Cynthia Ramsay – Page 28

Poetry and painting flourish

Pnina Granirer launches her new book, Garden of Words, at the Cherie Smith JCC Jewish Book Festival Feb. 9. (photo from JBF)

“Unexpected and unplanned, like small gifts offered by a kind friend, poems have been forming in my head ever since I was a child,” writes Pnina Granirer in her most recent book, Garden of Words. “Unexpected” is the perfect word for Granirer, who continually reinvents her artistic self.

Garden of Words is a beautiful mix of Granirer’s painted “words” and her written ones, her more distant past and recent experiences, including the loss of her life-partner of more than 65 years, in August 2020. The book is dedicated to Eddy and the final poem (“Goodbye”) and image (“Eddy Studying During Power Outage,” 1957, charcoal on paper) are of him.

This collection is a very personal work that shows Granirer’s powers of observation, both in her paintings and drawings, as well as in her poetry. It also shows her strength via her willingness to be vulnerable.

photo - Pnina Granirer — Pnina Granirer *(photo courtesy JBF)*

Two poems are part of the book’s foreword. The first, explains Granirer, who was born in Romania, “expresses the joy and happiness of a 10-year-old when on August 23, 1944, the Soviet Red Army entered our town, on the day that the cattle cars were waiting at the train station to take us away to the concentration camps. It had been a narrow escape, indeed!” The second is the title poem, in which Granirer notes that she is a painter, “I speak with paint and brush / my words are written / with colour and with line.” But, she recognizes the power of words, their ability to “conjure a Universe”: “I should so like to plant / a garden of words / in my field of colours // and watch them grow.”

Garden of Words has six sections: Sea and Stones; Pandemic; Dancers; Memories of Spain; This and That; and Closure. Her poems are short, concisely capturing the ephemerality of life – not even stones are permanent, the ebb and flow of water covers and exposes them, reshapes them, while they absorb past lives (fossils) and form sculptures. Stones offer inspiration and company to Granirer, who listens to their “quiet whispering.”

While all of the paintings Granirer has selected for this book interact wonderfully with her poems, reinforcing their themes, particularly powerful is the interplay between the poems about COVID-19 and artworks that had, of course, other meanings when they were created years ago. The new poem “All Together Now,” which starts, “This novel enemy is democratic. // In its indifference / all prey is equal,” is followed by the 2008 painting “Utopia – All Together Now,” which features four people dancing within a diamond-shaped boundary. One dancer’s head and their left foot cross the barrier. With dancing as one of the activities that has been restricted during the pandemic and the fact that we’ve all had to create bubbles (diamonds?) within which we can socialize safely, this probably once-joyous painting takes on a more sombre joy.

There are also sparks of sombre humour in various poems, including “Visit with El Greco” and “City Woman.” And the fear is palpable and relatable in the prose poem “Grenada,” which includes the stark reflection: “Five hundred years after the Inquisition, the burnings and autos-da-fé are pushed out of memory, conveniently forgotten, but the ceremonies persist; the dark past is not taught in Spanish schools. It has been turned into an Easter celebration, a parade, a fun event.” But, for Granirer, the crowds are ominous, evoking images of the Inquisition: “I am a Jew and it is coming for me. I am a Muslim and I am afraid. I am a Black woman and here is the KKK coming. I am terrified. The sight of those pointed hoods unleashes a flood of emotion I did not know I was capable of. My anxiety is close to panic.”

There are happier reflections. “Pas-de-deux,” for example, describes two men, each flying their own kite, but close together: “They leap / they dance / they bend and kneel / they sway from side to side / and turn as one.” When the men and their kites finish their dance, they receive “scattered applause from the small gathered crowd.”

At age 86, Granirer continues to create in new and meaningful ways. She launches her new book at the Cherie Smith JCC Jewish Book Festival on Feb. 9, 1 p.m. Visit jccgv.com/jewish-book-festival.

Poetic auto/biography superb

Lisa Richter, author of Nautilus and Bone, joins the Jewish Book Festival Feb. 7 (photo from Lisa Richter)

Nautilus and Bone: An Auto/biography in Poems by Toronto poet Lisa Richter – who takes part in the Cherie Smith JCC Jewish Book Festival on Feb. 7 – will send readers down many proverbial rabbit holes. They will want to know more about the writings and life of Yiddish poet and journalist Anna Margolin – not only to better understand Margolin, but to appreciate more fully Richter’s poetic biography of Margolin and her conversations with Margolin’s works.

Margolin is the pen name of Rosa Lebensboym, who was born in Brisk (now Brest, Belarus) in 1887. She immigrated to New York City in 1906, “spent time in London, Paris, Warsaw, Odessa and Palestine before eventually settling permanently in New York in 1913, where she died, in 1952.”

Says Richter: “I was enticed by this Russian-Jewish-American woman writing a hundred years ago about myth-making, roots, identity, alienation, gender fluidity, Eros and desire (at times unmistakably queer, arguably pansexual). Her poetry felt bold and subversive, even by modern standards: H.D. meets Patti Smith.”

Richter does not speak Yiddish, so has relied on Shirley Kumove’s Drunk from the Bitter Truth: The Poems of Anna Margolin, a translation of Margolin’s volume of poems, Lider (Poems), with a “thorough and comprehensive introduction to Margolin’s life and work.” Richter also accessed Margolin’s files at YIVO and read Reuben Iceland’s (Ayzland’s) memoir, From Our Springtime: Literary Memoirs and Portraits of Yiddish New York, as well as other source material.

Richter discusses her many reasons for feeling connected to Margolin, including that, as Lebensboym adopted the name Margolin upon arrival in New York, Richter’s maternal great-grandfather, born Samuel Margolin, “changed his surname to the more Russian-sounding Lapitsky to avoid antisemitism when he immigrated to Montreal as a young man in 1903.”

Richter writes, “I like to imagine him meeting Miss Rosa Lebensboym. In my imagination, he passes his old birth name to her, much in the way one would pass along a string of heirloom pearls to one’s daughter (though they would have been roughly the same age, both born in the 1880s).” Richter notes that the name Margolin and its variations come from the Hebrew margoliyot, meaning pearls.

The emotional and spiritual connections come through in Nautilus and Bone. Richter does not claim to explore every facet of Margolin’s life and work. She explains, “The persona I have enacted in these poems hovers on the periphery of my imagination, filtered through my own dreams, preoccupations, (dis)pleasures, experience. I try my best to give a lyric voice to the most essential, enduring aspects of the poet’s life and work as I see her, and to engage in conversation with those parts of myself that are most closely, most symbiotically intertwined with her story.”

And she does so in a wide variety of poetic forms, all of which she wields with great skill. Among the recognition the book has garnered are the Canadian Jewish Literary Award for Poetry and the National Jewish Book Award for Poetry (United States) – “the first time a Canadian poet has ever received this honour,” Richter shared with the Independent.

In Nautilus and Bone, most readers will encounter forms of poetry they’ve never encountered before. “A City at the Sea’s Mouth” is a homolinguistic translation (in this case, English to English). “Primeval Murderess Night Talks Back to Anna Margolin” is a Golden Shovel poem – the “end-words of each line make up the first two lines of Anna Margolin’s poem ‘Primeval Murderess Night,’” notes Richter, crediting the creation of the form to Terrance Hayes. And, as the name suggests, “Anna Margolin Cento” is a cento, in which a poem is composed of lines from other poets’ poems.

“A poem’s form and content are inextricably linked, in the same way that a particular dish can only be made or served in certain kinds of containers,” Richter told the Independent in an email interview. “The same raw dough can be shaped into dinner rolls, pretzels or challah bread – the way you present and shape the material will affect the way it’s consumed and experienced.

“In some cases,” she said, “the form came to me later (the prose poem form of ‘So Uncommonly Smart for a Girl,’ for example) after a traditional, lineated form didn’t seem to be working. In other cases, the form came first, and the poems later. For instance, the long sequence of sonnets at the end of the book became the vehicle for telling the love story of Anna Margolin and her final life-partner, the poet Reuben Ayzland, as the sonnet has a long and distinguished history of wrestling with matters of the heart.

“The process of homolinguistic translation, or ‘re-translating’ a poem from the same language, is a means of engaging/wrestling/ conversing with a source text, and keeping it alive by breathing new life into it, using fresh grammar, syntax and language. I see it as an act of homage and tribute.”

Some of the poems were written as early as 2017, said Richter, shortly after her first book – Closer to Where We Began – was published, but “the bulk of the poems were written over the course of a year-and-a-half, from 2019 to spring 2020,” she said. “The original manuscript was much more autobiographical, but once I started researching and writing the Margolin poems, it became clear that the book was to become ‘an auto/biography in poems,’ as the book is subtitled, and was much more about Anna Margolin than it was about me. I have to credit my editor at Frontenac House, Micheline Maylor, for her vision and encouragement for this project. Both she and George Elliott Clarke, my mentor at the Sage Hill Spring Poetry Colloquium, were extremely supportive.”

While Richter’s conversations with Lebensboym/Margolin left her with more questions than answers, Richter said, “I think that’s a good state of mind for a poet to live in. As Rilke famously put it in Letters to a Young Poet, ‘Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now.’ I don’t think I’ll ever be entirely ‘done’ with Anna/Rosa, but it’s not entirely up to me. For all I know, she’ll be with me for some time…. I would love to learn to read Yiddish someday so I could read and appreciate her work in its original form.”

As for what she hopes readers take away from the conversations, Richter said, “Mystery, uncertainty, history, complexity, ambiguity, ancestral lineage, eros/sensuality, mythmaking. But if a reader just finds one poem in the book that speaks to them, I’m happy.”

Richter will be joined Feb. 7, 6 p.m., by local translator Rachel Mines (Jonah Rosenfeld: The Rivals and Other Stories; see jewishindependent.ca/stories-that-explore-the-mind) in a discussion with moderator Faith Jones. Visit jccgv.com/jewish-book-festival.

Novels about love, art

Inspired by real people, Jai Chakrabarti and Michaela Carter have written novels that explore the Holocaust and its impacts. Their books also happen to share common themes. Notably, the power of art to change the world, and the power of love to change a person.

Chakrabarti (A Play for the End of the World) joins Gary Barwin (Nothing the Same, Everything Haunted: The Ballad of Motl the Cowboy) on Feb. 6 in a Cherie Smith JCC Jewish Book Festival event, moderated by Helen Pinsky, called Mythical Quests. Carter (Leonora in the Morning Light) and Meg Waite Clayton (The Postmistress of Paris) take part in the event Art and War on Feb. 9, moderated by Hope Forstenzer.

In Chakrabarti’s A Play for the End of the World, the quest is that of child survivor Jaryk Smith, who travels from New York to India in 1972 to collect the ashes of his best friend and fellow Holocaust survivor, Misha, who died of a heart attack. Misha had ventured to India to help a village mount a production of Rabindranath Tagore’s Dak Ghar (translated as “The Post Office”), which Jaryk and Misha had performed when they were under the care of Janusz Korczak (aka Pan Doktor by the children) in Warsaw in 1942.

While Jaryk, Misha and all the other characters are fictional, Korczak and Dak Ghar were very real. “The play is about a dying child living through his imagination while quarantined,” writes Chakrabarti in the author’s note. “Pan Doktor chose to stage the play to help his orphans reimagine ghetto life and to prepare them for what was to come.”

The Indian villagers are also being prepared for what is to come – they are under threat of expulsion, or worse, from the government; already, protesters have been imprisoned, even killed. The Indian professor promoting the play wants to bring international attention to their plight.

Tangled up in all this is Lucy, who Jaryk loves but abandons in New York when he hears about Misha’s death. One of the many choices Jaryk faces is whether he can accept the happiness that Lucy and life in general can offer him.

Happiness is a rare and difficult-to-achieve state in Carter’s novel, as well. The Leonora of the book’s title is artist Leonora Carrington, who was born in England in 1917 and died in Mexico in 2011. An unofficial part of the Surrealist movement (because women weren’t allowed), Carrington was an acclaimed painter and writer. Of her relationships, the most famed would be with fellow Surrealist Max Ernst, who was twice her age at their time of meeting.

“I was drawn to Leonora Carrington before I even knew who she was,” writes Carter in the author’s note. “Long intrigued by the Surrealist artists, by their playful take on creativity and their celebration of surprise and strangeness, I had set out, in 2013, to write a fictional story placed among them, set between the wars and with a young woman at its centre.”

It was only later that Carter, at the Tate Gallery, came across a piece by Carrington, as well as the book Leonora Carrington: Surrealism, Alchemy and Art by Susan L. Aberth. For months, Carter says, she resisted the idea of writing a novel, but “read everything about Leonora I could get my hands on, as well as everything available about Max and Peggy Guggenheim, who was, I realized, an integral part of their story.”

Ernst had many lovers, including Guggenheim, who helped him get to the United States, but Carter’s novel posits that Carrington was his true soulmate, and that he was Carrington’s. Their affair is interrupted by the Second World War, however, and, after we get to meet the couple in 1937, the novel mainly alternates between Carrington’s story from that point and Ernst’s from 1940, as he is trying to escape from France. While the two met in London, they moved to Paris – Ernst first (Carrington’s father apparently had a hand in Ernst’s work being declared “the product of an immoral mind,” which was an arrestable offence at the time in London), then Carrington.

Leonora in the Morning Light – which is named after a painting Ernst made of Carrington – takes readers to 1943, by which time Ernst is in Arizona and Carrington is in Mexico; both married to other people.

“During her 94 years on this earth, she created thousands of magical, mystical works of art – drawings, paintings, statues, masks, plays, short stories and her masterful novel, The Hearing Trumpet,” writes Carter of Carrington. “She was also an eco-feminist who fervently believed in the innate rights of all individuals – of humans, animals, plants and the earth itself.”

Visit jccgv.com/jewish-book-festival for the full festival lineup and tickets.

Beauty amid harshness

Rachel Rose, left, and Ami Sands Brodoff take part in the Cherie Smith JCC Jewish Book Festival on Feb. 8.

None of us knows what lies ahead. We might think we do, but a lack of awareness one moment can have tragic impacts, mental or physical illness can overtake us, and our actions and reactions can hurt ourselves and others, whether harm is intended or not. Control is a fiction. And two recently published short story collections that will be featured at the Cherie Smith JCC Jewish Book Festival on Feb. 8 explore that fact with tales that should make most of us feel grateful for the relative boringness of our lives.

Poet Rachel Rose’s debut novel, The Octopus Has Three Hearts, presents a series of unconventional characters in life-challenging situations difficult to imagine oneself in and yet portraying familiar emotions. The characters in Ami Sands Brodoff’s The Sleep of Apples will be easier for many readers to recognize in themselves, but they are also a diverse group of people for whom living is more of a task than a pleasure. In both collections, instances of uncomplicated joy, love and connection are rare. Nevertheless, they leave one feeling melancholically appreciative of the incomparable value of life, and acutely mindful of its fragile nature.

Rose’s stories are explicitly linked by the animals with whom her people interact, from dogs to rats to pigs to parrots and others, including, of course, an octopus. The title story centres around a polyamorous relationship, the narrator husband, his wife (who is a biologist at an aquarium) and one of his wife’s partners trying to find an octopus who’s escaped their tank under the biologist’s watch. The animal’s attributes – intelligence, fluidity, ambiguity, etc. – have obvious symbolic meaning not only within this particular chapter but the collection as a whole; similarly with the other animals that figure into Rose’s narratives.

The Octopus Has Three Hearts was longlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize, and Rose is no stranger to awards and recognition for her writing. She is the poet laureate emerita of Vancouver for good reason. She writes with succinct and oft-times detailed brutality, with touches of dark humour, and with much insight into humanity. Elements of her characters – whether they be ex-cons, cheating spouses, or people who just made a terrible mistake – are within all of us to some degree and our world would probably be a better place if we confronted these aspects of ourselves, instead of burying them or pretending they don’t exist.

Similar themes appear in The Sleep of Apples, a more overtly Jewish compilation. Rather than animals linking the chapters, the people are related or connected in some way to one another. Miri’s Bubbe Zelda dies in the first story and, right away, loss, guilt, love, identity, tradition – throughout the book, no matter the characters’ gender, sexuality, age, upbringing, relationship and friendship choices, career path, they must deal with these and other basic elements of existence. Death is always present. But so, too, is the will to live, to forgive, and to care for oneself and for others.

It is interesting to think of the creative process and how people come up with stories that are out of the ordinary yet resonate. Some of the language and situations in these short stories will shock and discomfort readers. Many of the characters will not resemble people most of us regularly encounter. But, ideally, if we’re willing, they will open our minds in a way that will help us navigate the real world more thoughtfully and with more compassion.

The Cherie Smith JCC Jewish Book Festival is online only this year. For the full lineup of authors, visit jccgv.com/jewish-book-festival.

Living well with dying

Lap of Honour: A No Fear Guide to Living Well with Dying by Jewish community member Gaby Eirew and Dr. Pippa Hawley is not a new book – it was self-published in 2019 – but its subject matter is timeless. And, after almost two years of the pandemic, many of us have perhaps contemplated the fragility of our existence more than we otherwise would have. While the book talks about what we can do to live well with dying once we are diagnosed with a terminal illness, it’s probably better to read it before that happens, if we have the opportunity, as we’ll have other things to contend with at that point.

Being prepared for something generally reduces our anxiety about that something, no matter what it is – even death.

“When you have been diagnosed with an illness (or someone close to you has) you enter a rather unusual time,” write Eirew and Hawley. “Life’s finishing line might be drawing nearer, but you are still very much alive. This is a time of huge opportunity for warmth, connection and honesty. There are unknowns and inevitably there will be fears, yet once you have a sense of what to expect, fears can be much more manageable, and the personal growth often described by people in this situation can be maximized. There may be difficult conversations ahead, but if these are tackled with honesty and kindness, they can be uplifting.”

Eirew is a counselor and educator, and she created the Recordmenow app, which they recommend in the book as a way to leave messages for your loved ones – you record answers to questions that were derived from interviews of 100 people under the age of 16 who had lost a parent; questions the kids wished their parent had answered for them.

Hawley, a clinical professor and division head at the University of British Columbia, is a pioneer in palliative care, having founded several programs and models of care. She was the founder, for example, of the Bucket List Festival, which was a workshop for people facing end-of-life issues to meet others who were going through similar experiences and has been adapted to other scenarios.

The title of the book comes from the “finishing line” metaphor: “Some runners stop at the finish line. Others take their time, grab a flag, cheer with the crowd and feel the love back. They do a lap of honour, recognizing everything that brought them to this moment, all the events in their life and all the people who are key to them.”

The book has 16 chapters, some written by Hawley, some by Eirew. They touch upon numerous subjects, starting with the process of being diagnosed and receiving a prognosis, or a “best guess as to what will happen to an average person with your condition.” Despite its inherent uncertainty, you might want this prediction because it gives you an idea of what you might want to prioritize.

There are chapters on facing the unknown; on how to tell other people, including children, that you’re ill; on deciding on home, hospital or hospice care; on caring for the person caring for you; on health insurance and the costs that you might face; on celebrating your life; on accessing support services and groups; and more. In the chapter on what you should take into account if you decide to take that trip of a lifetime, to travel with an illness, Hawley highlights “a recurring theme in this book: let people help you.”

While the bulk of the work will still be up to you to do, Lap of Honour discusses almost everything, it seems, that you – and those who love you – will be feeling if you find yourself in this position. And it offers ways for you to “live your life to the very end … in the way that feels right for you.”

For more information, visit lapofhonourbook.com.

Four solos and a duet

Livona Ellis, left, and Rebecca Margolick, right, perform together Dec. 17 and 18 at Scotiabank Dance Centre. (photo by Faviola Perez)

Next weekend, choreographers and dancers Livona Ellis and Rebecca Margolick will première their first collaboration, a duet called Fortress. The Dec. 17 and 18 performances at the Scotiabank Dance Centre also feature four solo works.

Ellis performs Unmoved, “a response to the idea of overcoming the limitations we place on ourselves,” and Margolick’s solo Bunker draws “on themes of memory and the shared history of previous generations of women.” The other two solo pieces were revived last season specifically for them: Peter Bingham’s Woman Walking (away) (1997), danced by Ellis, and Allen Kaeja’s Trace Elements (2000), performed by Margolick. (See jewishindependent.ca/albert-solos-reimagined.)

Both dancers have had the chance to perform for live audiences recently and both have been touring – New York-based Margolick internationally with her own work and locally based Ellis with Ballet BC, for audiences in Ottawa and Montreal.

“From these past two years of experiencing how quickly it can be taken away and experiencing how deeply I miss it when it’s gone, performing has a renewed sense of urgency and importance for me,” Margolick told the Independent. “I’m so excited to perform for a live audience here in Vancouver, especially because last year, when we were about to do this show for a live audience, on the day of the show, we had to switch to livestream only. A lot of energy has been built in this show over the past three years, and I’m looking forward to being able to share it live.”

While Margolick and Ellis have known each other for a long time, Fortress is their first duet together.

“Livona has always been one of the best dancers and performers I know. We trained at Arts Umbrella together all through high school, but, since then, we hadn’t danced together, until now. So much of collaboration happens outside of the studio and so, in a way, I feel like through our friendship and conversations over the past number of years, the work and ideas were already starting to form and it felt natural to transition to a studio together.

“At the time we decided to work together, I had been creating a solo titled Harbour, which was about my grandmother and my relationship to her both in life and death. One day, Livona and I had a conversation about it and she began talking about her grandmother. I was moved by this, and this conversation naturally spiraled into how we’ve started to see our mothers and grandmothers differently; how we see their influence on us; our desires to become mothers one day, being in our 30s now; how dance has changed for us, etc. The conversation was vibrant and honest and there’s a lot of history and love between us and I just asked if she wanted to create together, and she said yes.”

Ellis added, “One of the silver linings about the pandemic is that we both found ourselves in Vancouver at the same time…. I have always admired Rebecca’s work from afar but we’ve never been in the same place long enough to even begin to think about a collaboration. She was working on Harbour and we started speaking about our family and our grandmothers. This sparked the inspiration for Fortress. We were both doing a lot of reflecting during our various lockdowns and quarantines and found we were thinking a lot about who we are as artists and as women. How does our matriarchal lineage affect who we are today?

“We both feel like we are in a moment of change or transformation,” Ellis continued. “We can feel our experience settling in and grounding us in a way that allows us to move forward into the next chapter of our careers. This felt like the perfect jumping off point to create a duet.”

The pair started creating that work this past August 2021, with a residency hosted by the B.C. Movement Arts Society, rehearsing at the Athletic Hall in Sointula. “We are now working with composer Ivan Shopov from Bulgaria to develop the music, and Mimi Abrahams to develop the lighting,” said Margolick.

For Margolick, while both Bunker and Trace Elements haven’t seen any changes choreographically, “as time goes on, and as I evolve, they naturally do as well.”

“Especially for Trace Elements,” she explained, “it’s been a journey since I began working on it with Allen Kaeja. I started to learn more about Jewish history and specifically Jewish leftist and Jewish resistance history, both in the U.S. and Europe. Specifically, in Trace Elements, there is a spirit of resistance and remembrance in the work, countering the text we hear out loud, text of German propaganda and generational indifference to the history of the Holocaust. In that, I think about resistance fighters, countering the narrative that Jews went quietly towards death – they didn’t. That is a history we’re not often told of, and it’s been a part of my Jewish education to learn that history. The work is really spiritual for me and every time I perform it, I feel the spirit of those who fought and those who keep fighting and inspire me to as well.

“More recently,” she said, “I’ve been learning about Jewish women activists and fighters, especially women like Hannah Senesh, Faye Schulman, Bella Abzug, Emma Goldman, Anna Sokolow and others. I can’t really explain into words how this knowledge affects my performance, but I feel it, and it gives me a sense of grounding and inspiration.”

Margolick highlighted the Jewish Women’s Archive and Judy Batalion’s book The Light of Days: The Untold Story of Women Resistance Fighters in Hitler’s Ghettos as resources.

Bunker is also steeped in research. While she premièred the full-length version of the piece (titled Bunker + Vault, which runs 35 minutes) a few weeks ago in San José, Costa Rica, the December performances will include only the first 10 minutes of the work.

“A part of my research for this piece included looking through the archives of the Clara de Hirsch Home for Working Girls at the 92nd Street Y from the late-1800s to mid-1900s,” said Margolick. “The Clara de Hirsch Home was a place where young, poor, mostly Jewish immigrant women were housed and supported with educational resources as they found jobs and worked towards being able to support themselves. These archives were records kept by the staff, with observations and notes about the women who resided there. These observations gave me a window into the lives of the women who lived there, ranging from extreme hardship, repression, mental health issues, Jewish culture, camaraderie, acts of extreme kindness and on and on. Some of these women informed the movements, and spirit of resilience and care in the work.”

Fortress + Four Solos is presented by the Dance Centre and B.C. Movement Arts Dec. 17, 8 p.m., and Dec. 18, 1 p.m. and 8 p.m. For tickets, visit thedancecentre.ca.

A lifelong love of performing

Left to right, the Hot Mammas are Mary Ella Young, Julie Brown, Georgina Arntzen. (photo by Dee Lippingwell)

The Hot Mammas are busy this holiday season – and year round. With three albums to their credit, they perform at venues ranging from jazz clubs to shopping malls. Readers can next see them at Robson Square Skating Rink on Dec. 15, and then at Water Street Café Dec. 18.

One of the holiday songs the group performs is “Mamma Julie’s Hanukkah Song,” so dubbed by Georgina Arntzen and Mary Ella Young because the third member of the Hot Mammas, Julie Brown, wrote it, and “too many songs are called ‘The Hanukkah Song’ or ‘Festival of Lights.’” (A video of it can be found via facebook.com/thehotmammas.)

Brown’s Jewish heritage is Ashkenazi. “My maternal grandfather, who I’m named after (Julius Cohen), was a rabbi,” she told the Independent. “My father always followed our traditions. My mother was a phenomenal cook and it’s because of her I’m able to make latkes, matzo balls, knishes, chicken soup, etc. When she didn’t want me to understand something she and her sisters were talking about over the phone, she’d suddenly switch from English to Yiddish. That’s where and how I picked up some fun expressions, which I use to this day.”

Born and raised in Montreal, Brown said she has been performing music since she could walk.

“My older, late, great brother Martin Overland was the founding member of the Canadian folk group the Raftsmen,” she said. “Your readers may recall the song ‘Something to Sing About,’ which was one of their hits. Martin had perfect pitch and the voice of an angel. He was also a terrific guitarist and accordionist. Eleven years my senior, we would sing together in harmony when I was a very young child. I still recall performing ‘Buttons and Bows’ in front of a roomful of relatives and friends.

“When the opportunity arose as a 10-year-old to actually sing on camera, I jumped at the chance. The Montreal kids show was called Small Fry Frolics and there I was with my cousin Shirley singing the Everly Brothers’ ‘Bye Bye Love’! At 15, I joined a rock band, while singing lead as Carmen in high school.

“The singing/performing didn’t stop at teacher’s college either,” she added. “McGill’s Macdonald College offered a two-year teaching diploma program at the time and, much to my delight, also had yearly talent shows.”

During her teaching days, Brown brought her ukulele to class. “The kids were as crazy about the Beatles as I was and we sang our buttinsky’s off to start the day,” she said.

While at university, Brown performed in stage plays and film. She recalled working on a movie directed by John Huston, which featured Sophia Loren – “and I was fortunate enough to garner a wee speaking role when Ms. Loren walked over to a table of background performers of which I was one, and asked me a question. I wasn’t supposed to answer her as a silent on-camera person but spontaneously blurted out a comment because I didn’t want to be rude. (Out of my peripheral vision, I noticed John Huston smacking his forehead.) And that was how I got my first ACTRA permit! Even after moving out to Vancouver and doing radio full time, I still continued to audition for film, TV and did a lot of voice work. In fact, I was the Telus voice for nearly 15 years – ‘We’re sorry, the number you have dialed is not in order. Please hang up and try your call again. Thank you, from Telus.’ That was me and one of 40 or so prompts I did for them.”

Brown left Montreal after the Front de libération du Québec “raised its ugly head in Quebec” and the Parti Québécois was in power.

“My child came home in tears from school with a notice that all English-speaking children had to be educated in French the following year,” she explained. “French didn’t come easy to my son but it was more than that. We lived in Canada, or so I thought. Stop signs had Nazi slogans scrawled across them. Shop windows in the English and Jewish communities were smashed and vandalized. An elderly Jewish woman who couldn’t speak French and wanted to order flowers for a friend was disgustingly treated over the phone because she was trying to place her order in English. The clerk hung up on her.

“As a teaching friend once said to me, if you say, ‘ich bin a Yid,’ you get it from both sides. I still don’t think the rest of Canada realized just how dangerous and revolting that regime was. Well, I did…. We came out to Vancouver for a visit and, with tears in his eyes, my son asked if we could move. And we did just that in 1978.”

Within a week, Brown got a job as a news broadcaster at CFMI, the sister station to CKNW.

“Not long after that, the program director allowed me to develop an interview show as well. I had been doing interviews at the Montreal radio station, along with news, so this was a huge relief to me. I love people and am a naturally curious person, so interviewing was, and still is, a good fit. My radio career blossomed here in Vancouver. Eventually, I co-wrote, co-produced and co-hosted Vancouver at Noon on KISS-FM for 11 years.”

In her more than two decades as a broadcaster, Brown interviewed hundreds of people, including Bob Hope, Paul Newman, Shirley MacLaine, Johnny Depp, Leonard Cohen, Eartha Kitt, Sarah McLachlan, Neil Diamond, Buffy Sainte-Marie, François Truffaut, Jackie Collins, Jim Byrnes, Rick Hansen and Dee Lippingwell.

For Brown, singing in choirs has always fed her soul, and it was in one of those choirs she met Arntzen and in another that they met Young. The Hot Mammas have been together now for 11 years.

“They are both family to me – my sisters,” said Brown. “All three of us love performing because we give to our audiences and they give back. Something magical and marvelous happens, no matter where we are or how many or how few people are in that audience. Synergy. Energy. Love. Music heals. It is the ‘universal language.’

“We sing songs we love. That’s how we choose our repertoire. Jazz, pop, rock ’n’ roll, folk, show tunes, you name it. We don’t just cover groups. We also write originals. In fact, one of our tunes is called ‘The Hot Mammas’ Song,’ and it’s quite amusing – all about being mothers who love their kids but have ‘traded in their aprons for a microphone.’”

For more, visit thehotmammas.com.

Vitaly Beckman at the Anvil

Vitaly Beckman will bring some of his best illusions yet to his Dec. 22 performance. (photo from eveningofwonders.com)

“I have been working very hard on some new illusions that I consider to be some of my best work yet,” Vitaly Beckman told the Independent. “I created a lot of my illusions during

no-show periods, a few of which I plan to include in the upcoming show.”

Vitaly: An Evening of Wonders returns to the stage on Dec. 22 at the Anvil Centre in New Westminster. While it is Beckman’s first live in-person performance in Canada since the pandemic started, he already has performed in theatres in the United States.

“It is certainly exciting to start doing live shows again – both performers and audiences could feel the void of live theatre during the past two years,” he said. “Life is really not the same without theatre.”

But there have been some benefits from the enforced hiatus.

“It is really helpful for the creative process to be able to focus on just one goal, and not be distracted by anything else for a period of time,” acknowledged Beckman. “So the lockdowns were helpful in that regard, as I managed to finish some really great illusions – one involves a sculpted bust, another involves an oil painting that comes to life and another, a matchbox. The latter I created while visiting my family in Israel. Actually, I’ve created a lot of my illusions in the past while vacationing there – it seems that the sunny place boosts my creativity.”

In addition to creating new material, Beckman has been busy in other ways, as well.

“It was certainly a long period to go without doing a single live show,” he said, “but I did a lot of magic for virtual performances and recorded an illusion for Penn & Teller’s Fool Us show, with a second appearance there.” (In that appearance, Beckman once again managed to fool the master illusionists.)

About returning to the stage, he said, “I was wondering if I would be ‘out of shape’ when performing again, however, from recent shows in the U.S., it was like riding a bike. I really enjoyed going back on stage and especially seeing how the audience left the theatre feeling uplifted and full of joy.”

For tickets to see Beckman on Dec. 22, at 7:30 p.m., click here.

Photographing the rebellious

Photographer Dina Goldstein and Myles Peterson, one of her model-collaborators, at Goldstein’s OG Punk exhibit, which is at the Polygon Gallery until Jan. 2. (photo by Dina Goldstein)

Walking past the Polygon Gallery in North Vancouver, it is hard not to be drawn to the photographs adorning the walls. The powerful portraits of self-described original – OG – punks were taken by Jewish community member Dina Goldstein, whose work is known for its thought-provoking social commentary.

The exhibit OG Punk is on display at the gallery until Jan. 2. Curated by Helga Pakassar, it comprises portraits of major figures from the punk rock scene in Vancouver and Victoria, which were taken by Goldstein over the past year. It is accompanied by an audio guide written by author Michael Turner.

Turner notes, “Goldstein gave her model-collaborators little instruction on what to bring to their shoot, apart from their ‘leathers.’ As for poses, these too were left to the model-collaborators, though it should be noted that the poses chosen for display, as portraits, were decided by Goldstein and exhibition curator Helga Pakasaar.”

“I met some of my model-collaborators by chance around my neighbourhood,” Goldstein told the Independent. “They are artists, musicians and punk devotees; most of them over 50, in punk regalia, hairdos, piercings and tattoos. I was excited by their stories and memories of their time as punks during the late ’70s, ’80s and into the ’90s. There was a vibrant punk scene in Vancouver and Victoria, with local bands, like DOA, incorporating activism and social commentary into their music.

“I have always been attracted to individualism – those who openly express themselves, are unconventional and live an authentic existence,” she said. “Some of the punks were ailing and not well. Some key figures had already passed. Most recently, the iconic Chi Pig, who passed a couple of years ago. I felt an urgency to document this generation of local punks. The project evolved into a series when I was able to collect a good amount of participants.”

Among the participants featured are Murray “The Cretin” Acton, Myles Peterson and wendythirteen. Goldstein sent out questionnaires to better understand the participants. Turner discusses some of the responses to the questions – such as “Has punk changed much since the 1980s?” and “Is punk here to stay?” – in the audio guide, the script of which can be found at mtwebsit.blogspot.com/2021/11/og-punk-2.html.

Though none of the model-collaborators to date are Jewish, Goldstein noted that she “will be continuing to photograph more people for this series in January.”

As for what punk means to her, Goldstein said, “I have always been rebellious. I am non-conventional and have a DIY mentality. My photography requires critical thinking and is a form of activism. My art has been described as satirical, irreverent and subversive.

“As one of my model-collaborators Lisa Jak said and I totally agree: ‘Anywhere and anytime that there is oppression, ignorance, intolerance and f–king stupidity – some punk will be there to question and fight it!’”

Head to Metro for Panto

Lucas Gregory, left, and Daniel Cardoso, in Metro Theatre’s Snow White: The Panto, which runs until Jan. 3. (photo by Nicol Spinola)

“A lot of musical theatre is inherently silly and fun but it still doesn’t reach the level of a holiday panto,” said Daniel Cardoso, who plays the Prince in Metro Theatre’s Snow White: The Panto. An annual treat for more than 35 years, this year’s panto, which runs until Jan. 3, has added significance.

“The past year and a bit has been challenging, not only for the arts community, but for everyone,” said Cardoso. “I got to go to an opening night of a show last week and part of me had forgotten the energy of getting to be in an audience and the joy that it brings to people to get to go to live theatre. I hope that we can do something similar with the panto and that we can act as another step in a return to normalcy.”

“I love being back with the theatre community after so much time away,” said fellow Jewish community member Kat Palmer, who is stage manager of the production. “I think most of the team feels this way. So often actors would be finished working their scenes but would choose to stay a little longer to watch and support their fellow cast members rehearse. There is this sense of returning to what was and that’s been quite moving.”

Things aren’t completely back to normal, of course, as COVID is still is concern.

Metro Theatre requires proof of vaccination, said Palmer. “Usually, pantos have lots of kids and an ensemble – our show has a much smaller cast with no children,” she said. “Everyone – cast, crew and staff – is fully vaccinated. We have taken our inspiration from film sets and have rapid COVID tests on hand. Usually, kids in the audience get to come up on stage – we can’t do that this year. Luckily, there are still lots of opportunities to participate by booing and cheering our demon and good fairy.”

For Palmer, Snow White was “always a favourite growing up – I think mostly because she had black hair like me. But the traditional story is a little dated. Erik Gow, our writer, has done a great job breathing new life into this script. In our version, Snow White is spunky, independent and doesn’t need a prince. She takes charge of her own destiny.”

That said, the prince is still an important part of the story, and it was Palmer who suggested Cardoso try out for the role.

“I’ve known about the Metro Theatre since I was in university and have often gone to see shows there, but the panto this year is the first time I’ve gotten to work there,” he said. “I came to Snow White when Kat Palmer … reached out and asked me to audition for it. I hadn’t initially planned on it but it was an opportunity to work with Chris and Kat and Suzanne again, so I’m glad I did.”

Chris Adams is the director of the production, while Suzanne Ouellette is the choreographer.

Cardoso is a graduate of the musical theatre program at Capilano University and has been working in theatre around Vancouver since 2011. “I was also lucky enough to work on Disney Cruise Line for a few years,” he said. “In 2016, I went back to school to become a registered massage therapist and have been doing that in addition to theatre since 2018.”

While not raised attending shul, Cardoso said his mother and her family are Jewish, “so it is definitely a part of me that I am proud of and something that I think I will always want to learn more about and explore. I know it sounds cliché, especially for a theatre performer, but getting to do a production of Fiddler on the Roof (Gateway, 2012) was a special experience for me in that I got to play in that story and feel like I belonged there instead of just pretending like it.”

For tickets to see Cardoso as the Prince that Snow White (played by Scotia Browner) may or may not need to help her, visit metrotheatre.com. The panto promises to be a “zany and uproariously funny family pantomime,” but that’s not the only reason to check it out.

“The theatre community is hurting right now. We are trying to stay afloat,” said Palmer. “After almost two years of silence, we need your laughter – we need your applause. Please come out and support local theatre.”