Vancouver’s PuSh 2008 and the Phenomenon of Festivals

Abstract

Montreal and Toronto are arguably Canadian arts festival capitals, boasting heady and never-ending streams of performing arts, film, jazz, winter, literary, new music and ethnic festivals and cultural-tourist events. However, it may be instructive to look thousands of kilometres due west to examine the PuSh International Performing Arts Festival, located in the booming Pacific Rim and 2010 Olympic host city of Vancouver. Guided by executive director Norman Armour and co-founded with local theatre director Katrina Dunn, “the PuSh Festival engages and enriches audiences with adventurous contemporary performance … work that is visionary, genre-bending, startling, and original” (Press release). The organization’s October 2007 news release (“PuShing beyond the Borders”) and Web-site archives indicate that PuSh has grown exponentially in its six years. It now boasts a history consisting of two initial three-show seasons (2003—4) that morphed into festival formats in the last four years (2005—8), becoming an essential fixture on the Vancouver arts scene.