Siminovitch and Stravinsky

In the Globe and Mail yesterday an announcement of the three directors nominated for the latest installment of the Siminovitch Prize in Canadian Theatre. The prize, the most lucrative of its kind in the country, and which uniquely requires the winner to bestow a quarter of the $100,000 award upon a protégé of his or her choice, had been doling out the kudos to playwrights, directors, and designers on a rotating basis since 2001. However, after last year's award it was announced the prize would be suspended due to a lack of sufficient funds in its endowment. Fortunately, over the summer the University of Toronto and the Royal Bank of Canada Foundation stepped in to shore up the finances, and the award is back on track.

Among this year's nominees, I know Chris Abraham's work best. The Artistic Director of Crows Theatre in Toronto, he directed the original Toronto production of Eternal Hydra, which Touchstone staged in Vancouver last fall. And he also refereed the James Long and Marcus Youssef's Winners and Losers, which played the PuSh Festival this past January and arrives at Canadian Stage in Toronto this November following an acclaimed international tour. Ironically (or not), Abraham was the first Siminovitch protégé back in 2001, chosen by winner Daniel Brooks.

Also yesterday I got to my second--and likely last--VIFF film. Autumn's Spring, directed by Denis Sneguriev and Philippe Chevalier, is a moving documentary about choreographer Thierry Thieû Niang's seven-year collaboration with a group of elderly men and women from Marseilles, most of whom had never danced before, and several of whom had severe mobility issues. However, under Niang's tutelage, they produced a version of Stravinsky's Rite of Spring that ended up playing to acclaim at the Avignon Festival and, eventually, at the hallowed Théâtre de Châtelet in Paris.

Every year there are usually one or two dance documentaries at VIFF--this year, for instance, there is also Toa Fraser's film capturing the New Zealand Royal Ballet's version of Giselle. Two years ago the stand-out was Bess Kargman's First Position, about six young dancers preparing for the Youth American Grand Prix competition in New York. That film, which I briefly blogged about here, was as much about the personal sacrifices as the professional talent of its young, classically trained, subjects. Autumn's Spring, in forcing us to question, among other things, what counts as dance and who counts as a dancer, shows us the joy that movement brings regardless of age--and ability.

P.

More Arts Deaths (and some ideas for rebirth)

I was distressed to read in today's Globe and Mail that the annual Siminovitch Prize in theatre, awarded on a rotating basis to the best playwrights, directors, and designers in this country, and at $100,000 won of the richest arts awards in this country, is coming to an end after this year's competition.

This comes on the heels of Marsha Lederman's article in yesterday's Globe about the increasingly bleak cultural landscape here in Vancouver, what with the Playhouse's recent demise being followed by news of the imminent shuttering of the historic Ridge Cinema, an exodus of talent from the region in the performing arts generally, and, just today, the announcement that Book Warehouse, one of the last independent chains in the city, and a strong supporter of the arts, would be closing operations after 32 years in business.

And it's not like we can look to the provincial government for support, with Minister for Community, Sport, and Cultural Development Ida Chong's recent remarks on the Playhouse's demise indicative of the art-as-afterthought, sink-or-swim mentality of the BC Liberals to culture generally. And is an appeal to the robocalling Tories in Ottawa is even an option?

That leaves the city. And while it may be, as Heather Deal notes in the same Georgia Straight item above where Chong is quoted, that there can be no more bailout money for the Playhouse, if Gregor Robertson's Vision council is serious about making Vancouver the most sustainable city in the world, then part of their plan has to include a comprehensive cultural strategy for the city.

As part of that plan, they should look at the precinct around the civic theatres on Hamilton Street, especially if the Vancouver Art Gallery does indeed move to Lardwell Park. Presently the Queen E and Playhouse are just containers for the art presented on their respective stages, and the area adjacent them is a dead zone (except for the masses of people crossing the viaduct to get to Rogers Arena for the Canucks games). This needn't be the case, even when the theatres themselves are dark. The plaza outside the Queen E is a wonderful space that is woefully underused. Why isn't the restaurant that used to be there operating, preferably with a star chef at the helm? With the Library Plaza and CBC studios nearby, Gastown and SFU Woodward's mere blocks away, and a resited VAG potentially in the offing, the whole area could become a cultural hub of the sort that works so well in Melbourne, with its performing arts precinct in Southbank (taking a page from that other Southbank, in London) and galleries and civic plazas in nearby Federation Square.

Melbourne is often cited alongside Vancouver as one of the most livable cities in the world. In addition to tackling the affordability and housing issues that will surely threaten to displace us from that list in the very near future, folks at city hall would do well to look at the cultural planning and infrastructure that has gone into making Melbourne a hotbed of artistic production and export. And I'm not just saying this because I'm a huge fan of Chunky Move.

Recommended reading on this front for Mayor Robertson and Councillor Deal is Jon Hawkes' book The Fourth Pillar of Sustainability: Culture's Essential Role in Public Planning (2001). Needless to say, Hawkes is from Melbourne.

P.