32nd Annual Powell Street Festival

Saturday, August 2nd and Sunday, August 3rd, 2008
at OPPENHEIMER PARK, 400 block of Powell Street

Download this year’s schedule or check it out here. Please note that this schedule is subject to change without notice.

Taiko extravaganza featuring several Vancouver-based taiko groups and Jodaiko, featuring Tiffany Tamaribuchi from California • Martial arts demonstrations • New work by Kokoro Dance commemorating the 20th Anniversary of Japanese Canadian redress • Dress me up in your love, an intimate theatrical experience by Theatre Replacement • Dance performances by Hiromoto Ida/Ichigo Ichieh Dance (Nelson) and mask and mime artist Yayoi Hirano • Launch of pH6,a collection of haiku-inflected poetry by six Asian Canadian writers • Jazz by Yuji Nakajima’s Coracao Boemio • Historical Walking Tours of the Powell Street area • Animated shorts by Japanese Canadian filmmakers.

Sensu: An all-encompassing, modern Japanese word meaning “style,” derived from the English word “sense.” Also literally translated as traditional Japanese fan, a symbol of Japanese functional art.

Design is a process of relating. Whether to our time, our place, or each other, every moment of relating is an opportunity for interaction and with interaction, an opportunity for design. By attempting to describe how we live while defining our limitations, design allows us to form our ideas so that they may meet in a level field and be sculpted by those at play. Design from Japan is refined. A limitation of resources combined with an ongoing dialog between the tradition of craft and the chaos of play has created recognizable artefacts from centuries past to the present day. It is both a reaction to the world which has formed it as well as an exemplary method for living in that world.

Sensu will explore how on one side of the field stand the history, tradition, and limitations that have formed our past; and on the other side, stands the contemporary reaction to a modern climate of technology and excess. Where the two interact, stands opportunity. A focus on visual arts, media arts and performances that interact with other media will be evident in Sensu.

Festival goers carry the omikoshi (shrine) at the 2004 Powell Street Festival. Photo by Jon Elder.