About
Welcome to HOLD ON LET GO, an annual festival of contemporary performance work by Vancouver and Canadian artists.
Now going into its 15th season, HOLD ON LET GO (formerly PushOFF) has solidified its place as a vital space for artists and audiences to come together in the sharing of new, experimental works that look to challenge what performance is and can be.
HOLD ON LET GO takes place at the Russian Hall and is produced by Theatre Replacement in partnership with Company 605.
Theatre Replacement
Best Life – Theatre Replacement
Photo by Chelsey Stuyt
Image description: On a dark stage, a small red boombox sits on a plinth with a gold tablecloth draped on it. There is a standing microphone in front, pointing towards the boombox speakers. In the foreground is the back of a woman’s head, which is not in focus and fuzzy in the picture. Beyond the boombox, to the left, is a washing machine with some laundry folded on top, and to the right, is a table saw. It has some toy blocks on top, in the shape of a little house.
Theatre Replacement (TR) creates new, experimental and intercultural works of performance. Led by Artistic Director Maiko Yamamoto, in collaboration with resident, associate and guest artists, the company’s work is known for its love of formal inventiveness and conceptual play, often drawing from autobiography and biography in making performances that search for playful, immediate and authentic ways of bringing audiences together. The company also supports the practice of making and sharing new work through our public programs — opportunities for mentorship, residency, professional development and networking.
TR has been presented at internationally recognized festivals and venues including: Festival TransAmériques (Montréal), Magnetic North Theatre Festival (Ottawa, Vancouver, Kitchener, Whitehorse), Free Fall Festival and Factory Theatre (Toronto), PuSh International Performing Arts Festival (Vancouver), High Performance Rodeo (Calgary), On the Boards (Seattle), Fusebox Festival (Austin, TX), Noorderzon Festival (Groningen, NL), PAZZ Performing Arts Festival (Oldenburg, Germany), Lókal and Everybody’s Spectacular Festivals (Reykjavik), A! Festival (Akureyri, Iceland), Terni Festival (Italy), Dublin Fringe Festival and Dublin Theatre Festival (Ireland), Foreign Affairs (Berlin), Soho Rep. (New York), Woolly Mammoth (Washington, DC), Portland Repertory Theatre (Portland, Oregon), Mayfest (Bristol, UK), artsdepot (London), Cambridge Junction (Cambridge, UK), foldA Festival (Kingston, ON), BASTARDFESTIVALEN, Meteor Festival (Norway) and the Melbourne Fringe Festival.
Recent presentations and touring works include Best Life, a new, relational show performed by an audience for each other, inspired by the machines that make our lives better, and Town Choir, where writers send real-time messages to an awaiting choir who then sing the everyday observations out in public space. Current works in development include The End of Greatness, conceived and created by Yamamoto and long-time Artistic Associate and musician, Veda Hille (premiering in 2025/26), and FUTURE POEMS, a brand new work by Yamamoto, created and performed with a group of kids and youth — a playlist of poems performed to and for an audience of the future.
Company 605
lossy - Company 605
Photo by Luciana D'Anunciacao
Image description: A group of dancers are moving across a stage, some are low to the ground, others are in a mid way pose, some are reaching with their arms towards the right. On the left hand side of the photo are some modern furniture pieces: a clear, blow up armchair that is upended, a small side table, and a lamp on a boom stand. There are also fluorescent lights of bright, neon colours – pink, green and purple that light up the space and are reflected and bounce colourful lights off the floor.
Led by artistic co-directors Lisa Mariko Gelley and Josh Martin, Company 605 is an arts organization based in Vancouver, on the traditional, unceded territories of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh First Nations. Producing various dance projects and performances through shared creative process, the artists place emphasis on rigorous choreographic propositions and movement exploration – juxtaposing raw with precision, and highlighting effort, risk and interconnection. 605 is an ongoing exchange between separate people, bodies and ideas, with each project seeking and celebrating their own unique forms of togetherness. Valuing collaboration as a critical path for new directions in dance, Company 605 continues to transform and build on an ever-evolving aesthetic, with multiple choreographic voices in pursuit of an embodied art form derived from the human experience.
With an expanding repertoire of diverse works, the company has performed from coast to coast in over 30 cities across Canada, as well as in the US, Central America, Europe, Asia and Australia, presented at many notable festivals and venues such as: American Dance Festival (Durham, NC), New York City Center’s Fall for Dance Festival, PuSh International Performing Arts Festival, The Cultch, Usine-C and L'Agora de la Danse (Montréal), La Rotonde (Québec City), DanceWorks (Toronto), Live Art Dance (Halifax), The Banff Centre, On The Boards' NWNW and Bumbershoot Festival (Seattle), Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (San Francisco), Festival PRISMA (Panama), Festival Parentesis (Costa Rica), Internationale Tanzmesse nrw, Tempel Kulturzentrum and Regensburger TanzTage (Germany), BODY.RADICAL (Budapest), Oduru Akita and Fukuoka Dance (Japan), Hong Kong Dance Exchange, M1 Contact (Singapore) and the Sydney Festival (Australia). 605's co-directors have created commissioned works for several dance companies, including Ballet BC (After We Glow, 2021 and Anthem, 2017). Their collaborations with filmmakers have allowed 605's work to be shared globally, with short dance films shown at over 55 dance-on-screen festivals around the world.
Current projects include the recent premiere of the company’s full-length ensemble work, ‘lossy’, as part of the 2024 Dancing On The Edge Festival, presented in partnership with SFU Woodwards, with upcoming touring in Germany (Tanzbiennale Heidelberg, Feb 8th); the digital release of ‘Looping’, a new dance film directed by Aryo Khakpour (The Biting School); and continued international screenings of Future Futures, 605's episodic mini-series of short sci-fi dance films produced in collaboration with director Brian Johnson and Screen Siren Pictures. Company 605 has also begun a large-scale international co-production with with The Human Expression Dance Company (Singapore), assembling a creative team and cast from both cities to collaboratively build a new group work premiering at both The Dance Centre (Vancouver) and Cont-act Festival (Singapore) in June 2025.