The first Powell Street Festival was held in 1977 to celebrate the Centennial of the first Japanese immigrant to Canada. Eventually, we hope to present information about all of the past Festivals. For now, here are the highlights of some of the more recent Festivals.

34th Annual Powell Street Festival
Saturday, July 31st and Sunday, August 1st, 2010
11:30 am to 7 pm
Oppenheimer Park (400 block Powell Street)

Download the schedule (1.1 MB) and the full programme (3.8 MB) as printed in The Bulletin.

The Powell Street Festival is heading home! After last year’ one-year relocation to Woodland Park, the Powell Street Festival will return to its traditional home in the newly-renovated Oppenheimer Park. Taking inspiration from the Japanese notion of Koen debut, or Park debut, whereupon neighbourhood toddlers are introduced to their local community, the 34th Annual Powell Street Festival celebrates the idea of neighbourhood, youth, children, the park and its landscape.

Festival Weekend Highlights

Cross-disciplinary collaboration by Toronto-based contemporary dancer Andrea Nann and Vancouver theatre artist Maiko Bae Yamamoto • World premiere of the Podplay Ground Zero, a downloadable audio theatre piece (320 kbps or 128 kbps) by NeWorld Theatre (Vancouver) • Performances by local bluegrass band Shout!WhiteDragon, butoh innovators Kokoro Dance (Vancouver), New York singer Yoko Kikuchi, Katari Taiko (Vancouver) with Mario Zetina, and many more • Screening of award-winning video art from Japan

Zero Waste + Bike Valet

Join Powell Street Festival’s 3rd year with its Zero Waste Challenge! In addition to providing a free Bicycle Valet to all Festival attendees, the Festival serves all food and drinks sold on site in compostable or recyclable containers. Compost and recycle at the Festival and help us reduce our garbage output by over 80%!

The Bicycle Valet service is a free, safe and secure solution for event goers. It allows attendees to store all non-motorized transportation while they enjoy an event without the worry of where they lock or store their bike.

It’s quite simple. Patrons sign a claim check, give us their bike and keep the stub. When they want to leave, they bring back the stub and their bike/belongings are returned. For more info, go to www.thebicyclevalet.com.

This Year’s Theme

Park/Koen

Returning to its traditional home in Oppenheimer Park after a one-year relocation, Powell Street Festival Society (PSFS) will celebrate its return and its 34th year with the theme of Park/Koen. As important places of congregation and community, Oppenheimer Park is a source of escape, celebration and rejuvenation. Heralding the city-directed and community-based renovation of Oppenheimer Park, PSFS looks back to its grassroots origins and to its future as a community-based organization and presenter of challenging experimental arts. Like Oppenheimer Park where nature meets cultivation, PSFS’ 34th year celebrates the confluence between the wilder side of artistic expression as well as the more refined traditional forms of art.

Oppenheimer Park is inseparable from the organization’s 1970s birth. It is the locus of the formerly-named Powell Grounds, and is the centre of Vancouver’s early 20th century Japantown, once a busy gathering site for baseball games and big community gatherings. 2010 aims to re-entrench the stable roots of the past and build strong local connections, reflecting on this newly seeded and reborn environment. Taking inspiration from the Japanese notion of Koen debut, or Park debut, whereupon neighbourhood toddlers are introduced to their local community, PSFS will focus particularly on the idea of neighbourhood, youth, children, the park and its landscape itself. The season’s many shades of Park themed events begins with the artistic collaboration between Andrea Nann and Maiko Bae Yamamoto who perform a new interdisciplinary work set in the historic Vancouver Japanese Language School (located nearby the Park), a new series of youth-directed and community-based theatrical PodPlays set in the Oppenheimer area by NeWorld Theatre, performances by local bluegrass band Shout!WhiteDragon, and the experimental performance and public interactive exchange by Tochka Factory. This series of events planned for 2010 will bring in new artists and create many opportunities for creative collaborations.

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33rd Annual Powell Street Festival
Migration
Saturday, August 1st and Sunday, August 2nd, 2009
Woodland Park (Woodland and Adanac)

Download the 2009 Festival schedule (pdf) by clicking here. To download a pdf of the entire program, click here.

Some highlights of the 33rd annual Powell Street Festival included: Singing and drumming collaboration between Sawagi Taiko and First Nations performance group Tiqilap • Contemporary chamber music by Tiresias • Martial arts demonstrations • Screening of Empty Orchestra: video collaborations between karaoke singers and new media artists • Performances by Vancouver Asian Canadian Theatre, dancer Aretha Aoki (BC/USA), Kokoro Dance (Vancouver), Performance duo Elfin Saddle (Montreal), and contemporary taiko performer Kenny Endo (USA) • Documentaries by Tadashi Nakamura • Literary readings by Asian Canadian writers • Historical Walking Tours

The Powell Street Festival had free bicycle parking in 2009!
The Bicycle Valet service is a free, safe and secure solution for event goers. It allows attendees to store all non-motorized transportation while they enjoy an event without the worry of where they lock or store their bike.

It’s quite simple. Patrons sign a claim check, give us their bike and keep the stub. When they want to leave, they bring back the stub and their bike/belongings are returned. For more info go to www.thebicyclevalet.com.

2009 Festival Theme
MIGRATION: Change & Exchange

In 2009, the Powell Street Festival explores the concept of Migration as it is expressed within Japanese Canadian identity. For the 33rd festival, the theme of Migration is negotiated on both the macro and micro levels. Allowing for the expression of the Japanese Canadian cross-cultural migratory experience and the fusion that has resulted, Migration also explores intergenerational and interdisciplinary exchange. It presents a temporal and spatial migration back to Japanese hereditary traditions as well as the exploration of contemporary media, technology, arts and cultures, and the new trajectories that they provide.

Cultural change is so often a result of migration—people adapting to foreign lands and communities. Although the migratory experience can heighten the hold on hereditary traditions, culture itself is by no means static; it is in a constant state of evolution. However, the speed of cultural evolution has been compounded by the rise of globalization and the subsequent decay of geographical barriers. People, ideas, and cultural expressions have greater mobility. The resulting exchanges have born forth fusions of seemingly disparate cultures.

In ancient times, Japan borrowed many things from their neighbour China, including written language, pottery, martial arts, and religion. However, in the contemporary era, Japan has extended its absorption of culture beyond Asian borders. Renowned for their contemporary anime and manga, the Japanese have borne this distinctive aesthetic by fusing Japanese style with Western animation and comics that traversed the waters post WWII. Whereas some of these cultural elements are now perceived as distinctly Japanese, the Powell Street Festival redefines these ideas of the traditional and the contemporary. Bridging a multiplicity of cultures, the Powell Street Festival demarcates a fusion territory of hybrid Japanese Canadian identity.

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32nd Annual Powell Street Festival
Sensu
Saturday, August 2nd and Sunday, August 3rd, 2008
Oppenheimer Park (400 block of Powell Street)

Download the 2008 Festival schedule (pdf) by clicking here

Some highlights of the 32nd annual Powell Street Festival included: a 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

2008 Festival Theme
Sensu

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.

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2007 Powell Street Festival
Play/Playful
Saturday, August 4th & Sunday, August 5th, 2007
Oppenheimer Park (400 block of Powell Street)

Download the 2007 Festival schedule (pdf) by clicking here.

poster by Lynda Nakashima

Some highlights of the 31st annual Powell Street Festival included: new work by festival favourites Kokoro Dance; Theatre performance of Skim, written and directed by Mariko Tamaki (Toronto) and performed by Julie Tamiko Manning (Montreal); Visual Arts group exhibit, Between what’s said and unsaid group exhibit, featuring artists from Canada, USA and Japan; public sculpture exhibition by 3rd generation Nikkei artist Michael Tora Speier entitled Broken Only at Sky: a Magnification of 20th Century Japanese Diaspora & Community Journey; music performances by Yuji Nakajima, Keiko Devaux, and special guest from Japan Koichi Makigami; the usual exciting array of taiko by Katari Taiko, Sawagi Taiko, Chibi Taiko, Yuaikai Ryukyu Taiko, and new to this year, Jodaiko, a superstar group led by taiko master from California Tiffany Tamaribuchi; and the annual YUGO Hip Hop Fusion event.

We are also presented, for the first time, a Japanese film festival Kibatsu Cinema in partnership with the Pacific Cinematheque, as a lead-up event to festival weekend.

2007 Festival Theme
Play/playful

Play/playful: experimentation, risk taking, fall and recover, process, children, fun, social engagement, imagination, creativity, opposite of finished or complete, opposite of “work”, curiosity, light-hearted, opposite of serious

The 2007 Powell Street Festival’s theme was Play, a celebration of artistic creativity and possibilities and an exciting and inspirational follow-up to 2006, the Powell Street Festival’s 30th anniversary year that focused more on history and community. Programming explored all facets of this concept from play as recreation or amusement, such as children’s play, to an aesthetic tradition of play that is grounded in an intent toward artistic discovery. The tie that binds various forms of play was a commitment to curiosity and creativity. Artistic process, innovative forms of audience development and engagement, providing more space for children’s and youth events, and integrating children and youth into adult-dominated areas of the festival was prioritized.

Since its culturally reclaiming inception, Powell Street Festival has continued to flourish as a veritable hothouse of dialogues, social inquiries, remembered traditions, artistic fusions and urban contrasts. New and old stories and experiences span generations and have come together here for more than three decades. It is a place of not ideal, but real, community activity, creative invention and intervention, social investigation and rediscovered history. PSF has always been committed to openly creative processes that leave room for further exploration and larger definitions of us as (hyphenated) Canadians.

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2006 Powell Street Festival
Memory Streams
Saturday, August 5th & Sunday, August 6th, 2006
Oppenheimer Park (400 block of Powell Street)

Download the 2006 Festival schedule (pdf) by clicking here.

Out of town artists included Kyo Maclear (Ontario, literary), Terry Watada (Ontario, theatre), Derek Nishikawa (Ontario, music), Miki Nishida (Quebec, dance), Linda Turnbull (Alberta, dance), Mu Daiko (USA, music), Yamini Nayer (USA, media arts), Yasue Maetake (USA, media arts), Christian Nguyen (USA, media arts), Maria Dumlao (USA, media arts), Kazuko Hohki (Japan, performance) and Angharrad Davies (England, music).

Local artists included Hiromi Goto, Roy Miki, Assaulted Fish, Dharmakasa, Sawagi Taiko, Katari Taiko, Baco Ohama, Rafael Tsuchida, Maya Ersan, Karin Lee, Aretha Aoki, Katherine Shozawa, LOUD, World Tea Party, Kokoro Dance and more.

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2005 Powell Street Festival
Hip’pu Pop’pu, celebrating contemporary Japanese Canadian culture
Saturday, July 30th & Sunday, July 31st, 2005
Oppenheimer Park (400 block of Powell Street)

Download the 2005 Festival schedule (pdf) by clicking here.

Out of town artists included Kim Moritsugu (Ontario, literary), Gerry Shikatani (Ontario, literary), Mariko Tanabe (Quebec, dance), Aya Takada (Japan, visual arts), Yuki Iwata (Japan, media arts), Tadasu Takamine (Japan, media arts) and musicians Nobukazu Takemura (Kyoto, Japan) and Suppamicropanchop (Tokyo, Japan).

Local artists included Fred Wah, Hiromi Goto, Henry Tsang, Kirsten Forkert, Kokoro Dance, Theatre Replacement, Hiro and Maiko, Craig Takeuchi, Katari Taiko, LOUD, Alcvin Ramos, Assaulted Fish, Vancouver Opera, Rafael Tsuchida, Vanessa Kwan, and more.

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