Powell Street Festival August 4, 2007

The Powell Street Festival is an annual celebration of Japanese Canadian arts, culture and heritage that features something for everyone: dance, music, film and video, visual arts, martial arts demos, amateur sumo tournament, craft vendors, traditional displays, and of course, tons of scrumptious Japanese food.

PSF is the largest event of its kind in Canada and the longest running community arts festival in the Lower Mainland. We provide a much-needed venue for emerging and established, professional and amateur, and traditional and contemporary artists in the Japanese Canadian and Asian Canadian communities.

Some highlights include: new work by festival favourites Kokoro Dance; Theatre performance of Skim, written and directed by Mariko Tamaki (Toronto) and performed by Julie Tamiko Manning (Montreal); Visual Arts group exhibit, Between what’s said and unsaid group exhibit, featuring artists from Canada, USA and Japan; public sculpture exhibition by 3rd generation Nikkei artist Michael Tora Speier entitled Broken Only at Sky: a Magnification of 20th Century Japanese Diaspora & Community Journey; music performances by Yuji Nakajima, Keiko Devaux, and special guest from Japan Koichi Makigami; the usual exciting array of taiko by Katari Taiko, Sawagi Taiko, Chibi Taiko, Yuaikai Ryukyu Taiko, and new to this year, Jodaiko, a superstar group led by taiko master from California Tiffany Tamaribuchi; and the annual YUGO Hip Hop Fusion event.

We are also presenting, for the first time, a Japanese film festival Kibatsu Cinema in partnership with the Pacific Cinematheque, as a lead-up event to festival weekend. Please see season events for more information.
This Year’s Theme

Play/playful: experimentation, risk taking, fall and recover, process, children, fun, social engagement, imagination, creativity, opposite of finished or complete, opposite of “work”, curiosity, light-hearted, opposite of serious

The 2007 Powell Street Festival’s theme is Play, a celebration of artistic creativity and possibilities and an exciting and inspirational follow-up to 2006, the Powell Street Festival’s 30th anniversary year that focused more on history and community. Programming will explore all facets of this concept from play as recreation or amusement, such as children’s play, to an aesthetic tradition of play that is grounded in an intent toward artistic discovery. The tie that binds various forms of play will be a commitment to curiosity and creativity. Artistic process, innovative forms of audience development and engagement, providing more space for children’s and youth events, and integrating children and youth into adult-dominated areas of the festival will all be prioritized.

Since its culturally reclaiming inception, Powell Street Festival has continued to flourish as a veritable hothouse of dialogues, social inquiries, remembered traditions, artistic fusions and urban contrasts. New and old stories and experiences span generations and have come together here for more than three decades. It is a place of not ideal, but real, community activity, creative invention and intervention, social investigation and rediscovered history. PSF has always been committed to openly creative processes that leave room for further exploration and larger definitions of us as (hyphenated) Canadians.

Official Website: http://powellstreetfestival.com/festival/this_fest.html