Things to Do in Vancouver This Weekend: November 9, 2017

This weekend in Vancouver, an exhibit of Salish weaving has opened up, Fuse is conjuring magic at the Art Gallery, interesting Vancouverites will be sharing their stories, the holiday season’s first major craft market is on, and there will be abundant cosplay going on at the Convention Centre.

Friday | Saturday | Sunday | Ongoing

Friday November 10

The Fabric of Our Land: Salish Weaving
Where: UBC Museum of Anthropology
What: For generations Salish peoples have been harvesting the resources of their territories, transforming them into robes of rare beauty and power. Symbols of identity, they acted as legal documents and were visible signifiers of the presence of knowledge holders and respected people. Now mostly stored away in museums these masterworks are rarely seen. They have much knowledge to share and many stories to tell. Musqueam asked the Museum to bring these weavings to inspire weavers and share part of this rich legacy with all of us.
Runs until: April 15, 2018

Fan Expo Vancouver
Where: Vancouver Convention Centre
What: Everyone is a fan of something, and this is a place to celebrate all things pop culture. Get an autograph or a photo with your favourite guest and get the inside scoop on movies & TV shows at celebrity panels. Watch professional comic artists battle it out in Sketch Duels, learn from workshops, and take photos with costumed characters. It’s also a great place to buy a unique gift (or treat yourself) with over 100,000 square feet of shopping madness.
Runs until: Saturday November 12, 2017

FUSE
Where: Vancouver Art Gallery
What: An artful evening of magic, spell and ritual. Become part of the coven at FUSE: A Conjuring, a night of unexpected happenings and surprise encounters—from artist bars to live performances, music and dance.

Interesting Vancouver
Where: SFU Woodwards
What: Interesting Vancouver is an annual community gathering showcasing the region’s most fascinating people and the way they express their creativity through their hobbies, passions, and obsessions. From their offices, farms, studios, schools, workshops or wherever else they squirrel away, we find fascinating people and ask them to speak about something they passionately care about.

Artists for Conservation Festival
Where: VanDusen Botanical Gardens
What: Featuring a world-class art exhibit, live music, films, guest lectures, live birds of prey, workshops, live painting demos, music and cultural performances.
Runs until: Monday November 13, 2017

Circle Craft Christmas Market
Where: Vancouver Convention Centre West
What: Formed in 1972, Circle Craft is a BC-run artist cooperative dedicated to providing opportunities for craftspeople to connect with the community. Members of Circle Craft exhibit at the Market; they also play host to makers of fine crafts from across Canada. Over 300 artisans will take part: clothing designers, potters, wood and metal workers, glass blowers, jewellers, toy makers, candle and soap makers, and more.
Runs until: Sunday November 12, 2017

Public Artwork by New Delhi-Based Artist Asim Waqif
Where: Vancouver Art Gallery
What: Inspired by environmental concerns and the pace of human consumption, Waqif will construct an immersive architectural experience from materials collected at re-purpose stores, transfer stations and landfills in the metro Vancouver area. Waqif’s architectural structure will also incorporate an interactive acoustic system using microphones, effects pedals and speakers. Visitors are encouraged to move through the installation maze allowing them to actively experience the architecture instead of passively observing it.
Runs until: April 15, 2017

Dead Kennedys
Where: The Rickshaw
What: Dead Kennedys were one of the most popular and important American hardcore punk bands of the late 70s/early 80s. Formed in San Francisco in 1978, they were among the first American hardcore bands to make a significant impact in the UK.

Daniel Johnston & Friends
Where: Venue
What: Daniel Johnston has spent the last 20 or so years exposing his heartrending tales of unrequited love, cosmic mishaps, and existential torment to an ever-growing international cult audience.

Headstones (show 1 of 2)
Where: The Commodore Ballroom
What: A Canadian punk-rock band Headstones, formed in Kingston, Ontario in 1987.

Walker Lukens
Where: The Biltmore
What: Walker Lukens has been called ‘one of the best songwriters in Texas’ (Free Press Houston.) The Austinbased, Houston-bred singer, multi-instrumentalist has been called ‘wonderfully inventive’ (NPR World Cafe,) a ‘non-sexually intimidating version of Prince’ (Austin Chronicle,) [editor’s note: HAHA!] and a ‘veteran balladeer with sudden indie rock ambitions’ (Indy Week.)

Cornucopia
Where: Whistler, BC
What: The festival will offer food and drink tastings, intimate wine dinners, educational and entertaining luncheons, craft beer celebrations, spirited parties and over 35 seminars.
Runs until: Sunday November 19, 2017

Eat! Vancouver
Where: Various Locations
What: The 15th annual EAT! Vancouver Food + Cooking Festival attracts attendees throughout North America and features culinary collaboration from award-winning chefs across Canada with local thought-leading chefs.
Runs until: Saturday November 11, 2017

Wives and Daughters
Where: UBC Frederic Wood Theatre
What: Based on Elizabeth Gaskell’s 1860’s serial novel and adapted by UBC Theatre and Film Professor Jacqueline Firkins, Wives and Daughters tells the story of seventeen year old Molly, the daughter of a country doctor, whose life gets turned upside down when an overbearing stepmother and an impetuous stepsister move in, bringing with them a unique talent for improving people and a wealth of secrets. A feminist ahead of her time, Gaskell tackles the meaning of love in all its forms.
Runs until: Saturday November 25, 2017

Saturday November 11

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Jane
Where: VanCity Theatre
What: In the 1960s, National Geographic sent a cameraman to film Jane Goodall’s pioneering work with chimpanzees in Tanzania’s Gombe Stream National Park. Goodall was a striking figure, hand-picked in her twenties by groundbreaking paleontologist Louis Leakey for her love of animals, her appetite for adventure, and her patience. Photographer and filmmaker Hugo van Lawick trained his camera on her as much as on the chimpanzees. He shot over 140 hours of 16mm footage that was stored in an archive for decades — until now.
Runs until:Saturday December 2, 2017

DanceSport BC Snowball Classic
Where: Sheraton Vancouver Airport Hotel
What: Dancers from around the world compete in multiple categories.
Runs until: Sunday November 12, 2017

Vancouver Train Expo
Where: PNE Forum
What: The show celebrates its 34th year, serving as an exhibition of the great hobby of model railroading. All are welcome, whether you have a model railroad empire of your own, a train set or are just hoping to see some cool models.
Runs until: Sunday November 12, 2017

Tinder Tales All-Stars
Where: The Fox Cabaret
What: Tinder Tales is a platform for comedians and everyday people to confess their hilarious, unique, outrageous and just plain weird Tinder Tales and other dating disaster stories live on stage.

Halsey
Where: Rogers Arena
What: A pop singer-songwriter from New Jersey.

Son Little
Where: The Biltmore
What: His songs are deconstructions of the diaspora of American R & B, weaving different eras of the sound — blues, soul, gospel, rock and roll — through his own unique vision.

One Last Song: Chor Leoni’s 25th Annual Remembrance Day Concert
Where: St. Andrews-Wesley United Church
What:Chor Leoni’s Artistic Director, Erick Lichte, has drawn together classical works, folk songs, and selected readings for a program that invites the audience to journey through the pain of war to the cathartic joy of Armistice Day.

Beethoven’s 5th
Where: The Orpheum
What: Canadian violinist Blake Pouliot is the 2016 winner of the prestigious Orchestre symphonique de Montréal Competition, and he performs Bruch’s Scottish Fantasy, an evocative work based on Scottish folk melodies. This concert also features maybe the most famous symphony of all, Beethoven’s exceptional ode to fate, Symphony No. 5.

Dance with the Dead
Where: Venue
What: An Orange County duo playing dark synthwave.

Only Drunks and Children Tell the Truth
Where: Firehall Arts Centre
What: The gripping account of the “Sixties Scoop” – a painful chapter in Canadian history in which Indigenous children were taken from their homes, their communities and their culture, and placed with non-Indigenous families, without the consent of their parents.
Runs until: Saturday December 2, 2017

Headstones (show 2 of 2)
Where: The Commodore Ballroom
What: A Canadian punk-rock band Headstones, formed in Kingston, Ontario in 1987.

The Ridiculous Darkness
Where: The Annex Theatre
What: A boldly satirical, modern mash-up of the classic novel Heart of Darkness and the Oscar-winning film Apocalypse Now, and Alley Theatre’s adaptation of it is a humble, hilarious love-hate letter to Vancouver. It’s about making fun of our relationship to difference in this culturally rich, yet socially awkward and unceded place in which we all coexist.
Runs until: Sunday November 19, 2017

Trevor Hall
Where: The Imperial
What: An American musician playing a mix of roots, folk and reggae.

Sunday November 12

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Vintage Trouble
Where: The Rickshaw
What: A soulful four-man band whose very essence screams out loud of the late 1950s to 1960s. They are tuned into the evolutionary period in music and life when there was a razor thin line between rhythm & blues and rock & roll.

The Moscow Ballet’s Russian Nutcracker
Where: Queen Elizabeth Theatre
What: Experience the exceptional dancing of award-winning principal artists and a company of nearly 40 classically trained dancers. With a 60-foot growing Christmas tree; hand-made costumes by Resident Designer Arthur Oliver; stunning, hand-painted sets designed by Academy Award nominee Carl Sprague, Detroit audiences are sure to be delighted.

Artist Talk: Kelli Clifton
Where: Bill Reid Gallery
What: Kelli Clifton is the artist behind the moving design for City Opera Vancouver’s production of Missing. She will be speaking at the Gallery about her experience as a female First Nations artist and how life in the north has influenced her work.

The Devil Makes Three
Where: The Commodore Ballroom
What: An Americana band from Santa Cruz, California that blends bluegrass, old time, country, folk, blues, jazz, and ragtime music.

Noah Gunderson
Where: The Imperial
What: An American indie folk singer-songwriter from Seattle.

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Missing
Where: The York Theatre
What: With libretto by distinguished First Nations playwright Marie Clements, Missing addresses the national crisis and devastation of Canada’s missing and murdered aboriginal women and girls. Set between Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside and BC’s notorious Highway of Tears, this deeply-moving drama follows the fate of two young women, one Indigenous and one not, whose lives become tragically intertwined.
Runs until: Saturday November 11, 2017

The Lonesome West
Where: Pacific Theatre
What: Brothers Coleman and Valene can’t seem to co-exist without sudden outbreaks of violence over the pettiest concerns. When their doubt-ridden parish priest attempts to bring reconciliation, their confessions quickly turn from earnest offerings into weapons in a hilarious and dark race to the bottom.
Runs until: Saturday November 11, 2017

Eat! Vancouver
Where: Various Locations
What: The 15th annual EAT! Vancouver Food + Cooking Festival attracts attendees throughout North America and features culinary collaboration from award-winning chefs across Canada with local thought-leading chefs.
Runs until: Saturday November 11, 2017

Circle Craft Christmas Market
Where: Vancouver Convention Centre West
What: Formed in 1972, Circle Craft is a BC-run artist cooperative dedicated to providing opportunities for craftspeople to connect with the community. Members of Circle Craft exhibit at the Market; they also play host to makers of fine crafts from across Canada. Over 300 artisans will take part: clothing designers, potters, wood and metal workers, glass blowers, jewellers, toy makers, candle and soap makers, and more.
Runs until: Sunday November 12, 2017

Fan Expo Vancouver
Where: Vancouver Convention Centre
What: Everyone is a fan of something, and this is a place to celebrate all things pop culture. Get an autograph or a photo with your favourite guest and get the inside scoop on movies & TV shows at celebrity panels. Watch professional comic artists battle it out in Sketch Duels, learn from workshops, and take photos with costumed characters. It’s also a great place to buy a unique gift (or treat yourself) with over 100,000 square feet of shopping madness.
Runs until: Saturday November 12, 2017

Artists for Conservation Festival
Where: VanDusen Botanical Gardens
What: Featuring a world-class art exhibit, live music, films, guest lectures, live birds of prey, workshops, live painting demos, music and cultural performances.
Runs until: Monday November 13, 2017

Diwali in BC
Where: Various locations
What: In it’s first year, Diwali in BC will explore the artistic theme of Shakti – feminine power – through theatre, dance, film, and culturally specific workshops. The programming will feature works primarily created by women, including Academy Award-nominated Canadian director Deepa Mehta, Dora Award-winning playwright Pamela Mala Sinha, Dr. Aparna Sindhoor along with her pioneering South Asian Contemporary Dance Theatre company Navarasa Dance Theater, rising South Asian award-winning actress Dipti Mehta, and classical dance theatre artist Arno Kamolika.
Runs until: Thursday November 16, 2017

Smart People
Where: Studio 16
What: On the eve of Barack Obama’s 2008 Presidential Election, four hyper-intelligent Cambridge residents find that, despite their best intentions upon broaching the subject, the topic of race is a treacherous one, full of stumbles and wrong turns.
Runs until: Saturday November 18, 2017

Revolutionary Rising: The Soviet Film Vanguard
Where: The Cinematheque
What: November marks the 100th anniversary of Russia’s October Revolution, an event that revolutionized the world of cinema. This creative explosion was both state sponsored and avant-garde. While it was undeniably intended to extol the virtues of the Revolution and advance the Soviet project, it was also, if not immune from official criticism or censorship, still relatively free of the creative shackles that would hamper (and imperil) artists after the early 1930s, when, under Stalin’s tightening grip, there was stricter enforcement of Socialist Realism, with its disdain for “formalism,” as the approved Soviet aesthetic.
Runs until: Sunday November 19, 2017

King Charles III
Where: Arts Club Theatre
What: His time has finally come. The queen is dead and Charles ascends the throne, at last. But is he ready for the monarchy or anarchy? When a single decision jeopardizes the trust of the prime minister and the people, revolt against the crown isn’t far behind—and Kate and William are always one step away, vying for their shot. This inventive story of a king under pressure is a clever imagining of a future not yet written.
Runs until: Sunday November 19, 2017

The Ridiculous Darkness
Where: The Annex Theatre
What: A boldly satirical, modern mash-up of the classic novel Heart of Darkness and the Oscar-winning film Apocalypse Now, and Alley Theatre’s adaptation of it is a humble, hilarious love-hate letter to Vancouver. It’s about making fun of our relationship to difference in this culturally rich, yet socially awkward and unceded place in which we all coexist.
Runs until: Sunday November 19, 2017

Cornucopia
Where: Whistler, BC
What: The festival will offer food and drink tastings, intimate wine dinners, educational and entertaining luncheons, craft beer celebrations, spirited parties and over 35 seminars.
Runs until: Sunday November 19, 2017

Abstract Design Showcase
Where: Kimoto Gallery
What: This exhibition features eleven of Kimoto Gallery’s most popular abstract artists; Scott Sueme, Christine Breakell-Lee, Sara Genn, Mark Ollinger, Claire Sarfeld, Yorke Graham, Veronica Plewman, Michael Soltis, Kari Kristensen Christian Nicolay and Katsumi Kimoto. Each driven by their own authentic styles and innovative art practices, this curated exhibition showcases artwork that was inspired by modern trends in design and contemporary interiors.
Runs until: Saturday November 25, 2017

Jane
Where: VanCity Theatre
What: In the 1960s, National Geographic sent a cameraman to film Jane Goodall’s pioneering work with chimpanzees in Tanzania’s Gombe Stream National Park. Goodall was a striking figure, hand-picked in her twenties by groundbreaking paleontologist Louis Leakey for her love of animals, her appetite for adventure, and her patience. Photographer and filmmaker Hugo van Lawick trained his camera on her as much as on the chimpanzees. He shot over 140 hours of 16mm footage that was stored in an archive for decades — until now.
Runs until:Saturday December 2, 2017

Only Drunks and Children Tell the Truth
Where: Firehall Arts Centre
What: The gripping account of the “Sixties Scoop” – a painful chapter in Canadian history in which Indigenous children were taken from their homes, their communities and their culture, and placed with non-Indigenous families, without the consent of their parents.
Runs until: Saturday December 2, 2017

Intangible
Where: Bill Reid Gallery
What: Contemporary Coast Salish art is embedded within a traditional cultural framework that includes community, ceremonial life, territory, history and innovation. Six artists challenge our expectations and illustrate Coast Salish art as a thriving art tradition – a dynamic one that demonstrates both continuity with the past and exploration of new ideas and technologies.
Runs until: Sunday December 10, 2017

Bill Reid Creative Journeys
Where: The Bill Reid Gallery
What: Celebrating the many creative journeys of acclaimed master goldsmith and sculptor Bill Reid (1920–1998), this exhibition provides a comprehensive introduction to his life and work.
Runs until: Sunday December 10, 2017

Cirque du Soleil: Kurios
Where: Under the tents, Downtown Vancouver
What: Step into the curio cabinet of an ambitious inventor who defies the laws of time, space and dimension in order to reinvent everything around him. Suddenly, the visible becomes invisible, perspectives are transformed, and the world is literally turned upside down.
Runs until: Sunday December 31, 2017

Site for Still Life
Where: Contemporary Art Gallery
What: Andrew Dadson’s practice engages with the notion of boundaries in relation to space and time, primarily through investigations with materials, process and abstraction. Comprising new, ambitious large-scale paintings, film and installation, this exhibition presents a major statement by this young artist of propositions core to his practice.
Runs until: Sunday December 31, 2017

Entangled: Two Views on Contemporary Canadian Painting
Where: Vancouver Art Gallery
What: An insight into two distinctly different modes of painting that have come to dominate contemporary painting in this country. The origins of both can be effectively traced back to the 1970s, to a moment when the continued existence of painting was hotly debated.
Runs until: January 1, 2018

Math Moves
Where: Science World
What: Visitors will investigate ratios and proportions, using their bodies, gestures, and words to set up, measure, describe and compare ratios and proportions. The exhibition encourages a collaborative approach to problem-solving, with open-ended activities that provide opportunities for visitors to talk about solutions to the challenges presented in the exhibition.
Runs until: Monday January 1, 2018

Amazonia: The Rights of Nature
Where: UBC Museum of Anthropology
What: MOA will showcase its Amazonian collections in a significant exploration of socially and environmentally-conscious notions intrinsic to indigenous South American cultures, which have recently become innovations in International Law. These are foundational to the notions of Rights of Nature, and they have been consolidating in the nine countries that share responsibilities over the Amazonian basin.
Runs until: January 28, 2018

True Nordic: How Scandinavia Influenced Design in Canada
Where: Vancouver Art Gallery
What: This ground-breaking exhibition examines the significant influence of Scandinavian craft and industrial design on the development of Canadian culture. Spanning more than seven decades, True Nordic reveals how Scandinavian design was introduced in Canada and how its aesthetics and material forms were adopted, revised and transformed.
Runs until: Sunday January 28, 2018

Tin and Gold: A 10 Year Anniversary Show
Where: The Fall
What: Celebrate 10 years of alternative music, tattoo artistry, and multimedia events. The art show includes artists Megan Majewski, Jenn Brisson, Alison Woodward and more.
Runs until: February 1, 2018

Portrait of the Artist
Where: Vancouver Art Gallery
What: This exhibition brings together The Royal Collection’s paintings depicting self-portraits, portraits of artists and artists at work. Encompassing over eighty works, Portrait of the Artist is a rich survey of how artists have seen themselves and the role of the artist within society.
Runs until: February 4, 2018

Gordon Smith: The Black Paintings
Where: Vancouver Art Gallery
What: The exhibition features a body of work described as black paintings that Gordon Smith began producing in 1990. These densely painted, darkly abstracted paintings—punctuated with occasional colour, text and collaged elements—sometimes refer explicitly to this wartime experience. Smith was deployed with the Allied invasion at Pachino Beach, Sicily (code name Husky), in July 1943, when he was twenty-four.
Runs until: February 4, 2018

Carol Sawyer: The Natalie Brettschneider Archive
Where: Vancouver Art Gallery
What: Sawyer’s ongoing project that reconstructs the life and work of the genre-defying, fictional singer and artist Natalie Brettschneider. The works on view will connect Brettschneider to a community of mid-twentieth century artists and musicians in British Columbia.
Runs until: February 4, 2018

City on the Edge: A Century of Vancouver Activism
Where: Museum of Vancouver
What: A photo-based exhibition exploring how protest demonstrations have shaped Vancouver’s identity from the Vancouver Sun and The Province newspapers’ photo collection. These photographs are exceptional historical records of intense and transformative moments in the lives of Vancouverites.
Runs until: February 18, 2017

Tasting History: The Traveling Tales of Tea
Where: Roedde House Museum
What: Tea is one of the most consumed liquids in the world, second only to water. But the beverage that brings much pleasure and calm to our 21st century senses is steeped in a turbulent history of politics and society. The exhibit will also feature stories from Vancouver’s modern-day tea community.
Runs until: March 2018

Emily Carr: Into the Forest
Where: Vancouver Art Gallery
What: Far from feeling that the forests of the West Coast were a difficult subject matter, Carr exulted in the symphonies of greens and browns found in the natural world. With oil on paper as her primary medium, Carr was free to work outdoors in close proximity to the landscape. She went into the forest to paint and saw nature in ways unlike her fellow British Columbians, who perceived it as either untamed wilderness or a plentiful source of lumber.
Runs until: March 4, 2018

The Lost Fleet Exhibit
Where: Vancouver Maritime Museum
What: On December 7, 1941 the world was shocked when Japan bombed Pearl Harbour, launching the United States into the war. This action also resulted in the confiscation of nearly 1,200 Japanese-Canadian owned fishing boats by Canadian officials on the British Columbia coast, which were eventually sold off to canneries and other non-Japanese fishermen. The Lost Fleet looks at the world of the Japanese-Canadian fishermen in BC and how deep-seated racism played a major role in the seizure, and sale, of Japanese-Canadian property and the internment of an entire people.
Runs until: March 25, 2018

Chief Dan George: Actor and Activist
Where: North Vancouver Museum
What: An exhibition exploring the life and legacy of Tsleil-Waututh Chief Dan George (1899- 1981) and his influence as an Indigenous rights advocate and his career as an actor. The exhibition was developed in close collaboration with the George family.
Runs until: April 2018

The Fabric of Our Land: Salish Weaving
Where: UBC Museum of Anthropology
What: For generations Salish peoples have been harvesting the resources of their territories, transforming them into robes of rare beauty and power. Symbols of identity, they acted as legal documents and were visible signifiers of the presence of knowledge holders and respected people. Now mostly stored away in museums these masterworks are rarely seen. They have much knowledge to share and many stories to tell. Musqueam asked the Museum to bring these weavings to inspire weavers and share part of this rich legacy with all of us.
Runs until: April 15, 2018

Public Artwork by New Delhi-Based Artist Asim Waqif
Where: Vancouver Art Gallery
What: Inspired by environmental concerns and the pace of human consumption, Waqif will construct an immersive architectural experience from materials collected at re-purpose stores, transfer stations and landfills in the metro Vancouver area. Waqif’s architectural structure will also incorporate an interactive acoustic system using microphones, effects pedals and speakers. Visitors are encouraged to move through the installation maze allowing them to actively experience the architecture instead of passively observing it.
Runs until: April 15, 2017

Winter Farmers Market
Where: Nat Bailey Stadium
What: Each week you can look forward to finding locally grown vegetables and fruit, meat and seafood from local ranchers and fishermen, artisan cheese and bread, herbs and seasonal nursery items, baked goods, prepared foods and artisanal craft.
Runs until: April 21, 2018 (Saturdays)

In a Different Light
Where: Museum of Anthropology
What: More than 110 historical Indigenous artworks and marks the return of many important works to British Columbia. These objects are amazing artistic achievements. Yet they also transcend the idea of ‘art’ or ‘artifact’. Through the voices of contemporary First Nations artists and community members, this exhibition reflects on the roles historical artworks have today. Featuring immersive storytelling and innovative design, it explores what we can learn from these works and how they relate to Indigenous peoples’ relationships to their lands.
Runs until: Spring 2019

What are you up to this weekend? Tell me and the rest of Vancouver in the comments below or tweet me directly at @lextacular