Results tagged “luminato”

PARTIES: Well, the Luminato Festival of Arts & Creativity closes out today with a big finale at Harbourfront in celebration of Cirque du Soleil’s twenty-fifth anniversary. Mini performance events will be happening at both Harbourfront and the Toronto Music Garden from 1:30 p.m. onwards, with a free shuttle boat running between the two locations (the last shuttle is at 8 p.m.). The day ends with the grand finale at 9 p.m. Keep in mind that there’ll be plenty of tasty $5 food dishes available at Harbourfront all day, too. Harbourfront Centre (235 Queens Quay West), 1:30–9 p.m., FREE.

ANIMALS: Love-struck pooches will have the opportunity to declare their undying canine love today at the first-ever Woofstock Doggie Weddings High Tea. Doggie couples dressed in wedding attire will receive a certificate of “muttrimony” upon celebration of their “commuttment.” The event is the official launch for next week’s Woofstock, North America’s largest festival for dogs and dog lovers. Proceeds from today’s fundraiser go towards the Pet Trust Fund in support of canine cancer research. Le Meridian King Edward Hotel (37 King Street East), 2–4 p.m., FREE ($10 donation suggested). Space is still available, online registration preferred: info@woofstock.ca

Urban Planner is Torontoist's daily guide to what's on in Toronto, published every morning. If you have an event you'd like considered, email all of its details—as well as images, if you've got any—to events@torontoist.com.

FESTIVAL: The big thing on everyone’s mind for the next two weeks will be Luminato. The festival, which we previewed yesterday and will be covering throughout, launches with a free opening night party, where Randy Bachman will play a free concert. The question is, will he play “Taking Care of Business” now that it’s not the Great Canadian Tune? Yonge-Dundas Square, 7 p.m., FREE.

Summer festival season is about to begin in earnest, and kicking things off is that multi-disciplinary, multi-location, multi-day extravaganza known as Luminato. With everything from nine-hour theatrical epics to a giant red ball popping up where you may least expect it, Luminato is again sure to draw its share of fans and also its share of haters. (It's whimsical fun! It's heartlessly corporate! Stuff is free! Stuff is overpriced! Pick a point of view, and you're bound to find someone who shares it.) Ever your intrepid cultural emissaries, we'll be on the lookout for the wacky, the wonderful, and the just plain trying-too-hard.

As part of each hand as they are called, her Luminato project celebrating the history of Jewish life in Kensington Market, artist Reena Katz was to organize a game of Mah Jongg between seniors from the Baycrest Centre for Geriatric Care and grade eight students from Ryerson Community Public School. (Mah Jongg is "a game that originated in China, migrated west, and was popularized with North American Jewish women during the 1920s.")

Torontoist has learned that Luminato staff will be taking a 5% pay cut next year. In a phone call yesterday, Publicity Coordinator Daniel Davidzon confirmed that a few weeks ago the organization reluctantly decided that a wage reduction was necessary. The pay cut applies to all staff, including CEO Janice Price, and will likely be in effect until July 31, 2009 (the end of Luminato’s fiscal year)—though it appears that the organization is still hoping that the cuts can be reversed sooner than that. The move appears to be precautionary, an attempt to keep the books in good order, rather than a symptom of deeper troubles. As Davidzon explained it, Luminato feels such a step is necessary in the face of a worsening economic climate that is proving challenging for the arts community across the country. No further cost-cutting measures are currently being considered, however, and all programming and events are proceeding as planned.

          

The wheatpaste of Fathima Fahmy was the first to go up just over a month ago. Two stories tall, it stands on the side of a newly-vacant apartment building slated for demolition in the heart of Regent Park. Since then, ten other larger-than-life portraits of other residents like her—those living in the fleet of low-rise buildings that are to be torn down and built on top of as part of Toronto Community Housing's $1 billion Regent Park Revitalization project—have been installed, all eleven of them photographed, constructed, and put up by Dan Bergeron (Fauxreel).

This Saturday, June 14th, as part of Luminat'eau, join those crazy kids and Newmindspace for their annual bubble battle. The event is loosely based on the Dr. Seuss classic The Butter Battle Book, where each warring faction (butter side up and butter side down) brings larger and crazier contraptions to the wall that divides their nations until their mutual destruction is assured.

There are those of us whose parents started bringing us to the Dream in High Park when we were six, who have probably seen A Midsummer Night's Dream a half dozen times, studied it in school on a regular basis since grade five, and can probably recite Helena's "O, spite! O, Hell!" monologue from memory. We will not have any trouble understanding the RSC's production of Dream currently playing at Luminato. But for those of you who haven't brushed up on your Shakespeare, you might find the production a bit of a challenge—unless you're fluent in Tamil, Malayalam, Sinhalese, Hindi, Bengali, Marathi, and Sanskrit, that is. The multilingual production is a real treat for the initiated, but with only about fifty percent of the text spoken in the original English it's hard to know how easy it will be for the layfolk to understand.

Every weekday morning, bright and early, we feature a photo (or two) from a photographer in the Torontoist Flickr Pool. It's our way of giving the many excellent photographers in our pool the attention that they deserve.

Photo by king_frankenstein.

Even if you’re sick of hearing about war stories in the news, there’s no denying they can make for powerful drama, particularly when the story onstage is about those who tell those grim stories for a living.

Luminato is upon us, fair citizens. If you're wondering what to do, what to see, or what's Luminato?, Torontoist is here to play festival guide. We've randomly drawn carefully chosen ten must-not-miss events: one for each day of the city's massive annual "arts and creativity" smorgasbord, which runs from June 6–15. Our staff's picks are after the jump.

Photo of the Montreal edition of Mille Femmes from Galerie [sas]'s Picasa album. Consider the first editions of Toronto's two major multidisciplinary arts festivals: Nuit Blanche 2006 was a stunning success, a magical playground that revived the spirit of the blackout and provided a moving conclusion to Let's All Hate Toronto; Luminato 2007 was a mixed bag of highfalutin performances not attended by anyone you know (with the exception of the George F. Walker...

While events like Luminato and Nuit Blanche are fantastic, Toronto is sorely lacking in quality, long-term public art. Last April, Henk Hofstra created an "urban river" in Drachten, Holland. The Blue Road installation is an example of what mind-blowing urban public art can be. Featuring 1000 metres of road painted blue and the phrase "Water is Life" written in eight-metre-high letters across it, the Blue Road is reminiscent of the waterway that used to be...

Every weekday, we pick an image from the Torontoist Flickr Pool and feature it here on the site. It's our way to give the many excellent photographers in our pool the attention they deserve!

Last week, we asked Torontoist readers to submit their ideas for a Stephen King-esque plot, for a chance to win tickets to King's first public appearance in Canada ever (Friday night!), as well as a whole pile of books. Here are the winning plots.

As the Luminato Fest continues, two more George F. Walker plays open at the Factory. Escape from Happiness is the sequel to already-opened Better Living, while Tough! is another one of Walker's East End Plays, focusing on a different group of characters. The entire play, which is only about an hour and twenty minutes long, is composed of a single scene: a confrontation between three young people in a park. Tina knows Bobby cheated on her at a party, which makes her especially mad because she's pregnant with his child, something Bobby is about to discover. Tina brings her friend Jill along for back-up, who has a long-standing grudge against Bobby and could happily "kick him to death".

Each weekday morning, we pick a recent image from the Torontoist Flickr Pool and feature it here on the site. It's our way to give the many excellent photographers in our pool the attention they deserve!

Running from June 1–10, Luminato takes over our fair city, with over 100 events spanning just about everything arts-and-culture-related. As they boast on their website, "Luminato was created to bring Toronto's best to the world, and the world's best to Toronto." A noble goal, and one they seem to have accomplished: Leonard Cohen! Philip Glass! Uh...Stephen King! Dancers! Artists! An Art Boat! Many things!

As you might have heard, Stephen King is set to make his first official public appearance in Canada. Ever. He's showing up to receive a lifetime achievement award from the Canadian Booksellers Association on Friday June 8th, at 7:30 p.m., as part of Luminato and BOOKED!.

George F. Walker, one of the country's most prolific and most produced playwrights, not to mention the creator of the sadly defunct CBC drama This is Wonderland, hasn't written a play since 2000's controversial Heaven, and he claims he may never write one again. But that doesn't stop him from getting produced at Factory about every year. This year, as a part of the innaugural Luminato Festival, Factory will be producing three of his East End Plays—Better Living, a remount of last year's Escape from Happiness, its sequel, and a workshop production of Tough! with a cast of 12 multi-racial young actors.

Hold on to your horrors, scary story-lovers: Stephen King is scheduled to make his first official Canadian appearance to receive a life-time achievement award from the Canadian Booksellers Association. The event, to be held at the John Bassett Theatre at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre on Friday, June 8, will include an on-stage interview. The organizers say that tickets go on sale today (but as of 9 a.m. this morning, the website isn’t online). You can also order tickets by calling the Harbourfront Centre box office at 416-973-4000.

Following the success of Spamalot, another part of the Monty Python canon is about to be "lovingly ripped off". This time it's the British comedy troupe's 1979 film, The Life of Brian.

We know it's hot out there. It's so hot that last night was on record as the hottest night in Toronto ever. According to electricity companies we were just shy of the power record yesterday so keep up the good work everyone, don't do stupid things like blast your air conditioner and open your windows. Heck, try to avoid the A/C all together.