Dear Readers,   Oh, June….. Summer is coming! If summer were a leisurely time, I would love to catch up on my own reading. Recently when my brainy friend alluded to Bloomsday, little did I know that I am now hosting Ulysses readings on June 16th to finally catch up with Joyceans (better late than never)!  In James Joyce’s Ulysses, he writes:  Every life is in many days, day after day. We walk through ourselves, meeting robbers, ghosts, giants, old men, young men, wives, widows, brothers-in-love. But always meeting ourselves.   In this epicenter that Joyce outlines, all that is as true today as it was more than 100 years ago.  And in our June issues, we here at Kerrisdale hope to capture all those figures from all walks of life to connect us with a sense of where we’ve come from, a journey of self-discovery:  Salomé Nieto on her own vision of contemporary dance with elements inspired by two powerful physical traditions, Japanese Butoh and her Mexican roots; Sudè Khanian on her exploration of the world of optical illusions where Qi meditation meets her Iranian roots;  Noriko Nasu-Tidball, our beloved Playbook photographer, on her journey to capture ordinary people in extraordinary ways with her strong sense of Japanese heritage, and a success story by Leigh Boyle, a talented young woman on fire!    Speaking of summer, don’t miss our Crossroad Cafe: A Complete Guide to BC Campgrounds: Thursday June 19 7:00-8:30pm.  Call 604.257.8100 today! Playbook will be back in the late summer with spectacular Arts Issue.  Here is to a sweet summer, like the one James Joyce had, the summer of 1904 (find out here if you are interested) !    Keiko Honda, Ph.D., MPH Chair and Editor-in-Chief Community Engagement, KCCS...

By Aryan Etesami Photos courtesy of Leigh Boyle   Sometimes all that’s needed to make you happy is a nicely done manicure! And the best person to attest to this statement is no one but an ambitious woman named Leigh Boyle. Leigh is 26 years old and although born and raised in North Vancouver, has finished all of her school years up to the 12th grade at Crofton House School here in the Kerrisdale neighbourhood. She holds her Bachelor of Arts in Communications degree from Trinity Western University and is currently working as a fundraiser at Union Gospel Mission on the downtown eastside. What sets Leigh apart from a typical, working university-graduate however is that she is the founder of a successful non-profit, volunteer-based society called the Lip Stick Project. After graduating from university, Leigh travelled to Swaziland, South Africa for an internship and later to Ethiopia to work as a communications officer. Soon after however, she started to feel very lonely working a routine job and being unable to effectively communicate due to the language barrier. As a coping strategy, Leigh started volunteering with a local women’s hospital, where she encountered many women living with a painful condition common in some developing countries, called Obstetric Fistula. Limited by communication difficulties, she surprisingly came to realize the best way to bring some happiness into the lives of these women may be nothing else but a good old manicure! When she later returned home from Africa, Leigh was encouraged by friends and family to re-establish the same practice within our healthcare system here in Vancouver; and that marks how the Lip Stick Project finally came to life. Today, men, women and children facing challenging health-related situations at local hospices and hospitals, have been receiving professional grade...

By Haley Cameron Photos by Lydia Nagai For Salomé Nieto, dance is not just a career. “It’s my oxygen,” says the Butoh dancer. Twenty one years ago when her ex-husband asked her to relocate to Canada she agreed under a single condition. “I told him that if I could dance in Canada I would go.” Luckily the answer was yes and she has called Vancouver home ever since.   Salomé’s stylistic focus is initially surprising. The 47-year-old hailing from Mexico City calls herself a Butoh dancer, a post-war genre originating in Japan, however this was not always the case. “I was trained in contemporary dance with a traditional Western background,” she explains. It was Kokoro Dance, a local company she worked with upon her arrival in 1992, that introduced her to the modern Japanese style.   “I’ve spent a lot of years trying to show diversity but I am ultimately most comfortable with Butoh.” According to Salomé, Butoh deals with themes of humanity, fragility, renewal, and constant transformation. Translated as “firm step into the ground with arms opening away”, she explains that it is the strong sense of expression that spoke to her. “I love the imagery, the focus on sensation,” she says. When I point out that her arms haven’t stopped moving since we sat down to talk she laughs and tells me, “My thoughts are bigger than the words I have.”   Butoh has taken much of the world by storm. Salomé says she is continually amazed just how much the art form is appreciated worldwide, citing that South and Central America, Europe and Asia are all incredibly supportive of the genre. “I haven’t necessarily found my place in Vancouver,” says the local dancer who does most of her collaboration internationally. “It isn’t...

  Artist Sudè Khanian          Sudè Khanian is an Iranian born artist specializing in Qi (energy healing) and philosophical art (Vaguest art) that is sometimes associated with Surrealism movement. Sudè is a Persian born Muslim who practices a form of Qi meditation referred to as ‘pure Qi’. The influence of her monotheistic religion as well as Universalist philosophy of Qi is evident in her paintings, both in choice of colors and lines to accentuate a single yellow or white focal point as well as within her detailed use of optical illusion to interrelate and derivate.  In contrast, the influence of her Persian culture and her experience of war is less pronounced in the paintings and is limited to random poetic expressions within colors, shapes, and figures; something that is repeatedly observed in works of contemporary Iranian painters as well as the traditional Iranian Miniature.    Apart from the Qi healing aspect of her work –which can be very subjective and not acknowledged or accepted by all belief sets  –Sudè states that her use of optical illusion and the discovery journey that the paintings take a viewer through, according to latest science researches on optical illusion, stimulates many areas of the brain. This stimulation helps the viewer fee alert, yet relaxed....

By Katja De Bock   If you are a regular reader of Kerrisdale Playbook Magazine, you will have noticed the beautiful photos of our interviewees, capturing the essence of their personalities with just a short click of the lens. You might be surprised to it’s an emerging photographer, Vancouver-based Noriko Nasu-Tidball, who made the professional photos.   In my experience as a producer and interviewer of television magazines, the videographers dominate the set. They have to set up their gear of tripods, lamps and cables in what is usually a very short time. However, for the nervous interviewer and self-conscious interviewee, that time seemingly takes forever. Moreover, the videographer often interrupts the flow of the interview as the subjects move in and out of focus, or when camera cards are full or batteries empty.   Not so when I am working as a writer with Noriko Nasu-Tidball as my photographer colleague. When my editor-in-chief, Keiko Honda, and I are speaking with the interviewee, Noriko has the astonishing ability to become what they call a “fly-on-the-wall.” You don’t hear her, you don’t see her, and yet she manages to make hundreds of photos per session, of which only a handful will be selected for the magazine.   For most of the interviews in Kerrisdale Playbook, Noriko relies on ambient light (daylight) and does not ask the subjects to pose, as she wants to capture the gist of the moment. An exception is a group portrait at the end of the interview.   Noriko says her love for vérité-documentary style of photography began during her childhood. She grew up in Susami, a small town in the Wakayama prefecture (administrative district) in Japan, as a daughter to a banker and a kimono storeowner. Magazines were always around...

          Some upcoming NSG events include: June 7   1 Day Healing Sanctuary  with Jimena http://westsidensg.wordpress.com/sanctuary   June 7   Goodbye Gordon – School  http://westsidensg.wordpress.com/general-gordon/   June 14-15   Kitsilano Car-Free Days http://westsidensg.wordpress.com/kits-car-free-days/   June 19   Next Kits Recycling – every month on the Thursday before the 3rd Saturday – westsidensg.wordpress.com/recycling   Contact: Natasha at moretash@gmail.com   June 28  A Day With Evelyn Roth     http://kitshouse.org/recycled-videotape July 1 4-8pm Free Jazz Concert westsidensg.wordpress.com/jazz  ...