Consciousness of Streams Performance

Sep. 10th | 6PM – 8:30PM | Slocan Park

Consciousness of Streams weaves together Still Moon’s stories through movement and textiles.

Inspired by the land, Consciousness of Streams invites you to walk the landscape and notice its contours through a mesmerizing series of site-specific performances following the lost streams buried under the streets of the Renfrew-Collingwood neighbourhood. It brings to light the lost streams, circulatory system, and lifeblood of the area with a procession of dancers, stilt walkers, and lanterns – using textiles dyed with locally grown plants.

The first scene is brought to life at Renfrew Ravine Labyrinth where community movement artists interact with naturally dyed streamers. Consciousness of Streams is then led by musicians to Slocan Park’s Harvest Fair for a performance featuring aerial dance. Consciousness of Streams then joins the Lost Streams Parade, and culminates in an interdisciplinary performance at Collingwood Park.

The work involves interwoven artist-community collaboration and integrates Still Moon’s projects: Colour Me Local Dye Garden, Dyers’ Guild, and Weaving with Invasives to produce costumes and sustainable textile art. To develop the work, a series of skill-building workshops including stilt walking and movement were offered to connect and celebrate a rich collective identity.

Full Event Info

Choreographer

Consciousness of Streams is choreographed by professional movement, stilt artist, and longtime collaborator Isabelle Kirouac. Read Isabelle’s full bio here and learn about her past projects.

“I am very inspired by all of the community relationships built through this project, reflecting on the lost streams. What an incredible opportunity to learn from one another through creative and embodied experiences. It’s been a joy to witness some stilt-walker’s first steps, and spontaneous dances emerging like resurfacing streams.”

20th Anniversary Feature:

Consciousness of Streams

Event Location 1: Renfrew Ravine Labyrinth

Enjoy a walking meditation from 6:00 – 6:45 PM with musical accompaniment by the Quasimodals band.

At 6:50 PM, Consciousness of Streams commences. Dancers and community members unravel and move with hand-dyed streamers made by the Still Moon’s Dyers Guild. The piece is set to an original music score composed by Isaac Rosen-Purcell.

Event Location 2: Slocan Park

Musicians will guide us from the Labyrinth to the Harvest Fair at Slocan Park. There, the second scene of Consciousness of Streams featuring community stiliters and aerial movement will take place. At sunset, Consciousness of Streams will join the Lost Streams Parade and lead the audience along the lost streams route to Collingwood Park.

Event Location 3: Collingwood Park

Upon arrival at Collingwood Park the Coastal Wolfpack will share a closing ceremony. Consciousness of Streams, scene three, will bring the night to a close with an interdisciplinary finale featuring light and shadow play, stilters, hand-dyed banners and an interpretive story of the lost streams.

At the end of the evening folks have an opportunity to connect and reflect over a cup of hot chocolate. We invite you to join any section of the performance or move alongside the performers from start to finish.

Event Details:

Event Date: September 10th, 2022
Event Time: 6 – 8:30 PM
Event Location: Renfrew Ravine Labyrinth, Slocan Park, Collingwood Park
Cost: Free
Ages: All Ages

Accessibility:

There are chairs at Slocan Park and Collingwood Park. Gender universal washrooms are available at Slocan Park, but there are no public washrooms available at Collingwood Park.

Transportation:

The Renfrew Ravine Labyrinth and Slocan Park are a short walk from the 29th Avenue Skytrain Station and bus loop. Event locations can be found using Google Maps. Bus numbers #16, 29, 33 take you to 29th Avenue Station. If you are only joining us at Collingwood Park the closest intersection is Joyce St at Euclid Ave.

This event takes place on the unceded territories of xʷməθkwəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish) and Səl̓ílwətaʔ/Selilwitulh (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations.

Still Suite by Treesong Performance

Co-Produced with Still Moon Arts Society

Sep. 17th | 7:30PM – 8:30PM | Renfrew Community Park

Created specially for the Moon Festival’s 20th anniversary Streamside Lantern Installation, Still Suite will give the audience a beautiful and mysterious immersive walk-through experience of light, sound, lyric and movement that celebrates the holistic “one-ness” of life-energy and environment.

The piece begins and ends with musicians & dancers scattered throughout the Renfrew Ravine, working individually but connected in spirit by a web of call & response song. It climaxes with the performers coming together in an exciting focused expression of life struggling to exist and flourish in a dance of common, but not always aligned, purpose.

This site-specific work features eight of Vancouver’s finest musicians and eight movement artists illuminated by lanterns in the magical Ravine.

Full Event Info

About Treesong

Treesong is an ensemble created by Brad Muirhead to showcase his compositions for David Gowman’s fantastic hand-crafted “Fuhorns, utilizing their unique tone-colours and pitch structures. In addition to the Treesong instrumentalists (pictured above) Brian Harding, Adrian Smith, Greg Farrugia, David Gownman & Brad muirhead on Fuhorns and Nick Apivor, Gary Wildeman on percussion, this performance also features Stll Moon Artistic Director Carmen Rosen on vocals. Read more about Treesong here.

Still Suite is co-produced by Brad Muirhead and Still Moon Arts Society with assistance from The Canada Council.

Composer / Lyricist / Musical Director

Brad Muirhead: professional trombonist, composer, educator, project instigator, community music facilitator, hobby audio recording & video producer, visual artist, philosopher and opinionator. Read his full bio here.

Instrument Maker

David Gowman: Fuhorn player, instrument maker, entertainer, David Gowman is the Canadian artist called Mr. Fire-Man.

Choreographer

The piece is choreographed by Dr. Carolina Bergonzoni: a dance artist, a curious human, a somatic educator and practitioner, an overthinker, a coffee drinker, and a dog lover who is challenging the labels of “professional” and “community-engaged” art making and facilitating. Learn more about Carolina’s practice here.

Treesong Musicians

Carmen Rosen (Vocals)
Greg Farrugia, Adrian Smith, Brian Harding, David Gowman, Brad Muirhead (Fuhorns)
Nick Apivor, Gary Wildeman (Percussion)

Treesong Community Dancers

Bayleigh Marelj, Maya Graves-Bacchus, Bryony Ollier, Charlotta Prigent, Lynda Sing, Tannaz Dtehrani

Brad Muirhead, a long-term creative contributor to the Moon Festival since 2001. As a bass-trombone and tuba player is well known to audiences across Canada and Europe for his powerful sound and inventive improvising and has been involved in the Vancouver music scene as a composer / arranger, recording artist, interdisciplinary collaboration artist / project instigator, music educator, arts administrator, community music facilitator and music copyist for over 40 years. He has performed, recorded and toured with his own groups Primal Orbit and Brass Roots as well as Vancouver’s three most important large jazz ensembles: Hugh Fraser’s VEJI, the NOW Orchestra and the Hard Rubber Orchestra, and also other creative groups like Colin MacDonald’s “Pocket Orchestra”. He is also known to occasionally instigate and compose for large-scale, unusual creative projects such as “Trisurgence” – a three-culture collaboration with Chinese and First nations Musicians, and “What’s The Big Idea” – a soundscape street-music minimalist piece for 22 musicians, and Idverb – combining instrumental improv, poetry and computer processing. His current original projects as leader include his original music outlet “The Brad Muirhead Quartet” which released it’s debut CD “OLD / IN / OUT / NEW” in 2017, his Chinese-jazz group “Koan” (since 2006). His most recent project “Treesong” features his compositions for hand-crafted wooden horns by artist David Gowman.

His career has been widely varied in content and direction with lots of overlap / crossover between all the different areas of work, which has kept things interesting – there has always been something going on, getting up & running, being planned and being dreamed-up, from new creative ensembles to new works for existing groups, interdisciplinary projects and new artistic practices. In recent years he has also (casually) stepped beyond artistic creation into the world of documentation – recording, mixing & mastering audio, and most recently video editing / production, which he finds quite interesting and seems to have a knack for.

Check out more at https://www.bradmuirhead.com/.

20th Anniversary Feature:

Still Suite by Treesong

Showcased at the Streamside Lantern Installation, Still Suite uses light, sound, lyric and movement to celebrate the holistic “one-ness” of life-energy and environment. Expect an immersive and experiential walk through during this year’s Streamside Lantern Installation as dancers move amongst you and hand carved wooden “Fu”horns sonify the space. Elements of audience participation can be expected.

Event Details:

Event Date: September 17th, 2022
Event Time: 7:30 – 8:15 PM
Event Location: Renfrew Community Park
Cost: Free
Ages: All Ages

Accessibility:

There is a wheelchair accessible path; use of washrooms requires stairs unless assisted by a volunteer.

Transportation:

There are three entry points into the Streamside Installation. Please see the sitemap for details.

Entry 1 – is down a set of stairs on the westside of the Renfrew Community Centre.
Entry 2 – is through the Renfrew Community Park field and is wheelchair accessible – you can access it from Nootka St at E 20th Ave.
Entry 3 – is from the parking lot on Renfrew St at E 21st Ave, there is a set of stairs.

We recommend walking, taking the bus (route #16 and #25 will take you 1 minute to entrance points), riding your bike, or carpooling when possible. There is limited parking. Event location can be found using Google Maps.

This event takes place on the unceded territories of xʷməθkwəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish) and Səl̓ílwətaʔ/Selilwitulh (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations.

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