DTES Heart of the City Festival returns, fostering connections and fresh perspectives
Attendees can enjoy various forms of art rooted in the Downtown Eastside community’s history until Nov. 10
The Prop Master's Dream is one of the performances featured in this year's DTES Heart of the City Festival. (Submitted)
The 21st annual Downtown Eastside (DTES) Heart of the City Festival is taking place until Nov. 10, featuring more than 100 events throughout the community and online.
The festival carries a rich history, rooted in decades of celebrating the DTES community, its stories, ancestral memory, cultural traditions, arts, and lived experiences.
“The festival emerged in 2004 following the huge success of the 2003 production of From The Heart of A City: The Downtown Eastside Community play,” Terry Hunter, executive artistic producer of the festival, wrote in an email statement to The Runner. “This play featured 80 local residents performing on stage, enacting out significant historical events from the community.”
The play had eight sold-out shows, each receiving a standing ovation, Hunter wrote.
“After the play was over, the question became — how do we carry forward the success and impact of the play? The answer — let’s do an annual festival dedicated to the residents of the Downtown Eastside, their culture, heritage, art forms, activism, and great stories about the people of our community.”
The festival’s theme this year, “Threads of Connection” reflects an understanding that the festival is a fabric of the community, weaved with threads of people, culture, heritage, stories, memories, and dreams.
Attendees can expect to experience various art forms including dance, theatre, spoken-word poetry, visual arts, and history walks, among other features. Participating artists range from professionals and “cultural treasures” to amateurs and community residents, Hunter wrote.
“A special event is The Prop Master’s Dream, contemporary Cantonese opera shedding light on the life of Gwan Wah-Kwan, a resident of the Downtown Eastside born of a Chinese father and Indigenous mother,” he wrote.
The opera show will take place on Saturday at Vancouver Playhouse at 2:00 and 7:30 pm. Today, a cultural sharing event is taking place at Carnegie Theatre at 7:00 pm to celebrate Dia de Muertos (Day of the Dead). The performance will feature La Llorona, a music, dance, and shadow puppet production, along with dancers from the Mexican dance group Calle Verde, Hunter wrote.
“The festival provides opportunities for the various neighbourhoods of the community, and the cultural groups of other communities, to share with each other their history and cultural practices,” Hunter wrote. “The festival fosters connection by building bridges and relationships between neighbourhoods, cultures, and communities.”
The festival also serves as an outlet for the community to express their true selves, history, and plans for the future, allowing attendees to see the community from a fresh perspective.
“Our community is so stigmatized and looked down upon by people from outside the community who only hear about one or two aspects of the community through the media. The festival provides an opportunity for the community to counter that negative perception and to help people see our community as a rich, vibrant, and caring community,” Hunter wrote.
“As a co-founder of the festival, the festival means everything to me. It is my heart. It’s a way that I have been able to be of service to the community. It is a way that I can help to build community through arts and culture.”
To learn more about the DTES Heart of the City Festival and to purchase tickets, visit www.heartofthecityfestival.com.
