PuSh International Performing Arts Festival wraps up 14th Edition Securing Vancouver’s Place as a Global Arts Hotspot

Festival Looks Toward 15^th Anniversary Following Historic Year

The 14th annual PuSh International Performing Arts Festival took place January 16 to February 4, 2018 at venues across Vancouver and, for the first time, in New Westminster. The festival closes a successful year furthering its reputation of presenting groundbreaking live performing arts experiences from around the world.

Artists hailing from Australia, Belgium, Canada, England, Germany, Italy, Ireland, Mexico, the Netherlands, Taiwan and the US descended on the city to speak, perform, enlighten and engage in dialogue as part of the 2018 PuSh Festival. More than 17,500 Vancouverites and visitors were in attendance at more than 150 performances and events over the 20 days of the Festival. In addition, 176 delegates from Canada and abroad participated in the annual PuSh Assembly’s Industry Series Week, attending performances, creative pitches on new shows, roundtables on sector trends and innovation, and the PushOFF platform of tour-ready shows.

Coming off a jam-packed three weeks, PuSh Festival Artistic and Executive Director Norman Amour reflected, “I’m not one to compare one edition of the Festival to the next, but in light of the works presented in 2018, many long in development, immense in scale and ambition, technically demanding, intellectually rigorous, and all thematically compelling, the PuSh Festival outdid itself this time. We find ourselves in a precarious political, environmental and social moment. In response, artists are creating works to invoke much-needed empathy—impassioned works that connect us to the world at large, to each other, and to the issues at hand. Such performance offerings were in abundance at PuSh—from Inside/Out to King Arthur’s Night, from MDLSX to The Eternal Tides—drawing audiences in droves, while affirming our Festival as one of Canada’s, and indeed the world’s, most noteworthy performing arts events.”

The 2018 Festival was a monumental success in its entirety; however, several standouts left a lasting impression with audiences and critics. The one-night dance/rock show Some Hope for the Bastards kicked things off. Montreal’s Frédérick Gravel electrified the crowd with this show, which was co-commissioned by the PuSh Festival, setting an exhilarating tone for the following three weeks. At The Cultch, this year’s Spotlight on Ireland suite provided encounters with cutting-edge works from the Emerald Isle: Dublin Oldschool, I’m Not Here, and Reassembled, Slightly Askew.

For the first time, the edgy, late-night Club PuSh series came to New Westminster patrons as part of a proud partnership with the Anvil Centre. This also marked the first time Club PuSh was presented at two venues simultaneously; the showcase continued at its Vancouver location at The Fox Cabaret on Main Street.