rodeo, HPR, Tubular Bells
Posted in Festivals & Fanfare, Sounds & Vibrations, Stage & Screen | No Comments »
January 7th, 2010 by Wil Knoll
He likes theatre and zombies and stuff
“Once it hits tomorrow it’s go go go, but the lead up is pretty easy.”
Ryan Luhning seems calm compared to most of the recent conversations I’ve had with people about the High Performance Rodeo. As the time drew closer to today, e-mail’s would be replied to later and later. Some responses started showing 2 AM time stamps or worse, and the responses themselves started getting shorter.
But Luhning is willing to give me a bit more. He isn’t producing a show for the High Performance Rodeo per se. He and his team are orchestrating one of the Festivals within the Festival, the 10-Minute Play Festival. Ground Zero Theatre, which he has been the artistic director of since it’s birth 13 years ago, produces the annual challenge that leads to one great big party on Saturday night.
Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: 10 Minute Play Festival, Ground Zero Theatre, High Performance Rodeo, HPR
Posted in Stage & Screen | 1 Comment »
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