PuSh Festival Promises Startling, Original Performances

Among the city’s many arts shindigs, the PuSh Performing Arts Festival dominates each year with lineups that introduce Vancouver to some of the world’s finest companies. Over 20 days this winter, 160 performances are given by artists representing 11 countries. Here, three can’t-miss standouts:

Still Standing You
Every pretence of “performance art” falls away in this rough, highly physical, and bawdily comical work created and performed by a Belgian-Portuguese male duo. Pieter Ampe and Guilherme Garrido test the limits of friendship and masculine rivalry in a montage of wrestling, fighting, gymnastics, and dance. Jan. 29-Feb. 2 (except Jan. 31)

Cédric Andrieux
Choreographer Jérôme Bel is the bad boy of contemporary Paris dance. His Cédric Andrieux, performed by the French dancer for whom it is named, gives Andrieux a voice—he had a hand in creating the piece, bucking trends that make dancers into nothing but puppets for a choreographer’s vision. Jan. 18-20

Ride The Cyclone
Victoria’s upstart theatre company Atomic Vaudeville has in recent years produced some of the region’s sharpest indie work. Its musical Ride the Cyclone, which features the frustrated spirits of a high-school chamber choir that dies in a freak roller-coaster accident, is seriously funny and seriously macabre. Jan. 17-Feb. 16