Cultural Olympiad 2010 First 20 Projects

A broken bottle of maple syrup in luggage arriving from Canada; the elegant, dramatic strokes of Chinese calligraphy; the romantic Old World sails of a junk gliding past the hulking steel of a modern ocean-going vessel.

These seemingly disparate visuals are magically weaved together by Québécois theatre visionary Robert Lepage in his latest stage offering The Blue Dragon/Le Dragon Bleu to illustrate the ongoing cultural clash between East and West and the dramatic changes in the lives of three people — two French-Canadian, one Chinese — thrust together in the rapidly changing world of modern-day Shanghai.

The play, performed in both French and English, is among the first 20 visual art, dance, theatrical, circus, and musical projects announced this month as part of the third and final edition of the Cultural Olympiad festivals, presented by Bell.

The Canadian and international projects, which include an extended version of Joni Mitchell’s ballet The Fiddle and The Drum, a massive hand-painted mural on a downtown Vancouver landmark by Taipei-based artist Michael Lin and a rare live performance of a monumental Mahler masterpiece by the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra, will start on January 22, 2010 and run throughout the Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games, concluding on March 21. The extensive program will include more than 600 ticketed and free performances and exhibitions in 50 venues in Metro Vancouver and British Columbia’s Sea to Sky corridor. Tickets are available now.

The Blue Dragon/Le Dragon Bleu, presented in partnership with the Simon Fraser University’s School for the Contemporary Arts, is the long-awaited sequel to Lepage’s epic series The Dragons’ Trilogy, which toured the world to critical acclaim for its rich story, use of multimedia elements and innovative stagecraft.

All those elements are present once again along with the themes of cultural heritage and identity as Lepage picks up the story of Quebec expat artist Pierre Lamontagne, the trilogy’s main character, who is middle-aged, unhappy and running an art gallery in China. He’s involved in an unstable relationship with a much younger woman named Xiao Ling, who’s wrestling with a potentially life-altering choice. At the same time, Pierre must also deal with the sudden arrival of an old lover from back home named Claire Forêt. Claire, a Montreal ad executive, is in China to tap into its booming economy and find new meaning in her life by adopting a baby.

Film clips, an innovative two-tiered stage and a snow storm add to the dazzling visual feast Lepage has concocted in The Blue Dragon/Le Dragon Bleu, which was co-commissioned by the Vancouver 2010 Cultural Olympiad.

The struggle with cultural identity and alienation is also poignantly explored in several other projects showcased by Cultural Olympiad 2010, including Where the Blood Mixes, written by emerging Canadian playwright Kevin Loring. The Playhouse Theatre Company production digs into the long buried and painful past of the Aboriginal residential school system and celebrates its survivors who struggled to cling to their culture, language and families in the face of staggering abuse and racism at church-run, government-funded schools.

Alienation is also a prominent theme in Globe Theatre’s production of Elephant Wake, a story of two Saskatchewan towns: a defunct francophone village and a neighbouring prosperous English township. Writer and performer Joey Tremblay shows the impact of the dying village through the eyes of a man angry about his own marginalized existence as he fights to keep his family and Prairie town relevant in a sea of sameness.

For more information and tickets to Cultural Olympiad 2010 events, visit vancouver2010.com/culturalolympiad.