Your couch is okay, but it doesn’t have the crazy pull of the PuSh festival, the cool of Feist, or the lure of Chinese dragons.

With the majorwinter holidays all wrapped up, now might seem the perfect time to head for the duvet and hibernate until spring has sprung. Think again. It might be cold, wet, and miserable outside, but with the number of arts festivals and events taking place throughout the city in the coming weeks, there’s no excuse for staying in. Whether it’s avant-garde dance at the PuSh International Performing Arts Festival, alt-pop songstress Feist headlining the Cultural Olympiad Countdown Concert, or the Chinese New Year lion parade, you’ve got plenty of ammunition for beating back the winter blues.

Cultural Olympiad 2008 (February 1 to March 21 at various venues) Decisions, decisions. Featuring everything from Japanese folk dancers to internationally renowned jazz musicians, the seven-week 2008 Cultural Olympiad celebrations (the first of three festivals in the run-up to 2010), include 79 events presented by 60 organizations in partnership with VANOC. The celebrations will reach a fever pitch at the fully VANOC–funded Cultural Olympiad Countdown Concert on February 12 at the Orpheum Theatre headlined by indie-pop-cum-iPod-ad sensation Feist. Still can’t decide what to see? Toss a ski pole at the program and see where it lands. More info and tickets: www.vancouver2010.com/en/Culture
Education/CulturalOlympiad/2008Celebration/.

PuSh International Performing Arts Festival (to February 3 at various venues) Tom Waits operetta? Check. Contemporary Western-Balinese music fusion? Check. Free haircuts? No problem. Now entering its fifth year, the PuSh festival continues to expand, with 23 genre-bending shows from around the world. Take in the avant-garde Black Rider, created by Waits, writer William S. Burroughs, and theatre maverick Robert Wilson. Wrap your ears around the musical mashup of the Turning Point Ensemble and Gamelan Gita Asmara’s Dual Eclipse, and make an appointment for a shearing you’ll never forget in Haircuts by Children. Or check out the program for other boundary-pushing works. More info: www.pushfestival.ca/. Tickets: www.ticketmaster.ca/ or 604-280-3311.

Wintersong Festival (February 8 to 17 at various West Vancouver venues) West Vancouver gives the February blahs the cold shoulder with the third annual WinterSong Festival, featuring a wide array of vocal styles, from bluegrass to bossa nova. This year, the Kay Meek Centre’s Studio Theatre transforms into a cabaret-style nightclub to feature, among others, A Jazz Valentine with Kate Hammett-Vaughan, Karin Plato, and Jennifer Scott; the Brazilian stylings of Mimosa; and the bluegrass twang of John Reischman & the Jaybird Trio. Restaurants from Horseshoe Bay to Ambleside will also bring in performers, and indie bands Mother Mother and Hey Ocean! will appear in the Cultural Olympiad–partnered Cypress Mountain concert series. Info: www.winter
song.ca/. Tickets: 604-913-3634.

Chutzpah! Festival (February 23 to March 2 at various venues) For the stage equivalent of bagels and lox, feast on the eclectic delights of the eighth annual Chutzpah! Festival, showcasing Jewish music, theatre, dance, and comedy. In Mozart Is My Homeboy! (Can You Handel It?), Miri Levi promises to “rock you like it’s 1895” with an evening of opera. Dance All-Stars presents works by Aszure & Artists, Vancouver’s own Amber Funk Barton, and Serge Bennathan, with a new solo for Susan Elliott. And a comedienne trio salutes comic trailblazers in The J.A.P. Show: The Princesses of Comedy. Info and tickets: www.chutzpahfestival.com/ or 604-257-5145.

Vancouver International Storytelling Festival (February 1 to 3 at Heritage Hall) Before YouTube, before radio, there were storytellers. Take in some old-school, low-fi entertainment with the 16th annual Storytelling Festival, this year featuring yarn-spinners from the Latin American community, all-ages and adult-oriented shows, as well as story jams, workshops, and a community potluck. Info: www.vancouverstorytelling.org/. Tickets: www.ticketstonight.ca/ or 604-231-7535.

Festival du Bois (March 1 and 2 at Mackin Park, Coquitlam) Scoff some poutine and drop your h’s at this weekend of French-Canadian culture in Maillardville, the centre of francophone culture, history, and heritage in B.C. This year highlights the oft-underrated accordion, featuring traditional Québécois musicians Club Carrefour, the Brazilian-influenced squeeze-box sounds of New York City’s Rob Curto, and the klezmer stylings of Tzimmes, a
Victoria-based septet. Don’t miss the big Saturday-night show, with the Zydeco sounds of Johnny Cajun and internationally renowned Quebec folk band La Volée d’Castors. C’est chouette! Info: www.festivaldubois.ca Tickets: 604-936-0039.

Vancouver International Bhangra Celebration (February 29 to March 8) It was once confined to the Punjab region of India, but nowadays you don’t have to go far to hear the lively beats of bhangra music and dance, with the likes of Madonna, Nelly Furtado, and Jay-Z embracing the genre. This year’s bhangra festival is bigger than ever, with an art exhibit, dance classes, a panel discussion about bhangra’s popularity among second-generation South Asians in Canada, and an event highlighting folk-dance styles from across India, South America, and Scotland—plus the usual evening stage at the Vancouver Art Gallery and a North American bhangra competition at the Queen E. Tickets and info: www.vibc.org/.

Talking Stick Festival (February 12 to 17 at various venues) Everything from multimedia installations to rebel music is on offer at the city’s seventh annual multidisciplinary aboriginal arts festival. Discover what’s on the minds of aboriginal youth in an exhibition of youth photography and writing at the Roundhouse Community Centre; get your groove on at the Railway Club, where nominees and winners of the Aboriginal Music Awards will perform; and let the Big Sky video installation at the Roundhouse shatter your preconceptions about First Nations art. Other notable performers include South American aerial dancer Diana Casas and singer/composer Sandy Scofield. Info: www.fullcircleperformance.ca/. Tickets: www.ticketstonight.ca/.

Festival Baobab (February 1, 2, and 8 at the Maritime Labour Centre) Festival Baobab’s celebration of African music and culture is back, this time with some Afro-Cuban fun thrown in. Get swept up in the rhythms of West African percussion, dancing, and storytelling with Masabo; shimmy to the sounds of Vancouver Latin band Puro Son, led by former Buena Vista Social Club trumpeter Miguelito Valdes; and get your groove on with DJ Marquinho’s Afro beats. Tickets: Highlife Records (1317 Commercial Drive), Zulu Records (1972 West 4th Avenue), and via www.ticketstonight.ca/.

Time Flies improvised music festival (February 7 to 9, 8 p.m. at the Ironworks) The 20th annual Time Flies festival serves as a three-night summit meeting for improvisers from around the world. These include Vancouverites Torsten Müller on bass, Dylan van der Schyff on drums, and François Houle on clarinet; Montreal guitarist Bernard Falaise; British saxophonist Evan Parker; Norway’s Hild Sofie Tafjord on French horn and electronics; and American trumpeter Peter Evans and violinist Mary Oliver. Info: www.coastaljazz.ca/. Tickets: www.ticketmaster.ca/, 604-280-4444.

But wait—there’s more! Greet the year of the rat with the dragons, fireworks, and dancing lions of the Chinese New Year Parade February 23 in Chinatown. Then head over to the Dr. Sun Yat-Sen Classical Chinese Garden for a day of fortune-telling, tai chi, and traditional Chinese music.

Check out the Nordic new-wave jazz stylings of Atomic (January 26) at the Western Front. Head back February 1 to step into the twisted folk-storytelling world of Faun Fables, lead by singer and theatre artist Dawn McCarthy.

Prefer lighthearted entertainment? Check out the Arts Club Theatre Company’s Glorious! (January 24 to February 24 at the Stanley Industrial Alliance Stage), starring Nicola Cavendish in the true story of Florence Foster Jenkins, an unlikely recording star of the 1930s and ’40s and possibly the worst singer ever. Then, wrap yourself in the golden voice of Korean soprano Sumi Jo, at the Orpheum with the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra on Monday (January 21). Alternatively, spend an evening revelling in the music of Franz Schubert with the Vancouver Chamber Choir, which performs Schubertiad! A Viennese Song Circle on January 25 at Ryerson United Church.

Vancouver Opera presents Gioacchino Rossini’s madcap comedy The Italian Girl in Algiers, in an updated production that pays homage to Amelia Earhart, complete with on-stage plane crashes (January 26 to February 2 at the Queen Elizabeth Theatre).

Intellectuals and existentialists should check out Twenty-Something Theatre’s production of Wallace Shawn’s The Fever, a monologue by a dying character struggling with morality and ethics, performed by Vancouverite Kirsten Kilburn (January 29 to February 3 at the Beaumont Studios). More heavy subject matter hits the boards in Green Thumb Theatre’s production of Robert Fulford’s Steel Kiss (February 14 to 24 at the Waterfront Theatre), a play dealing with the gruesome topic of gay-bashing. Don’t leave your tissues at home.

For something a little more uplifting, Ruckus Company Productions presents a remount of Ricochet (February 15 at the Centennial Theatre), Brock Jellison’s semi-autobiographical work about overcoming bullying and drug addiction to become one of Vancouver’s top tap dancers and choreographers.

And hopeless romantics won’t want to miss Ballet B.C.’s The Sleeping Beauty (February 28 to March 1 at the Queen Elizabeth Theatre), performed by the Royal Winnipeg Ballet, with cameo appearances from fairy-tale characters such as Little Red Riding Hood and Puss ’n’ Boots.