What’s Happening July 8 – 15
Published 1:30 am Thursday, July 8, 2021
Everybody dance now
This year’s Strawberry Festival will boast a day and evening full of music at its main stage and beverage garden, located at the Vashon Market IGA parking lot, from 12 p.m. to midnight on Saturday, July 17.
Vashon Events has put up a lineup of solo acts and bands to perform at the event, which is being hosted by the Vashon Chamber of Commerce.
The bill will start strong, with the Seattle band The Cumbieros filling the air with the high-octane brass and percussive sounds of Cumbia music, popular in Colombia and throughout South America, starting at noon. Local bluesman John Browne will play at 1:45 p.m., followed at 2:30 p.m. by Wild Rumors, a Fleetwood Mac cover band, from Seattle. The band Tres Huevos will play at 3:45 p.m.
Vashon favorites Saint Ophelia, Gregg Curry, Danny Newcomb and Tim Couldn’t Make It will follow those acts, each playing about one-hour sets starting at 4:30 p.m. As evening kicks in, festival-goers will be treated to music by Caitlin & Brent and JD Hobson, leading up to the headliner event: Publish the Quest, fronted by hometown music hero Jacob Bain, at 10:30 p.m.
Let’s talk about body image at VCA
Body image. Body shaming. Eating disorders. These are difficult issues commonly experienced by dancers and athletes pressured to conform to particular physical and aesthetic standards, and often affecting others who live in a culture focused on appearances.
Vashon Center for the Arts has collaborated with former professional ballerina Connie Flachs to present “Shaping Movement: An Embodied Conversation on Dance and Body Image” — an open and public conversation on these taboo topics with dancers and therapists designed to shed light on these cultural problems — the expectations and isolation, the deconstruction of damaging status quos and need for compassionate community — that play out in ballet, modern dance, hip hop, race, gender and sexuality.
The evening will include a panel discussion with Connie Flachs, Josh Spell, Monica Van Winkle, Noelle Price, Dani Tirrell, and Erica Lynette Edwards. The talk takes place at 7:30 p.m. Saturday, July 24, at VCA. For more information and tickets, visit vashoncenterforthearts.org.
UMO amps up for “Fail Better”
UMO Ensemble will present “Fail Better,” its critically acclaimed love letter to Samuel Beckett, as part of the first annual Vashon Theatre Fest. Performances will take place on July 22, 24 and 25, outdoors at Open Space for Arts & Community.
In the show, five archetypal Beckett characters tackle love, life, death, and “going on” in typical Beckett fashion: with humor, metaphor, stillness, and UMO’s trademark physicality. Their exploration takes them into the air on aerial ropes, balancing on a giant sculptural teeter-totter and reacting in a sonic world that represents the inside of Beckett’s head.
The NYC Fringe Festival described the show as follows: “All you really need to know about ‘Fail Better’ is that it is a lively and original production inspired by the work of Samuel Beckett, who is perhaps one of the most innovative 20th-century playwrights known for works that are minimalist, absurd, poetic, and that often combine tragedy and dark comedy in exploring what it means to be human.”
UMO’s production will be part of Vashon Repertory Theatre’s first annual Vashon Theatre Fest, taking place July 22 to 25 and July 29 to August 1, at mostly outdoor locations on Vashon. In addition to “Fail Better,” the festival includes Shakespeare’s “The Tempest,” “Woody Guthrie’s American Song,” “Bo-Nita” (an acclaimed one-woman show out of New York) and readings of original plays by Northwest regional playwrights.
Find out more and get tickets and passes at vashonrepertorytheatre.org.
