Halifax’s biggest labour and arts festival is back for another year.
The Mayworks Festival is both a celebration and a protest. It’s many artistic works present a mosaic of diverse and complex working-class issues, inspired by the May Day for which the festival gets its name.
“Art is inherently political,” says assistant festival director Jake Planinc in an interview with The Coast. “I think what Mayworks does is bring it to the forefront. I don’t think that you can be creating art in a vacuum. No matter what kind of art you’re making, it’s going to have a political context that it exists within.”
Living true to that belief, the Mayworks Festival features many artists whose works are often political in nature. On May 1, New Brunswick hip-hop artist Stephen Hero and his band El Tata y Los Taqueros will take over the Seahourse Tavern with support from local DJ and beatmaker Ambeez and rappers General Khan and Gearl. Hero is often cited as a “working-class rapper”, and each of the featured artists writes with their beliefs top of mind.
From May 7-8, a powerful performance of experimental dance theatre will take place at Breaking Circus (2164 Amalamek Way): everything i wanted to tell you (but couldn’t, so here it is now). It’s described as two dancers, locked together by memories and imagination, attempting to navigate change without letting go.
“In Toronto, it won outstanding choreography, outstanding production and outstanding performance by an individual (at the Dora Mavor Moore Awards),” says Planinc. “It’s a bit of a coup for us, I would say, to be bringing a show of this calibre to Halifax for the first time.”
Another one of the festival’s biggest draws will be the unique musical stylings of John Jameel Farah in his show Music of Liberation on May 9. The Palestinian-Canadian pianist and composer is known for his blend of electronic, baroque, Near-Eastern and improvisational music to create what he calls, “Arabic-Baroque-Cyberpunk.”
“All of this is dressed up in massive projections of his own ink drawings,” says Plancic. “We’re presenting that at the Joseph Strung Concert Hall on Dalhousie University’s campus.”
While these are the festival’s biggest events, featuring artists from outside of Nova Scotia, there are plenty of activities and shows throughout the week, ending on May 10. Kite-flyings, dance performances, music concerts, an art exhibition and film screening, even a workshop, are all available throughout the week’s worth of programming. A full schedule can be found on the Mayworks Halifax website.
“It’s not simply a celebration of labour,” says Planinc about May Day, and in essence, the festival. “It’s really a rallying call against our current economic system, a public declaration that capitalism isn’t working for workers and an affirmation that a better world is possible.”
