The set is crappy (and very cleverly designed), the costumes are deliberately tacky, there have not been worse wigs since Dynel was invented, the props fall apart, the acting is over the top, and my cheeks ached from grinning through the whole show.  This is cheesy as an art form.  The evening is a riot of bad puns, brilliantly bad acting, great singing and fun choreography. 

Vancouver, BC:   For 75 minutes you could have heard a pin drop in the small space of the PAL theatre.  As the actors exited and the lights went to black, the words "brave, terrifying, sad"  competed in my head with "so that's the real Allan Zinyk".  I think this is the first time I have seen him playing a normal person in a straight as opposed to a comedic role, and it brought to mind a handsome Allan Rickman - as Steven Spurrier (Bottle Shock) not the infamous Snape, of course.

A dream vacation, ballroom dancing , sometimes rock-and-rolling, my way across the Pacific Ocean with my favorite group of dancers and dance hosts on the Pacific Princess.  

Our South Pacific Cruise is rapidly coming to an end  and this is the part that most of us had been waiting for; visiting the beautiful islands of French Polynesia that sit like exquisite jewels in the warm blue and green waters of the Pacific Ocean.

We departed from Hilo shortly after 4:30 pm on Thursday afternoon  and set course in a southerly direction across the Pacific Ocean towards Christmas Island. The Pacific Ocean is the largest and deepest of all the oceans and covers two-thirds of the earth's surface. Compared to the distance between our various ports in Hawaii, an average of 100 nautical miles apart, the distance to Christmas Island from Hilo is 1088  nautical miles so it was no wonder that when we awoke early as usual and went up on deck, there was only the ocean to see all around us.

The opportunity to join Wendy and the Dancers at Sea on a South Pacific Cruise from Honolulu to Tahiti came up unexpectedly while I was on the Labor Weekend Getaway Dance Cruise. A test of my developing capacity for spontaneity - something I have really been working hard to achieve - I needed to decide on the spot whether to take up an unexpected vacancy that had arisen - the only problem  was that the cruise was scheduled to start a mere two weeks after I returned to Vancouver from New York (New York, New York 2009).

South Pacific Ballrooom Dancing Cruise, Parts I to III are coming soon,  but in the interim I could not resist  posting these  two pictures of a day spent in Bora Bora and a day spent in Moorea.   On both days, we rented a car and drove around the islands.

"We live our lives forward, but only understand them backward", says Anna (Medina Hahn) who then takes us on what becomes a waking nightmare, increasingly haunted by seemingly benign, Patrick (Daniel Arnold).  These two intensely talented actors, who are always surprising, are also the playwrights of this roller coaster ride of a play that explores the observer and the observed, the victim and the perpetrator, the dream and reality.

You take a brilliantly written script that turns the Judas Iscariot story inside out, set it in a court room, lace it with profanity, people it with some of the best actors in town, and you have a riveting evening of theatre. 

What better way is there for a newbie ballroom dance addict to spend the Labor Day Weekend than dancing the nights away in the largest ballroom afloat with Dancers at Sea? As the smiling faces in the picture taken on the Black and White Formal night photograph attest to, there were many great minds that thought alike on this question.

I am writing to you from what the Captain of this ship joking calls "the middle of nowhere." Out somewhere in the South Pacific Ocean.

Well, right now I am "living it" on the Pacific Princess en route from Hawaii to French Polynesia.  I read all about the 8.3 earthquake and tsunami in Samoa but we did not see the effects here. Apparently the wave was less than a foot high when it reached these islands.

This is dance theatre that you can take your husband to….and your teens…and anyone else you can think of.   The opening offering of the Cultch Family Series is a knock-out.  The re-furbished Cultch main stage was bathed in the light of a thousand candles being arranged and moved about by the seven members of the company, the men in jeans and the women in point shoes, as the audience entered the theatre. 

Toronto, ON:   The Guardsman is a quick witted comedy about life in the theatre and acts of imitation and deception. The famous Hungarian actor, Nandor, fears that the coming of spring will prompt his famous wife Ilona to roam. To circumvent an affair with another man, Nandor performs the role of a soldier and tries to woo his wife. When she falls for him, the question becomes, who is the better actor? Did she really know after two minutes of his portrayal that it was her husband all along?