PuSh's Artistic Director, Gabrielle Martin, speaks with Mother Bee Gvasalia, Savannah Sutherland, Ihomehe ("Legs"), and Menace Gvasalia about The Motha' Kiki Ball, coming up at the 2026 PuSh Festival: February 7 at the Birdhouse.

Show Notes

Gabrielle and her guests discuss:

• How did Blackout Collective begin and what was that specific moment that compelled it?
• The significance and meaning of ballroom as gathering and performance
• Balancing competitive fire with fierce tenderness with honouring roots
• How chosen families show up, especially in ballroom
• How ballroom judges work and what they are looking for
• The stories that ballroom tells
• Waves of new talent entering the scene
• The challenge of learning technique vs. competing
• The Ballroom 101 Rapid Fire Round!

About The Motha' Kiki Ball

From vogue to runway, The Motha' Kiki Ball crowns motherhood as the origin story, legacy, and creative force behind Ballroom. Black Out, a collective centering Blackness in the local Kiki scene, leads this year's winter ball co-presented by PuSh and Van Vogue Jam. This Black History Month spectacular celebrates the power that gives life to cultures and movements. Expect looks that radiate iconic energy and a runway filled with matriarch moments.

About BlackOUT Collective

BlackOUT is a Vancouver-based Collective that centers Blackness within the Vancouver Kiki Ballroom scene. Our mission is to make Ballroom accessible to Black folks in Vancouver by creating entry points, fostering belonging and celebrating community. Since our inception in 2024, we've hosted several open sessions and produced "The Cookout Mini Kiki Ball", Vancouver's first Ball featuring an all Black production team and judging panel.

Land Acknowledgement

This conversation was recorded on the unceded, stolen and ancestral territories of the Coast Salish Peoples: the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish) and Səl̓ílwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh), colonially known as Vancouver.

Savannah Sutherland joined the conversation from Accra, also called Ga, Ghana.

It is our duty to establish right relations with the people on whose territories we live and work, and with the land itself.

Credits

PuSh Play is produced by Ben Charland and Tricia Knowles. Original music by Joseph Hirabayashi.

Show Transcript

PuSh's Artistic Director, Gabrielle Martin, speaks with Vanessa Goodman about WAIL, coming up at the 2026 PuSh Festival: January 26 and 27 at the Scotiabank Dance Centre.

Show Notes

Gabrielle and Vanessa discuss:

• Vanessa's current work and process on tour across the continent with BLOT
• The original impulses and images that inspired WAIL
• How the complexity becoming a parent today requires one to find joy in work
• What does it mean to navigate joy within community? How can joy be a regenerative force?
• The power of physiological change from performance
• How compression can be used in choreography
• The auditory and visual world of the piece
• The body as site between the individual and collective
• The meaning of collaboration and how to hold space for many voices

About WAIL

WAIL is a choreographic poem for our fractured moment.

Six performers move through a shifting landscape of sound, light, and breath, their bodies echoing the patterns and distortions of the natural world. Drawing from botanical forms and auditory illusion, the work becomes a living ecosystem where motion and vibration feed each other—fragile, unruly, and alive.

WAIL immerses audiences in a multi-sensory meditation on coexistence. Amid contrast and chaos, the work finds its rhythm in the act of collective joy: a wail that is both grief and celebration, a sound that gathers us back into the body of the world.

About Action at a Distance and Vanessa Goodman

Action at a Distance is based on the West Coast on the ancestral and unceded territories of the Coast Salish peoples, including the Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), Stó:lō, Səl̓ílwətaʔ/Selilwitulh (Tsleil-Waututh), and xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam) Nations. The company is led by Artistic Director Vanessa Goodman and Artistic Producer Hilary Maxwell. Their work carries meaning beyond aesthetics, using choreography as a means to explore liminality within humanity. This exploration questions the boundaries of the human experience, emphasizing the interconnectedness of bodies, technology, and the natural world.

Their choreographic practice weaves together generative movement and sonic embodiment, creating immersive performative environments that aim to expand notions of identity, post-humanism and agency. Through their work, they seek to cultivate intimacy between the body and its surroundings, examining how these relationships redefine what it means to be an individual in a rapidly changing world. The company challenges conventional forms of performative hierarchy through collaborative approaches, inviting varied voices to reshape narratives around corporeality and Existence.

Goodman has received several awards and honours for the Company's works, including The Iris Garland Emerging Choreographer Award (2013), The Yulanda M. Faris Scholarship (2017/18), The Chrystal Dance Prize (2019 & 2024), the Schultz Endowment from the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity (2019), The Isadora Award (2025) and participation in the "Space to Fail" program (2019/20) through Hyde Productions (NZ), Critical Path (AU), and The Dance Centre (CA). Longstanding collaborations include Graveyards and Gardens with Caroline Shaw, BLOT with Simona Deaconsecu, and multiple works with Loscil (Scott Morgan), Brady Marks, and James Proudfoot. Their works have toured Canada, the United States, Europe, and South America.

Land Acknowledgement

This conversation was recorded on the unceded, stolen and ancestral territories of the Coast Salish Peoples: the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish) and Səl̓ílwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh), colonially known as Vancouver.

Vanessa joined the conversation from Calgary, in the traditional territories of the peoples of Treaty 7, which include the Blackfoot Confederacy (comprised of the Siksika, the Piikani, and the Kainai First Nations), the Tsuut'ina First Nation, and the Stoney Nakoda (including Chiniki, Bearspaw, and Goodstoney First Nations).

It is our duty to establish right relations with the people on whose territories we live and work, and with the land itself.

Credits

PuSh Play is produced by Ben Charland and Tricia Knowles. Original music by Joseph Hirabayashi.

Show Transcript

PuSh's Artistic Director, Gabrielle Martin, speaks with Rainbow Chan about Rainbow Chan Live at the Dream Factory, coming up at the 2026 PuSh Festival: February 4 at 7:30pm at the Chinese Canadian Museum.

Show Notes

Gabrielle and Rainbow discuss:

• The unique collaboration and context of Rainbow Chan Live at the Dream Factory
• The influence of Cantonese pop on Rainbow's work
• Voice as both instrument and archive
• Processing grief through song as an individual and collective
• The original sparks of interest to perform these particular songs
• The category of ritual song and music
• The fusion of folk with pop and electronica, and how tradition and futurity animate the process
• How theatre, as opposed to other artforms, affects the way in which an audience reads what is onstage
• What's next for Rainbow Chan?

About Rainbow Chan Live at the Dream Factory

Rainbow Chan is a Hong Kong-Australian vocalist, producer, multi-instrumentalist, and interdisciplinary artist celebrated for her inventive blend of heartfelt melodies, textured electronic production, and culturally rich storytelling. Her sound—both tender and experimental—reflects on migration, identity, and the intimate politics of love and loss.

Presented for one night only inside the Chinese Canadian Museum's Dream Factory: Cantopop Mandopop 1980s-2000 exhibition, this special live performance unfolds on Ming Wong's Vast Ocean, Boundless Skies stage—an installation that reimagines the legacy of Cantopop through diasporic lenses.

Fusing Cantopop, electronic music, Chinese folk laments, and experimental sound, Chan uses live looping, electronics, saxophone, and voice to explore resilience, identity, and connection across generations.

Through this convergence of sound, space, and story, Chan creates a distinctive and contemporary musical experience—an evening where cultural memory, sonic experimentation, and performance meet. The performance will be followed by an open mic karaoke party hosted by Rainbow Chan.

About Rainbow Chan

Rainbow Chan is an award-winning vocalist, producer and multi-disciplinary artist. Her practice bridges popular music and contemporary visual arts, exploring themes of cultural representation, (mis)translation, matrilineal histories and diasporic heritage. Central to her work is the research and reimagining of women's oral traditions, particularly the fading bridal laments of Weitou women, Hong Kong's first settlers, to whom she has deep ancestral ties. Through pop music, performance and immersive installations, she translates these endangered songs into contemporary art forms, preserving their subversive feminist voices while reflecting on loss, resilience and solidarity. She is particularly interested in the power of ritual, song and performance as both a means of reclaiming agency and a living archive.

Land Acknowledgement

This conversation was recorded on the unceded, stolen and ancestral territories of the Coast Salish Peoples: the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish) and Səl̓ílwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh), colonially known as Vancouver.

Rainbow joined the conversation from the unceded territories of the Wurundjeri Woi-wurrung peoples of the Kulin Nation, in what is today called Australia.

It is our duty to establish right relations with the people on whose territories we live and work, and with the land itself.

Credits

PuSh Play is produced by Ben Charland and Tricia Knowles. Original music by Joseph Hirabayashi.

Show Transcript