Concerts, cultural spectacles slated for Vancouver's 2009 Cultural Olympiad

An all-star concert this February featuring Sarah McLachlan, Joel Plaskett and the Alberta Ballet will help kick-off the countdown to Vancouver's Winter Olympics, organizers of Canada's Cultural Olympiad announced on Tuesday.

The concert is among the high-profile highlights slated for 2009's six-week Cultural Olympiad, the second of three multi-disciplinary arts and culture festivals leading up to the 2010 Olympics and Paralympic Games.

On Tuesday, the quartet of aerial dance artists twirling on ropes high up in the Vancouver Organizing Committee (VANOC)building's atrium offered a brief taste of the more than 400 free and ticketed performances, exhibits and spectacles scheduled for the 2009 edition.

Featuring both Canadian and international acts and held across dozens of venues throughout the Games regions in B.C., this year's Cultural Olympiad runs Feb. 1 through March 21.

"Culture and creativity are important to Canada so ours is the first Olympic Winter Games to have a multi-year program of arts commissions, festivals, events and outreach activities programs that will extend regionally and nationally in a variety of ways," Burke Taylor, VANOC's vice-president of culture and celebrations, said Tuesday.

Concert will be countdown kick-off

One of the anchor events will be the Feb. 12 concert at Vancouver's Queen Elizabeth Theatre officially marking the one-year countdown to the start of the Games.

Along with performances by Vancouver-based pop singer McLaughlan and Dartmouth's alt-rock, singer-songwriter Plaskett, the program will also include young Ontario violinist Adrian Anantawan and dancers from the Alberta Ballet in an excerpt of Joni Mitchell and Jean Grand-Maitre's acclaimed ballet The Fiddle and Drum. Tickets go on sale Nov. 1.

Exhibits during the festival will include the artwork of Canadian photographer Edward Burtynsky, Chinese avant-garde performance photographers, Canada's top ice sculptors and Haisla artist Lyle Wilson.

Though these events will take place in B.C., organizers plan to extend the Cultural Olympiad's reach by launching The Canada CODE, a collaborative art project calling on all Canadians to submit text, images and other materials online to help create a contemporary portrait of the country.

"Canadians have made themselves the most cabled, wired, broadband-enabled people in the world. So CODE is going to tap into all that capacity, engaging the creative energy and collaborative spirit of Canadians from coast to coast to coast," said Rae Hull, director of the initiative.

The digital creation will be unveiled as part of the Olympics in 2010.

Organizers estimate that more than 150,000 people took part in the approximately 300 events that comprised the 2008 Cultural Olympiad festivities earlier this year. The program will eventually culminate with a 60-day event edition in 2010 (from Jan. 22 to March 21), which will begin before and run throughout Vancouver's Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games.