Members of Vancouver’s arts community spent the afternoon of May 12 at the Vancouver Playhouse, taking part in the City of Vancouver’s Creative City Conversation 2008, a forum on arts and culture strategies.

The legendary comics creator and cocurator of the forthcoming KRAZY! multimedia show, says we live in a culture that’s forgetting how to work hard for meaning.

Are you wondering about where to place KRAZY!, the Vancouver Art Gallery’s big summer show? Curious about how to situate an exhibition of popular culture within the context of a “high art” institution? For starters, chuck out notions of high and low and kill the terms popular culture and mass media. Think, instead, of visual culture, the swirling mass of images that bombards us daily.

There are a number of reasons to be excited about the Vancouver Art Gallery’s upcoming KRAZY! exhibit. The show opens next Saturday (May 17) and features more than 600 pieces of work, drawn from comics, anime, cartoons, and video games.

From the outset, the trio of pieces on the Dance Centre’s latest Pulse series program seem to have nothing in common. A performer tapes himself into a cardboard box and then rolls around. Dancers push themselves to physical extremes to embody gluttony. And a quartet moves with modern grace to Arvo Pärt’s haunting music.

Billed as the world’s only standup comedian for children, Campbell says he won't treat his young fans any different from himself at the Vancouver International Children’s Festival.

Movers and Shapers

Liz Magor: MOUTH: FULL

A sophisticated new take on Jean-Paul Sartre’s faded classic projects huge yet intimate images.

The Dissemblers

Mis Hermanas

The sun may have set on the empire, but the music rolls on. At 8 p.m. this Friday (May 9), the Vancouver Bach Choir will shake the Orpheum’s rafters with its season-closing Last Night of the Proms, inspired by the yearly concert at the Albert Hall in London, England. The program features traditional Brit hits such as Rule Britannia and Land of Hope and Glory—all meant to stir up decorous forms of rowdiness in the boater-hatted audience, who will twirl noisemakers and throw streamers.

The time-honoured meets the cutting-edge as the Lorita Leung Chinese Dance Company and Moving Dragon collaborate on two afternoon dance performances—one at 2 p.m., the other at 4 p.m.—this Sunday (May 11) at the Roundhouse Community Centre. Through Lorita Leung’s classical perspectives and Moving Dragon’s contemporary attack, the show will trace out a kind of summary of Chinese dance’s long evolution. Go to www.newworks.ca/ for more.

It promises to be a battle unlike any other. With names like 5-Spice, Lick the Wax Tadpole, and Disoriental, nine teams will square off in the ninth annual Asian Comedy Night, titled Sketchoff!#%!! Etch-Your-Sketch 2! on Friday and Saturday (May 9 and 10) at the Roundhouse Community Centre. Friday night, a panel of celebrity judges including eTalk reporter and gossip blogger Lainy Lui, MuchMusic host Lauren Toyota, and Dragon Boys actor Edmond Wong will choose the Vancouver Rice Bowl winner.

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