Festival Gatherings
Join us for a series of social events, artist talks and panels throughout HOLD ON LET GO.
Opening Night Party!
Tuesday, February 4 @ 8:30pm
Celebrate the launch of this year’s HOLD ON LET GO at our Opening Night Party. Come dance the night away with us!
Catch Keely O’Brien’s Secret Ingredients before the party at 7pm!
This event is ticketed by donation to support the programming of TR’s 21st season on a Pay-What-You-Can basis.
Accelerator Lab Community Conversation
Thursday, February 6 @ 5pm
Over the last several months Vancouver-based experimental artists Davey Samuel Calderon, Aryo Khakpour, Kyle Loven and Keely O’Brien have been exploring new ways to grow mobility for their work and reinvigorate the current context for international touring, networking and relationship building as part of TR’s Accelerator Lab International Fellowship. Join them as they share their experiences, insights and discoveries as part of this Community Conversation, hosted by TR’s Artistic Director, Maiko Yamamoto.
Book with your All Access or Emerging Artist Pass or buy a single ticket to this event:
Artist Talk with Dancers of Damelahamid
Thursday, February 6 @ 8:30pm
Directly following their presentation of Raven Mother, Indigenous dance company Dancers of Damelahamid discuss the creation of their most ambitious production to date with Starr Muranko, Co-Artistic Director of Raven Spirit Dance.
Attendance included with a ticket to Raven Mother on February 6 @ 8pm.
A special screening of Looping, a Company 605 Film Directed by Aryo Khakpour
Thursday, February 6 @ 9pm
Looping is the title of an improvised movement practice developed by Vancouver’s Company 605, a continuous transformation and rigorous negotiation held between dancers as they weave and warp their repeated actions, and cope with the embedded impossibility to remain the same. In an evolving realtime physical conversation, each mistake and failure generates change, and drives this dance of emergence. It is a simultaneous doing and undoing, with each repetition of movement loop becoming a slight revision, erasing pieces of what has come before while successively building new ways forward.
Film Director Aryo Khakpour captures seven of Company 605’s performers in a Looping score already underway, playfully guiding attention towards and away from these sites of shifting connection and relationship, and into their dizzying experience of endurance and persistence. Instead of capturing every action in full, the cameras embrace fragments of the ongoing flow, serving as a reminder that any one view of the dynamic work is partial. Looping is, all at once, a creation, rehearsal, and performance of people continually and purposefully relearning how to be/dance together through a shared practice of embracing instability.
Join us for this special screening, followed by a Q & A with Director Aryo Khakpour. Aryo is one of the four artists in Theatre Replacement’s Accelerator Lab cohort.
Book with your All Access or Emerging Artist Pass or buy a single ticket to this event:
Kinderpocalypse Now
A talk by Mammalian Diving Reflex’s Darren O’Donnell
Saturday, February 8 @ 1pm
Since Mammalian Diving Reflex premiered Haircuts by Children in 2006 and presented it at the 2008 PuSh Festival, the situation with children’s rights and their role in the world has significantly changed. Darren’s talk will outline these changes, using key cultural examples drawn from the last 20 years and make the case that, along many dimensions, the kids are doing great, even as, along a few others, many are also having a hard time. Another consequence of this changing role is that the traditional arts and cultural offerings to the young-uns are not cutting it and the kids seem to be opting out in droves. In Australia, for example, since 2018, children attending at least one performing arts event has dropped by 26%, from 57% - 31%. O’Donnell has a solution: give the kids the keys to the sector, with his concluding concept: "The Avuncular Institution," a radically deeper community role for arts and culture.
Mammalian’s show, Sex, Drugs and Criminality is being presented on Friday, February 7th at 8pm at HOLD ON LET GO, featuring Vancouver teens and special guests! This presentation marks the company’s return to Vancouver after nearly a decade. See Sex, Drugs and Criminality and then attend this talk for further context on how and why Mammalian makes shows with young people.
Book with your All Access or Emerging Artist Pass or buy a single ticket to this event:
Panel Discussion with Accelerator Lab International Mentors: Matthew Austin, Juliet Knapp, and Ragnheiður Skúladóttir
Saturday, February 8 @ 3pm
International Mentors for Accelerator Lab Matthew Austin (MAYK - Bristol, UK), Juliet Knapp (Kyoto Experiment - Kyoto, Japan) and Ragnheiður Skúladóttir (Festspillene i Nord-Norge - Harstad, Norway), will be joining us for HOLD ON LET GO as part of a delegation of international presenters attending this year’s festival. Don’t miss this opportunity to hear them in conversation with TR’s Artistic Director, Maiko Yamamoto, about their roles as leaders and curators of some of the world’s most exciting festivals and venues.
Book with your All Access or Emerging Artist Pass or buy a single ticket to this event: