Browsing “Dance”

IT’S FITNESS FRIDAY MONDAY! For the next 3 months I’m blogging about my adventure to complete the 36 classes in 90 challenge put on by and in partnership with Barre Fitness! Hopefully you’ll join me and be motivated to get fit! I’ll be sharing recipes, exercises, class and workshop ideas, and more.And *BONUS* if when I complete the challenge and go to 36 classes, I get to give away TWO 2-Week Trial passes to Barre Fitness to some lucky VIA readers! So encourage me on twitter follow the challenge hashtag: #BBFC and I’ll see you at the Barre!

So here it is…Day One.

The 90-Day Challenge at Barre Fitness runs from March 11th – June 2, 2013 and I’m taking it on!
The goal is to go to 36 classes in 90 days and get fit! Which, I’m here to tell you, I am not. So hopefully these classes will whip me into shape and have me eating better.

Every Friday I’m going to give you a new post on my progress, but more importantly fitness tips, recipes and more from the wonderful ladies of Barre Fitness.

If you want to take this on with me, the 3-month class package is on sale until today online, and you can sign up for the challenge in-studio and have your measurements taken.
I’m excited to be able to give away two 2-week passes to Barre Fitness if I complete the challenge, so if I’m doing well, it could mean free stuff for you!!!

So, my first question for you, dear readers, what’s your favourite healthy breakfast recipe?! Tweet me it!

I’m completely ignorant to the world of dance crews but I received a release today announcing that Vancouver-based boy’s dance crew, FRESHH, recently placed top 3 on the TV show Canada’s Got Talent. These guys also performed at the Closing Ceremonies for the 2010 Winter Olympics as well as Rogers Arena “We Day” with Shaquille O’Neal and Shawn Desman a couple years back. That is awesome.

Learn more about the crew HERE.

When you see CiTR getting on the bus, you get up. You get up and offer her your seat with courtesy and respect because she’s 75 years old this year! Not that she needs to sit down – not by a long shot. She’d probably start a dance battle with you instead, and the whole bus would turn into one bad-ass dance party.

And a BADP (bad-ass dance party) is exactly what you can expect this weekend as our best-loved local student-run radio station celebrates its diamond anniversary. What began in 1937 as the UBC Radio Society, a small club with an hour-long weekly show on CJOR (1926-88), has evolved over the decades bringing us local treasures like Discorder Magazine, SHiNDiG, Nardwuar the Human Serviette, and Mint Records. The station has also been and is very much still an important training ground, embryonic petri dish, and right of passage for Vancouver bands, writers, and radio broadcasters – a creative, musical dojo that’s churned out a massive amount of talent these past 75 years.

CiTR, September 1980 from Scott Beadle’s Myspace Archive (!)

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Here’s the perfect thing for those of you looking to round out your Halloween weekend with a little culture: Cute to Kill III — the third installation of this short film and music performance event is happening this Sunday at VIVO Media Arts.

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39 weeks ago I read a theory that going for 50 coffees with people you’ve never met is the entrepreneur’s equivalent to the theory that doing anything for 10,000 hours will make you an expert on it. While I get the idea, 50 coffees is far easier than practicing something for ten years, and while I’m far from lazy I decided to set out on a fairly simple mission: over 50 weeks I’m inviting 50 interesting Vancouverites, most of whom I have never met before, to go for coffee. I’m using this as an exercise in networking for myself and for V.I.A. while also using it as a platform to introduce you to some people who are doing really cool stuff in the city you live in. COFFEE #39 Name: Mo Dhaliwal Occupation: Client Services Director Beverage: Ginger Ale

Meet Mo Dhaliwal. Co-founder of a digital agency called Skyrocket, Director of the Alliance for Arts and Culture and the founder of the Vancouver International Bhangra Celebration. Mo and I had crossed paths at Creative Mornings a few weeks back at the W2 Cafe and returned there today to chat over ginger ale.

As we got into conversation we shortly discovered that we had both been in the dot com bubble in the early 2000′s and that we had both moved to California around the same time and had come back to Vancouver with a newfound appreciation for it. I had previously invited him to write an “introduction to Bhangra” for V.I.A. readers as he is pretty much the local expert on the subject but instead he wanted to impress on me what it is, so that I can share it with you.

Literally, Bhangra is “a Punjabi-style of dance”. Mo told me that it’s inspired by natural rhythm, that it’s rooted in the idea that whatever our bodies choose to do when we hear music, that is Bhangra, and it made me think back about the first time I saw my son moving to music. Young Arlo had just begun to stand, assisted by holding on to things, and as one of his new toys blasted out a song he had never heard before, he just started to move. It was a moment I will never forget, not only because it was the first time I saw my son dance but it was when I realized that we aren’t taught to do that; dance comes naturally to us. When I told this to Mo he said “That’s exactly it; happy kids understand Bhangra!”, and I understood it a little better.

I still don’t totally get it though. I get the idea of it but it’s going to take me attending one of HSBC’s City of Bhangra‘s events in the next week to really get a grasp on it and an appreciation for it. I encourage you to do the same.

As a side note, the Vancouver International Bhangra Celebration Society (VIBC) is a not-for-profit organization dedicated to elevating and promoting the Indian dance form of Bhangra. Their first mission is to “Show the world the awesomeness of Bhangra”. That is awesome.

If you were to create a Venn diagram where one circle was labeled “cheap” and the other labeled “awesome”, the middle point where they cross over could be labeled “Vancouver on the Cheap”. In other words, this is a weekly series on things to do and places to go in Vancouver that fall into that magical category of being both cheap and awesome. Got a cheap-living tip you’d like to share? Send it in!

This weekend is packed with activities for Mother’s Day (I already mentioned one last week – Global Mother’s Day tomorrow afternoon at Regent College), but it’s also packed with cheap theatre!

Every year The Firehall Arts Centre hosts BC Buds Spring Arts Fair, a fair celebrating new and experimental theatre works. It’s all by donation to get in, so the price tag is whatever you want it to be, and the weekend is full of theatre, dance, film, and music taking in unusual locations around the Firehall – think the courtyard, bar, lobby, stairwell, rehearsal hall, and yes, even the occasional piece set in the actual theatre.

I have a confession about BC Buds: every year I have intended to go check it out, talked about checking it out, and then not actually gone to check it out. This year, however, I am committed to going. Not just because I want to check out some cheap entertainment, but because this festival provides awesome opportunities to emerging artists. It’s not very often these folks get an opportunity to just plain create something and have it presented at a major venue. Exciting!

Stacy Sherlock and Emily Griffiths in At First I Thought it Was…

There are performances happening all weekend, below is the entire lineup, and you can view the schedule with helpful info like performance times here.

If this list is way too daunting for you, I recommend just going by schedule: pick a time you’re free, see what’s starting around then, and show up. It’s by donation, so your risk factor is pretty darn low. In fact, this could be your chance to live your secret dream of experiencing the thrill of Russian Roulette minus any unfortunate death-like side effects.

Michael Unger in The Johnny Tomorrow Chronicles

Let’s Play Make Believe (music/performance)
Brad Muirhead, Carmen Rosen, Soressa Garner, Hugh Fraser & Katie Rice

Beginnings One
Signal to Noise (dance/media)
Craig Alfredson, Kelly McInnis and Arash Khakpour
The Wolf in the Mirror (theatre/dance)
Andrew Barrett (Impulse Theatre)
Caught (dance)
Lara Barclay, Cai Glover & Crystal Wills – Lamondance

Beginnings Two
JSK – a mini musical (musical)
Brad L’Écuyer & Clayton Baraniuk (Gotta Getta Gimmick)
At First I Thought It Was… (theatre)
Stacy Sherlock & Emily Griffiths (New Colour Productions)

The Tim Sars Band featuring Ross Barrett (music)

Unrelated (dance)
Daina Ashbee, Laura Avery, Maxine Chadburn

Cutting Room Dance Floor (dance)
David Yates & Diane Garceau (Night & Day Dance)

throwing coin squeezing soy (dance theatre)
Ziyian Kwan & Anne Cooper

Goodnight Dollface (video installation/dance)
Lina Fitzner & Caroline Liffman (Light Box)

Georges Aperghis’ Recitations (music)
Dorothea Hayley

4 places and a set of circumstances (dance)
Karissa Barry & Alex Tam

Film Screenings
companion (dance film)
Julianne Chapple & Ed Spence
Twixt (dance film)
Anna Kraulis & Majid Bagheri
(Dancers: Philippa Myler & Lindsey Ridgway)
Daniel (dance film)
Brett Owen
4 places and a set of circumstances (dance film)
Karissa Barry & Leon Feizo-Gas

Studio Age of Anxiety (music/sound)
Wendy Atkinson & David Lester

Tee-Pee Theatre (kids/theatre)
Terri-Lyn Storey & Grandview Elementary students

KidStuff
Downtown Animal (theatre)
Tara Travis, Amy Clausen & Joel De Stefano (Sticky Fingers Productions)
The Johnny Tomorrow Chronicles (theatre)
Michael Unger
Rainbow Star (family storytelling)
Tim Sars & Lisa Sars (Dixiestar Storytelling)

The Toilet Paper Caper (theatrical reading)
Michelle Deines, Kathryn Kirkpatrick, Frances Perras, Sebastian Kroon, Alex Willows, Jeff Gladstone (Working Spark Theatre)

Superhero Boy Band: Seads of Change (music/theatre)
Aaron Malkin, Alistair Knowles & Islando Bocock

Kid Gloves (theatrical reading)
Sally Stubbs, Patrick Keating, Colleen Wheeler, James Macdonald, Andrew McNee & Marlene Ginader

Medicine (theatrical reading)
TJ Dawe

Daina Ashbee in Unrelated

For the record, I’m most excited about Beginnings One with its combo of dance and media pieces, Downtown Animal featuring the always hilarious Tara Travis, and Super Hero Boy Band: Seeds of Change because it will either be the funniest, awesomest show of all time or a total flop, and either way, that’s something I want to see.