Ruckus Dance is a new twenty member company led by BC choreographer Brock Jellison who toured the world with the internationally acclaimed Tap Dogs production.

Brock is absolutely amazing. I used to take classes with him Sunday mornings at Harbour Dance. I think he frightened off a couple of people by having us dance full blast to Korn. It was Sunday morning after all. Nevertheless, Brock is no “jazz hands” tapper. He is rock hard and choreographs a mean number. I recall times in class thinking “so I jump over that foot, how?”

If you’re interested in tap dance and live anywhere near Vancouver, you must come see this production. There is not a bad seat in the Centenniel Theatre. It is an intimate space without been crowded.

For more information click here

Ruckus Dance Performs

Where: Centennial Theatre
2300 Lonsdale Ave
North Vancouver, BC

When: Mar 17-18, 2006 7:30 pm
Details: For Tickets call: (604) 984-4484
Buy tickets online

The performance is part of the Vancouver International Dance Festival.

Here’s the performance description:
77 Minutes imagines a desperate vision of a possible future where a national disasteróthink nuclear war, terrorism, or earthquakeóresults in a despotic government that imposes extreme censorship on individual expression. Suspected trouble makers ìdisappearî under the guise of emergency measures. A group of dancers and musicians decide to take a stand against this repression. In seventy-seven minutes, through hip hop, tap, and contemporary dance driven by a five piece rock band, they sing and dance as though it were the last night of their lives Ö because it will be.

The amazingly talented Siobhan has constructed a quilt out of coffee sleeves. The finished quilt is a traditional design and measures 4’3″ x 5’6″. She used close to 200 used coffee sleeves. About 80% came from Starbucks. Reduce, recycle, reuse.

I guess the main point is the reduce part right? Reduce your waste. Siobhan collected 200 coffee sleeves from coworkers in a couple of weeks. I admit the recyle and reuse part of the project is very cool, but I’m taking my own mug down to the coffee shop today.

If you want to see more of the coffee-sleeve quilt, check out Flickr.com or if you live in Vancouver the quilt is on display at the Seamrippers Quilt Show.

Seamrippers Quilt Show
March 3 to 18, 2006
436 W. Pender Street
seamrippers.ca
604-689-7326

From the press release: The Quilt Show is a collection of various textile pieces that expand from the traditional notions of quilt making and the one of a kind hand-made object.Using these notions artists explore ideas such as: gentrification, cultural identity, queerness, hairdos and geometry.

As my friend John says, “it was a week from hell.”

Actually it wasn’t too hellish, it’s just that my dear friend is moving back to London, UK. I’m happy that she’ll be happy but I’m sad that I’ll be sad.

So for the sake of tossing down a blog post and moving quickly into the weekend, here’s a round up of the very interesting things going on in Canadian publishing.

Atwood’s LongPen
Margaret Atwood demos the LongPen at the London Book Fair. The LongPen is Atwood’s invention, which lets authors autograph books long distance. She’ll demonstrate at the fair by signing upstairs a book that is downstairs. Then her pen will cross the Atlantic and autograph a book at the Book Shelf in Guelph. Very cool. If anyone attends the event, please take photos.

That guy Craig Ferguson
Craig Ferguson, host of the Late Late Show has written a book. I’ve just finished reading an advance copy of his novel Between the Bridge and the River. Absolutely hilarious and quite beautiful. Craig Ferguson is obviously a smart guy. The clever and slapstick humour that works on The Late Late Show is present in the book, but at times I thought he was channeling Gabriel Garcia Marquez.

The story is about two friends and two brothers. The friends are both Scottish and they’ve since grown up. One has become a late night tv evangelist, who gets blow jobs before he goes on camera to preach the word of the Lord. The other is a fuddy-duddy who’s just learned that he’s chronically ill. He decides to commit suicide in style, ends up in Paris, falls deeply and madly in love–which is where many of the most beautiful passages of writing are in the book–and, well, I won’t tell you if he goes or not.

The brothers of the story are also evangelists, but they start out in Hollywood. The sexually perverted brother is the talented brother’s agent. Things go horribly wrong, as they often do, but they find redemption in tv evangelism, and happen to invite the Scottish religious guy to one of their conventions.

Ferguson pokes fun at the Scottish, Catholics, Protestants, terrorists, Hollywood, religious fanatics, and pretty much everyone in the first chapter. Definitely one of my top reads of the year. It’s suppose to arrive mid-April but you can pre-order on Amazon.

New consumer website for independent bookstores
BookManager, which is an inventory system for many Canadian independent booksellers, is now offering bookstores an online presence, bookmanager.com. It’s a group website. About 50 stores have created pages. Customers can look up books and their availability, find info on local stores and place orders. I haven’t tried it out yet, but I think anything independents can do to “get in the game” is great. Maybe they should all come to the SFU Summer Workshop in New Media.

Boyden brings home the gold
Joseph Boyden won the Writers’ Trust fiction honour on Wednesday, cbc.ca article. The prize is $15,000. James just finished reading his novel Three-Day Road. It was actually my copy, but I haven’t had a chance to read it yet, which is shameful considering that I’ve met Joseph several times in the last 2 years.

That, my friends, is this week’s snapshot of Canadian publishing.

Get your sinning done today, tomorrow is Lent.

Today is Fat Tuesday, also known as Mardi Gras. In days of old, today was the last day of indulgence before Lent (Ash Wednesday). Fat Tuesday is the day to eat fish, meat, milk, eggs, butter, and sweets. As a good school girl I recall being asked to give up one of these things for Lent. I think I also had to be nice to my brother.

But Lent is tomorrow, today is about all the fats.

In pre-Christian times, celebrations at this time of year honoured Bacchus (or Dionysus), he’s the booze god, and widely celebrated during Carnival.

I like this idea of Carnival. When I was in Colombia in 1997, I decided that my dream vacation would be to sail around to all the Caribbean islands celebrating carnival. Each island stages separate events so you could easily follow Carnival from one island to the next. Quite the tour, non?

So today get fat on doughnuts, pancakes and anything with a sweet filling. I recommend custard, jelly, or chocolate. But pancakes are the kicker–butter, eggs and milk. And definitely have some wine.

Are you a geek with good fashion sense? Do you covet the laptop bag more than the laptop (only slightly more though, ok)?

These designs are pretty great: a keyboard inside a tablecloth, usb-drives in bracelets and cuffs.

I’m a fan of the usb leather bracelet.

Stylishly geeky.

http://www.toniawelter.de/snw_5_tidytippist.htm