“An AV experience set in your bathtub?”
“A ballroom showdown where intergalactic glam meets fierce competition?”
By now Jaysuits, you know that I seek out experiences that reshape perspectives and demand reflection. Fortunately the arts scene here in Vancouver isn’t contained to a singular medium. It’s a scene that thrives on the intersection of disciplines; where dance, theatre, music, installation, and performance art blur into something that defies easy categorization.
For over 20 years, PuSh has been a playground for bold, experimental storytelling, bringing in artists from around the world who challenge what we think performance can be.
“Did I just watch a play? Hear a concert? Wander through an art installation? Or all of the above?”
Given our short attention span these days , I’ve gone the other way and constructued this deep deep dive (because, let’s face it, this celebration deserves nothing less), and laid it all out in bite sized chunks for you (Bless my ❤️). Whether you’re here for the festival highlights, craving an in depth breakdown of All That Remains, or just skimming for the ticket deets, consider this your cheat sheet. Click, scroll, and immerse yourself in the sections below that call to you!
Buckle up Dorothy, we ain’t in Kansas anymore…
🌍 A Global Stage in Vancouver🌍
Since its founding in 2003, PuSh has evolved into one of Canada’s most important performing arts festivals, drawing local and international artists into conversation with Vancouver’s ever growing creative scene.
Building on
the legacy of founders Norman Armour and Katrina DunnWith with a mission to:
“Ignite curiosity and push artistic boundaries”
This is where the rules of storytelling are rewritten. Each year, the lineup features an eclectic mix of works that range from immersive site specific performances to multimedia installations, experimental dance, cutting-edge theatre, live music, and genre defying fusions of all the above.
2025’s edition saw artists from Canada, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Denmark, and beyond, each bringing performances that engage with history, identity, memory, and social transformation.
Beyond bringing world class performances to the city, PuSh has played a crucial role in expanding what Vancouver’s arts scene can be. In a city known for its strong traditional theatre culture, they’ve opened doors for contemporary and experimental works, creating a space where artists can innovate and challenge the norm.
It’s a festival that dares to ask big questions:
What does it mean to tell a story?
How does performance change when it spills beyond the stage?
Can art be immersive, unpredictable, and even confrontational?
What happens when audiences are invited not just to watch, but to feel, to question, to participate?
For artists, it’s a platform to showcase their most daring, genre-defying work.
For us Vancouverites, it’s a chance to step outside our comfort zones and engage with stories in ways we’ve never expected.
It’s the perfect stage for that kind of artistic reckoning. And it finally happened Jaysuits, I took the plunge into my first ever, and stepping in I knew I was in for something special. This year, I peronally experienced a performance that, while wildly different, struck at something deep:
All That Remains
Unfolding in a desolate, post-industrial landscape, where dance, debris, and disco bled into each other (well not disco, but I’m tring to get some rhythm goin myself). This performance explored wounds; both bodily and environmental.
PuSh Playbook: Must See Festival Picks
Now hold your horses Vancouverites! Before we dive headfirst into the visceral world of All That Remains, let’s take a moment to scope out some of the must see performances lighting up this year’s festival. Think of this as your “Jaysuit approved cheat sheet“: A quick guide to some of the most intriguing, boundary pushing works that I highly recommend checking out! From sci-fi ballroom extravaganzas to hauntingNordic dreamscapes and immersive sound experiences that turn your own bathtub into a theatre!
So, here’s an invitation to look deeper and embrace the unexpected. The performances. The themes. The visceral artistry. The moments that made me reflect and reimagine, pulling (heh) me out of my comfort zone in the best way possible.
🛁 THIRST TRAP: A Bathtub Sound Ritual for the End of the World🛁
No seats. No stage. Just..
YOU
Thirst Trap invites you to transform your own bathroom into an immersive audiovisual experience, a space where sound, candlelight, along with the elemental force of water converge into a guided exploration of climate change, consumerism, and the fragile balance between destruction and renewal. This is art that meets you where you are.
Literally
A performance for those who seek refuge and want to experience something quietly radical; by providing a carefully curated box of sustainably sourced materials, designed to heighten the experience. Each element; handmade and locally sourced, encourages reflection on how we consume, how we waste, and more importantly how water, the essence of life, is both a source of healing and a force of destruction.
This work is a spiritual sibling to Bodies, another performance by creator Amy Sharrocks, which invited participants to float in a swimming pool while experiencing an ambient soundscape. Both pieces challenge traditional notions of performance, making room for those who may feel uncomfortable in conventional arts venues.
“It’s a really interesting offer for me to bring two very different works [to the festival],” Young shares. “One that is … within the theatre space, and then this other piece that is for people to do by themselves, in case people are still shielding or for whatever reason they can’t come out.”
Why You Should Experience It:
✅ A rare, immersive solo experience that allows you to engage with art on your own terms
✅ A poetic yet urgent meditation on climate, capitalism, and the body
✅ A gentle but firm call to action—because the future isn’t written yet
So, run the bath, dim the lights, and prepare to sink into something deeply transformative.
⚔️ Dune Wars: Kiki Ball : A Sci-Fi Ballroom Spectacle at The Birdhouse⚔️
Get ready to step into the cosmos
Taking over 🌈The Birdhouse🌈; a sanctuary where Vancouver’s queer and trans community can breathe freely. The same space I explored in my previous post on its surreal, immersive drag shows and dance parties, Dune Wars Kiki Ball promises to merge ballroom culture with sci-fi spectacle in a battle of fashion & self-expression.
Inspired by Dune, this electrifying event transforms voguing into an intergalactic showdown, where warriors of style and movement compete in a cosmic clash of flavoured artistry and unapologetic presence.
Expect astro glam looks from Arrakis to Tatooine, legendary performers, and an atmosphere charged with energy as competitors (yes there’ll be cash prizes!) bringing their most futuristic, extravagant, and mind-bending interpretations of Dune’s universe (R.I.P David Lynch) to the stage.
💡 Why You Should Experience It:
✅ A celebration of Black, queer, and trans artistry in full force
✅ A rare chance to witness Vancouver’s underground ballroom scene
✅ A high-energy, unforgettable fusion of sci-fi, fashion, and dance
Missed my post on 🌈The Birdhouse🌈 and its immersive art world?
🏛️BOGOTÁ: Brutalism, Myth, and the Body in Motion🏛️
Some performances are watched
Others are felt
BOGOTÁ is shaping up to be one of the most visceral performances in this year’s lineup. A collision of raw, physical storytelling and Colombia’s complex history of political and spiritual transformation.
With a cast of nine powerhouse performers; through movement inspired by Colombia’s heritage and mythologies, this powerful work pulls us into a world of chaos and rebirth, inviting us to confront the ongoing cycles of destruction and renewal that shape our collective histories.
💡 Why You Should Experience It:
✅ A powerful blend of dance, theatre, and history
✅ A rare look at how choreography can embody resistance and resilience
✅ A physical and cinematic exploration of transformation
❄️ De Glace (From Ice) : A Frozen Dreamscape of Memory & Loss❄️
Step into a world where time stands still, where grief and memory swirl through a mist laden winter landscape, and where the bonds of friendship transcend even the mortal realm.
This is the world of De Glace. Based on Tarjei Vesaas’a hauntingly beautiful Nordic fable The Ice Palace (1963); brought to life by Théâtre la Seizième and the Vancouver International Children’s Festival
It follows the story of two young girls bound by an unbreakable connection. The performance shifts between reality and dream, presence and absence, as one of them vanishes into a glittering ice palace and the other is left searching for a memory that refuses to fade. It’s an atmospheric descent into an ice laden dream.
How you may ask?
🌫 Fog rolls across the stage, transforming it into a shifting, spectral world.
💡 Fractal lights shimmer and refract, mirroring the crystalline beauty of ice.
🎧 Audience members wear headphones, hearing whispers of the past, the howl of Arctic winds, and the cracking of frozen lakes.
The result?
A completely enveloping experience that pulls you into the mystery, being described by critics & audiences alike as “A dreamlike trance” (Le Devoir) that “exerts an undeniable spell.” With its delicate balance of quiet tension and emotional depth, it lingers in your mind long after the final snowfall fades.
💡 Why You Should Experience It:
✅ A visually stunning, atmospheric journey into a world suspended in time
✅ A deeply moving tale on love and the weight of loss. Perfect for the month of love
✅ An experience that feels like stepping inside a dream
While this festival offers a spectrum of performances that transport us from neon lit ballrooms to surreal frozen landscapes, what I peronally had the pleasure to expereince takes us somewhere entirely different; an invitation to linger in the spaces we often rush past.
🌀 All That Remains: When Bodies, Landscapes & Wounds Speak🌀
Have you evr witnessed something unsettling yet strangely beautiful?
This wasn’t just dance
It wasn’t just theatre
To understand All That Remains, you have to understand the artistic mind behind it. Italian-born, Denmark-based choreographer Mirko Guido masterfully explores the idea of wounds as injuries to be healed, as well as sites of transformation. Inspired by philosopherBayo Akomolafe’s notion that a wound is an invitation to slow down and reimagine, this work of art didn’t seek to “fix” anything. It asked us to feel and embrace rupture as a threshold to something new. To sit with the discomfort of fragility, to witness the body as both wounded and resilient, and to acknowledge that we, too, are shaped by the spaces we inhabit.
The SPACE?
A desolate, industrial wasteland, scattered with remnants of both human intervention and natural decay. A haunting reminder that we are as much a part of the world as the world is a part of us. Dancers moved through this environment not as performers in isolation but as beings intertwined with their surroundings. They crawled, folded, stretched, trembled, their bodies morphing between playfulness, resistance, exhaustion, and surrender.
All That Remains. Photos by Christoffer Brekne
At times, they clung to objects as if seeking refuge; at others, they wrestled with them, caught in a push-and-pull of destruction and renewal. But there were also moments where they simply stood, letting the space speak for itself. The work blurred the line between individual and environment, performer and landscape, reminding us that we are always in conversation with the world around us.
And then there was the sound. If movement was the body’s language, vocal vibrations and electronic resonance became its echo. Sound artist Fredrik Arsæus Nauckhoff captured the performers’ voices—eerie, guttural, primal—looping them into a shifting electronic soundscape that reverberated through the space. At times, the stage felt like a site of ritual, merged into something ancient and uncontainable.
Born and raised in Italy, Guido’s career has taken him across Europe. Performing with the Cullberg Ballet in Sweden and collaborating with some of the most boundary pushing choreographers in contemporary dance, including Crystal Pite, Mats Ek, Johan Inger, and Deborah Hay. With a Master’s degree in New Performative Practices from Stockholm University of the Arts, Guido has developed a signature approach to choreography that prioritizes co-existence over spectacle; revealing how the body interacts with its surroundings.
Throughout his career, Guido has sought unconventional spaces for performances. His previous works as you’ll see below; have unfolded in art galleries, museums, and public spaces, challenging the idea that performance must be contained within the proscenium.
His three-hour piece The Longest Gap, performed at ARoS Aarhus Kunstmuseum in Denmark, invited vistors to experience dance within the context of a museum; by observing the way public moved in and out of the Museum, in and out the gallery spaces. It focused on the corridors, staircases and halls, as an intermediate space, a place of passage, of before and after, where the uncertainty of ´what these bodies are doing´ can increase, reinforcing the potential for doubt, avoidance or curiosity.
While I didn’t witness this work firsthand, it’s clear this resonates with the ideas explored in All That Remains. Both performances exist in spaces of transition, asking us to examine what it means to be present in places designed for movement and passage. In The Longest Gap, the museum’s architecture becomes part of an evolving, imaginary landscape, while in All That Remains, the stage itself transforms into a fragmented terrain where body and environment merge.
The performers’ engagement with visitors in the museum; their whispered questions and delicate exchanges, echoes the relational focus of what I saw at Push, where the dancers interact with their surroundings and one another in ways that highlight the fragile balance between connection and isolation. Both works explore the tension of the in-between: the space between movement and stillness, near and far, internal and external.
ThisPlace:
Set against the backdrop of an industrial port where containers, trucks, barges, and ships are in constant motion. Guido positions the performer within this dynamic environment; carrying sacks and ropes symbolizing the invisible labor and constant adjustments demanded by the flow of capital. He moves through a deliberate cycle of effort and resistance, navigating the weight, imbalance, and continuous pull of his surroundings.
Similarly,in All That Remains, the dancers’ interactions with industrial debris and organic remnants highlight humanity’s entanglement with the world we’ve created; and the toll it takes on both body and spirit.
And therefore, this feels like a precursor to the visceral themes explored in what I witnessed at Push. Both works investigate the tension between the body and its environment, drawing attention to the weight; both literal and metaphorical, that shapes our existence. While ThisPlace situates the performer within the relentless motion of a globalized industrial port, All That Remains expands this exploration into a more surreal, fragmented world
Guido’s collaboration with visual artist Søren Engsted pushed this vision further. Together, they crafted a stage that feels alive, where sculptural assemblages of industrial debris (all sourced locally) act as both obstacles and extensions of the dancers’ bodies. For the performance I witnessed here in Vancouver, visual artists Jaeden Walton and Taha Saraei (both recent graduates of SFU’s master’s of fine arts program) made new iterations of the sculptures that both honoured the land here on the West Coast and mourned the waste that is created upon it.
His fascination with liminality (the space between one state and another) is evident in every aspect of this performance piece. Whether it’s the transition between stillness and movement, destruction and renewal, or past and present, his work refuses easy answers, instead inviting us Jaysuits into a space of reflection and asking:
“How do we locate ourselves in spaces of transition, and what do we carry with us when we leave?“
The performers; Elisa D’Amico, Zen Jefferson, Roosa Törma, and Eliott Marmouset themselves are co-creators, working with structured improvisation. Rather than giving them cut-and-dry steps to execute, he taught them a series of movement scores to draw from each time they perform meaning no two performances are exactly the same.
This experience unfolded like a hypnotic ritual that pulled me into a world where bodies and landscapes shared the same scars. Performance as transformation. An invitation to slow down and sit with discomfort.
So, now that you’ve tasted a slice of this festival’s boundary breaking lineup and journeyed with me through this masterpiece, the festival still has so much more to offer.
🎟️ PuSh the Button : Your Ticket to the Unforgettable! 🎟️
If you haven’t grabbed your tickets yet, head over to PuSh Festival’s official site and catch these groundbreaking performances while they last! And if you’re reading this after the curtains have closed, don’t worry! PuSh returns every year with a fresh lineup of daring, thought provoking works. Stay tuned, Jaysuits, because this is one you’ll want to keep on your radar.
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6 responses to “PuSh International Performing Arts Festival: Witnessing Humanity’s Wounds & Dreams with ✨All That Remains✨”
[…] now, there’s another layer to add to this unfolding story. Aryo was a company-in-residence at the PuSh Festival; the very festival we recently covered! PuSh has been a beacon for genre bending performances in […]
[…] Dickensian London with Oliver!, and my most recent deep dive into Vancouver’s art scene was the PuSh Festival; a whirlwind of experimental storytelling that still lingers in my mind. But now, we’ll be […]
[…] Shakespearean classics and breathe new life into them. Others, like the ones featured in the PuSh20 Arts Festival that we explored recently, break the mold entirely, proving that theatre isn’t just about […]
[…] Shakespearean classics and breathe new life into them. Others, like the ones featured in the PuSh20 Arts Festival that we explored recently, break the mold entirely, proving that theatre isn’t just about […]
[…] Shakespearean classics and breathe new life into them. Others, like the ones featured in the PuSh20 Arts Festival that we explored recently, break the mold entirely, proving that theatre isn’t just about […]
[…] Shakespearean classics and breathe new life into them. Others, like the ones featured in the PuSh20 Arts Festival that we explored recently, break the mold entirely, proving that theatre isn’t just about […]