>>PREVIEW
20TH ANNUAL HIGH PERFORMANCE RODEO
One Yellow Rabbit
Runs January 3 to 29
Epcor Centre and Tower Centre
One Yellow Rabbit’s High Performance Rodeo is celebrating its 20th anniversary in January and, as you’d expect on such a momentous occasion, there’ll be visits by old friends and past faves, music and dancing and parties, and fun for the whole family.
Hold on one gosh-darned minute, you say – fun for the whole family? This is the Rodeo, right? One of Canada’s major experimental performance festivals? Where nudity, obscenity, violence and obscurity aren’t just the norm – they’re practically entrance requirements?
Yeah, but this year the rambunctious Rodeo is pushing another barrier and entering a whole new area it has yet to explore – family entertainment. The programming includes no less than three all-ages shows: Living Memory, a poetic play about the wonders of childhood by Montreal’s Les Deux Mondes; Sun Spirits, a pair of aboriginal tales (one of them by Tomson Highway) from Toronto’s Red Sky; and a performance by the Rheostatics of their children’s album Harmelodia.
Of course, not all of the 24 shows in the four-week Rodeo will be suitable for kids, but curator Michael Green has certainly catered to the music and dance fans in a big way. Expanding on the music-heavy 2005 Rodeo, Green has tabbed the Rheostatics to serve as the festival’s first artists-in-residence, with the grizzled indie-rock band playing five different shows that provide a retrospective of their quarter-century career. As well, American avant-garde darlings Kronos Quartet will be back to marry contemporary string quartet with traditional Inuit throat singing in the première of a new work entitled Nunavut and featuring Canada’s Tanya Tagaq, described by Kronos leader David Harrington as "the Jimi Hendrix of Inuit throat singers."
Other musical acts rocking the Rodeo include Montreal’s Bell Orchestre, recently seen here as the opening act to Arcade Fire and featuring bassist Richard Parry and violinist Sarah Neufeld from the latter band, as well as Vancouver singer-songwriter Carolyn Mark and veteran Calgary punk percussionist Peter Moller. The pair will be backing one another as well as teaming with a high-powered roster of guest artists, including Kris Demeanor, Lester Quitzau and Chantal Vitalis, for a series of shows. And if you’ve never heard electric cello, you’ve got to check out New York-based cellist Rufus Cappadocia’s one-night stand.
The dance bill is topped by celebrated Canadian dance diva Peggy Baker, with a double-bill under the umbrella title of The Heart Moves, and also offers the return of the exciting Montréal Danse troupe, performing Estelle Clareton’s From Julia to Émile, 1949. La Caravan, which, despite its French moniker, hails from Calgary and features Israeli-trained dancer-choreographer Maya Lewandowsky, presents The Corridor. And One Yellow Rabbit’s dance goddess, Denise Clarke, will also be centre stage, collaborating with David Hoffos, a visual artist known for his illusory works, in an experimental fusion of imagery and movement they’re calling the Hoffos/Clarke Conspiracy.
Vancouver dancer-choreographer Joe Laughlin, a.k.a. Joe Ink, also presents a performance hybrid, merging his art form with the computer-controlled visuals of Jamie Griffiths for Grace. And Montreal choreographer Martha Carter seeks inspiration in the dance clubs for marta marta HoP’s iDUB. In one of the many instances of cross-fertilization at this year’s festival, Griffiths is also part of Carter’s show, while Laughlin, Griffiths, Clarke and Hoffos will all be facilitating a pair of experimental organic shows called HydraPonic 1 and 2, which are being created during the Rodeo under the aegis of Calgary’s Springboard Dance.
To mark the 20th anniversary, three artists who performed at the very first Rodeo in 1987 (when it was called the Secret Elevator Experimental Performance Festival) are reuniting. Performance poet Sheri-D Wilson re-teams with actor Laura Parken and visual artist Martin Guderna for Adventures of the Trick Riders: During the Apocalypse While Thinking of Jesus. This time, they’ve also brought musician Russell Broom along for the ride.
Another longtime Rodeo contributor, poet and OYR co-founder Kirk Miles, is also back, with musings on the godfather of poet-songwriters, Dylan, in an evening dubbed me & BOB & BOB & me.
But for a sense of the early Rodeo’s rough magic, audiences will want to check out the Mutton Busting mini-festival, January 3 to 14. Returning after a hiatus, this roundup of visual and performance art, organized by Calgary’s Bubonic Tourist gang, is back with a vengeance, bringing us Cowgirl Opera’s fringe theatre hit The Three Sisters and indie-rock icon Calvin Johnson, among other delights.
The Mutton Busters aren’t the only younglings finding a showcase at this Rodeo. If, like me, you have a soft spot for bad adolescent poetry and the earth-shattering emotions that inspire it, you’ll have to catch Bad Grad: A Teen Angst Poetry Celebration for Adults, led by teen-angst poetry queen (and Calgarian) Sara Bynoe.
The festival’s theatrical offerings lean towards sketch comedy, with the cozy-sounding New Mexico duo Pajama Men heading north to perform their show Stop Not Going and Calgary-Vancouver trio Monster Theatre, known for their skewed views of the past, venturing into the unknown with The History of the Future.
Other components of the 2006 Rodeo include old standbys the 10-Minute Play Festival and the Bravo!FACT Screening; a speakers’ series; pirate radio, freaky film and strange installations in the Epcor Centre’s Centre Court; listening and viewing parties, and just party parties – among them Fast Forward’s own 10th anniversary shindig.
A complete schedule can be found at www.oyr.org or call 264-3224 for more information. |
Copyright ©2005 FFWD. All rights reserved.