Griot riot

In Africa, the griot plays a role reminiscent of the bard of ancient Celtic culture. He serves as the repository of the people’s oral culture—poems, songs and stories, which are performed with voice and kora. Since moving to Quebec three years ago, Senegalese griot Sadio Sissokho has continued to pursue the art passed on from his father, a famous musician who toured West Africa with Soriba Kouyaté and played kora in the Senegalese National Ballet.

Sissokho’s been collaborating with Trevor Ferrier, former percussionist for Rare Air and a devotee of the kalimba. “I’ve been playing music all my life, but this guy got me out of retirement for sure,” Ferrier declares. “For me, this represented a new opportunity to learn a pure tradition.” The duo will be performing with saxophonist Bryan Highbloom at this Sunday’s Words and Music at the Casa (4873 St-Laurent). The line-up also features Montreal-based Inuit spoken word artist Taqralik Partridge, and Luna Allison will launch her new mini-CD, Urban Lullabies. Feb. 19, 9 p.m., $5. —Vincent Tinguely

Nervous ticks

Choreographer and Concordia contemporary dance grad Andrew Tay wanted to create movement triggered by feelings so he and his duet partner Annabelle Savard did what they should and took a look within.

“We’ve been working on ideas from an emotional space,” he says, describing The Space Between, which takes on the complexity of personal communication through choreography. “We look at different states you might go through before you make the first connection with someone.” Tay says discomfort is one of those states he translates into dance: “We definitely work a lot with nervousness and nervous ticks,” says Tay, who was striving for what he calls a “stop-motion animation physicality.” It’s aptly set to music by Toronto-based vitaminsforyou.

Other short works by choreographers Josée Gagnon, Dean Makarenko, Chantal Lamirande and Andréa Dugas-Hawkes round out the Vernissage-danse #127 program this Saturday, Feb.18, 8:30 p.m., at Studio 303 at (372 Ste-Catherine W., #303). Call 393-3771 for more info. —Marites Carino

Ultimate playgrounds

If you know someone three to 10 years old currently looking for something amusing and different to do next weekend, try taking him or her to Families at Play at the Canadian Centre for Architecture and you’ll probably have some fun yourself. On Feb. 25 and 26, the focus is on leisure space—enjoyable places such as zoos, stadiums and skate parks. The 90-minute sessions start out with a tour of the current exhibition Sense of the City, and when I recently went through with a pack of about 12 children, it was quite surprising how interested and engaged they were with the exhibition. After the guided tour, everyone heads to tables where a large variety of materials are available for the budding young architects to build their own fantasy leisure spaces. Advance reservations are required—call 939-7026. —Christine Redfern

Sphere factor

At once fragile, funny and, well, kinda cute, Montrealer Karine Gibouleau’s Bulles de vie opened this week at Galerie SAS (372 Ste-Catherine W., #416), turning the space into a macrocosmos of miniature floating bubbles each containing a simple, innocent scene she calls a “caricature of reality.” “I exaggerate traits of society with the intention of creating images that can make people laugh at the same time as provoking a reflection,” she says. The show features miniature figurines and other objects enclosed in Plexiglas, all hand-created by the artist. Accentuated by an in-situ bubble-making machine built by the artist, it can be seen until March 4. —Matthew Woodley

Is it Art?

IT’S NO NUNAVUT: Just months after a StatsCan survey told us we’re the most artistic city in Canada, Montreal has been usurped from its creative throne. As it turns out, Cape Dorset, an isolated hamlet off the southwestern shore of Baffin Island, has just under a quarter of its population actively working as artists, more than double the concentration on the artist-heavy Plateau. That doesn’t boil down to more artists, of course—110 of the 485 working Cape Dorsettians make a living from their artwork, comprised mostly of Inuit carving and printmaking. In Canada as a whole, 0.8 per cent of the population are employed as painters, writers, musicians, dancers, choreographers, designers, producers, directors, sculptors, marionette makers and the like.

ArtsHole

LUST AND LIGHT: Dave St-Pierre’s hot and heavy hit choreography, La Pornographie des Âmes, rife with aggression, transgression and dancing so forbidden you’d think it was the lambada, is back as part of the Montreal Highlights Festival, running Feb. 16–18 at the Théâtre d’Outremont (1248 Bernard W.), 908-9090. More info on the festival, which features a gazillion activities until Feb. 26, can be found at www.montrealenlumiere.ca. • MOTHER AND CHILD AND UNION: British-born playwright Andrew Biss’s most unorthodox family drama Cuthbert’s Last Stand, in which a mother tries to pair her ill-tempered son with a handsome suitor she has coerced into coming over for tea, plays out at the Théâtre Ste-Catherine (264 Ste-Catherine E.) until Feb. 26.

ARTISTAT: Number of Quebec English-language books that can be found in the Quebec Writers’ Federation section at the Atwater Library (1200 Atwater), and very soon to be listed, with synopses, in an online database accessible through www.qwf.org: 500

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