62 things to do in Metro Vancouver on Saturday, December 23

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      Looking for something to do on Saturday? The Straight’s got you covered. Here are 62 events happening in or around Vancouver on Saturday, December 23.

       

      CONCERTS

      Wasted Strays and Gold Stars are for Suckers play the Railway Stage and Beer Café, with guests the Scott Perry Band.

      The Original Ugly Sweater Party at the Commodore features dance music by Groove and Tonic, with proceeds to the Make-A-Wish Foundation of B.C. and the Yukon.

      Canadian jazz vocalists Jennifer Scott, Karin Plato, and Kate Hammett-Vaughan (We Three Queens) perform the second of two nights at Frankie's Jazz.

      The Dark Eighties presents music by Shadowhouse, Puritans, and DJ Suzanne Hampton at the Astoria Pub.

       

      BENEFITS

      See more than 30 gingerbread creations designed by students, professionals, and amateur culinary artists at the Hyatt Regency Vancouver, with proceeds to Make-A-Wish B.C. and Yukon.

      The Festival of Hope at Havana Theatre features six days of music, theatre, and comedy and raises funds for Boden, a young man in palliative home care.

       

      FOOD & DRINK

      Festive Farmers Market at Nat Bailey Stadium features live carolling, visits with Santa, and a kids craft station, plus holiday dinner fixings, craft alcohol, and festive baked goods from over 70 vendors.

       

      SPORTS

      The Vancouver Canucks take on the St. Louis Blues in National Hockey League action at Rogers Arena.

       

      CHRISTMAS

      See thousands of lights adorning the Capilano Suspension Bridge, canyon, Treetops Adventure, and Cliffwalk at Canyon Lights.

      The Vancouver Christmas Market at Jack Poole Plaza features more than 75 vendor huts, authentic German food and drink, a carousel, a 30-foot-tall walk-in Christmas tree, live entertainment, and family-friendly activities.

      Van Dusen Botanical Garden's Festival of Lights features outdoor light displays, dancing light shows, stories with Santa, live entertainment, a fireside lounge, the Make-A-Wish candle grotto, and sing-alongs.

      Annual Lights of Hope display at St. Paul's Hospital features over 100,000 sparkling lights and raises funds for the St. Paul's Foundation.

      The Peak of Christmas at Grouse Mountain features holiday light installations around Blue Grouse Lake, Christmas movies, crafts, sleigh rides, skating, a gingerbread village, reindeer, storytime, and breakfast with Santa.

      Lights at Lafarge features outdoor light displays, live entertainment, roving performers, hot chocolate and cookies, photos with Santa, family-friendly crafts, a holiday market, and choirs at Coquitlam's Town Centre Park.

      Join Santa on a flight across Canada and on to the North Pole as he searches for his missing elves at Christmas at Flyover Canada.

      Holiday Heights at Bloedel Conservatory features seasonal lights, music, and a holiday scavenger hunt.

       

      COMEDY

      The Vancouver TheatreSports League presents the final performance of Christmas Queen 4: Secret Santa, a holiday-themed comedy show that sees the Queen and Santa exchange bodies in a Freaky Friday-style magical sleight-of-hand.

      Canadian comedian Kevin Banner performs the third of three nights of standup at the Comedy Mix.

      Vancouver comedian Jane Stanton performs the third of three nights of standup at Yuk Yuk's Comedy Club.

      Highbrow fusion of Shakespeare, served with a side of improvisational mischief, a Havana Theatre's Shakespeare After Dark.

       

      ARTS ETCETERA

      Cirque du Soleil presents Kurios: Cabinet of Curiosities, a new production that takes you into the curio cabinet of an ambitious inventor who defies the laws of time, space, and dimension, at Concord Pacific Place.

       

      MUSIC

      Violinist Monica Huggett leads performances of Vivaldi's Gloria and Magnificat as they were originally heard, performed entirely by women, at the Chan Centre for the Performing Arts.

      The Mei Lanfang Beijing Opera Troupe combines music, drama, martial arts, and acrobatics at the Queen Elizabeth Theatre.

      Vancouver Cantata Singers presents traditional carols and newer holiday compositions at Holy Rosary Cathedral.

       

      THEATRE

      Theatre Replacement's East Van Panto: Snow White and the Seven Dwarves is a kid-friendly production at the York Theatre that sees the title character flee the wicked Queen of North Vancouver across the Ironworkers Memorial Bridge, landing at the PNE.

      The Arts Club Theatre Company presents Onegin--Amiel Gladstone and Veda Hille's musical about a dissipated rogue whose romantic charms stir the passions of the residents of a country estate--at Granville Island Stage.

      The Arts Club Theatre Company presents a performance at Goldcorp Stage at the BMO Theatre Centre of The Day Before Christmas, Stacey Kaser and Alison Kelly's play about a perfectionist who's desperately holding fast to her Christmas traditions.

      The White Rock Players Club presents a performance of director Alex Lowe's kid-friendly pantomime The Hunchback of Notre PANTO at Coast Capital Playhouse.

      Gateway Theatre presents a stage adaptation of A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens's classic tale of a miser who changes his ways after he is visited by ghosts.

      The Arts Club Theatre Company presents a performance at Stanley Industrial Alliance Stage of Disney's Beauty and the Beast, a stage adaptation of the Academy Award-winning animated film.

      The Royal Canadian Theatre Company presents a performance at Surrey Arts Centre of Ellie King's pantomime Sinbad, the Pirate, and the Dinosaurwhich explores what happens when Sinbad meets up with pirate queen Anne Bonney.

      Performance at Deep Cove Shaw Theatre of Norman Robbins's kid-friendly pantomime The Grand Old Duke of York, which tells the story of a conniving baron who cancels an annual fair and outlaws fun and laughter.

      Metro Theatre presents a performance of the holiday pantomime Cinderella, which sees an underdog use her courage to go after what she wants.

       

      GALLERIES

      Entangled: Two Views on Contemporary Canadian Painting at the Vancouver Art Gallery offers insight into two distinctly different modes of painting that have come to dominate contemporary painting in Canada.

      Polygon Gallery's inaugural exhibition, N. Vancouver, explores how a specific locale can be reflected through existing and newly commissioned artworks by artists from Vancouver and beyond.

      Portrait of the Artist: An Exhibition from the Royal Collection at the Vancouver Art Gallery features more than 90 paintings, drawings, prints, photographs, and sculpture highlighting both the richness of the Royal Collection and the complex relationship that the British monarchy has had with artists for the last three and half centuries.

      True Nordic: How Scandinavia Influenced Design in Canada at the Vancouver Art Gallery highlights the enduring legacy of Scandinavian design principles in Canada through works by Niels Bendtsen, Bocci, Karen Bulow, Kjeld and Erica Deichmann, Thor Hansen, Andrew Jones, Janis Kravis, molo, Carl Poul Petersen, Rudolph Renzius, and Marion Smith.

      Carol Sawyer: The Natalie Brettschneider Archive at the Vancouver Art Gallery presents the latest findings of Vancouver-based artist Sawyer's ongoing research project that deftly reconstructs the life and work of the genre-defying, fictional artist Brettschneider.

       

      MUSEUMS

      In a Different Light: Reflecting on Northwest Coast Art at the Museum of Anthropology at UBC features more than 110 historical indigenous artworks and explores what we can learn from these works and how they relate to indigenous peoples’ relationships to their lands.

      The Fabric of Our Land: Salish Weaving at the Museum of Anthropology at UBC takes visitors on a journey through the past 200 years of Salish wool weaving.

      Amazonia: The Rights of Nature at the Museum of Anthropology at UBC features Amazonian basketry, textiles, carvings, feather works, and ceramics both of everyday and of ceremonial use, representing indigenous, Maroon, and white settler communities.

      City on Edge: A Century of Vancouver Activism at the Museum of Vancouver explores the history of Vancouver's street protests through over 650 images of street demonstrations, protests, and riots from the early 1900s to present day.

      The Lost Fleet at the Vancouver Maritime Museum investigates the unjust 1941 seizure of 1,200 Japanese-Canadian fishing vessels following the bombing of Pearl Harbour through a collection of historic photographs, models of Japanese-Canadian-built fishing boats, fishermen’s tools, and replica documents.

       

      ATTRACTIONS

      Mount Seymour features skiing and snowboarding, lessons, chairlifts, terrain parks, tubing and tobogganing, and snowshoe trails.

      Celebrate winter with free skating in the heart of downtown Vancouver at Robson Square Ice Rink.

      North Vancouver's Grouse Mountain features a Skyride to the peak with views of the city and the Pacific Ocean, as well as ziplines, a wildlife refuge, helicopter tours, paragliding, dining, and the Grouse Grind.

      West Vancouver's Cypress Mountain features skiing and snowboarding lessons, snowtubing park, cross-country ski trails, downhill skiing and snowboarding trails, and snowshoeing tours.

      At the Bloedel Conservatory you can take in more than 200 free-flying exotic birds and 500 exotic plants and flowers.

      The new Parq Vancouver features two luxury hotels, a 24-hour casino with 600 slot machines and 75 table games, eight restaurants and lounges, and the sixth-floor outdoor Parq.

      Take a ride in an exterior glass elevator and get a 360° view of Metro Vancouver and the North Shore mountains at Vancouver Lookout.

      Stanley Park features 400 hectares of trails, gardens, beaches, and West Coast rain forest, with scenic walking and biking along the 8.8 kilometre seawall.

      The Vancouver Aquarium features almost 800 animal species in galleries ranging from Canada's Arctic to the Amazon rainforest.

      Lighthouse Park features 10 kilometres of hiking trails, picnic areas, guided walks provided by the Lighthouse Park Preservation Society, and the historical 1912 Point Atkinson Lighthouse.

      Science World features hundreds of interactive exhibits in five permanent galleries, live science demonstrations and workshops, and giant movies in the Omnimax Theatre.

       

      MOVIES

      Screening at Vancity Theatre of Eyes Wide Shut, Stanley Kubrick's 1999 film about a Manhattan doctor whose complacent beliefs about his marriage are shaken when his wife admits to having fantasized about another man.

      Screening at the Rio Theatre of Loving Vincent, Dorota Kobiela & Hugh Welchman's feature-length painted animation which explores the life and unusual death of celebrated painter Vincent Van Gogh.

      Screening at Vancity Theatre of Feng Xiaogang's film Youth, which chronicles the joys and travails of a provincial military-arts troupe, soldiers in the People’s Liberation Army whose duty it is to promote culture, revolutionary values, music, and dance.

      Screenings at the Rio Theatre of the 1954 musical White Christmas and the 1974 slasher flick Black Christmas.

      Screenings at the Cinematheque of Charlie Chaplin's City Lights, Marcel Camus's Black Orpheus, and Akira Kurosawa's Ikuru as part of the Essential Big Screen! series.

      Screening at Vancity Theatre of The Other Side of Hope, Aki Kaurismäki's film about a poker-playing restaurateur and former traveling salesman who befriend a group of refugees newly arrived to Finland.

      Screening at the Rio Theatre of Jane, director Brett Morgen's documentary about legendary primatologist Jane Goodall.

      Screening at Vancity Theatre of director Bobbi Jo Harts's documentary Rebels on Pointe, which explores the story of the all-male drag troupe Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo.

       

      For all the latest Metro Vancouver event announcements and updates follow @VanHappenings.

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