Rubaboo Indigenous Arts Festival enters final four days with theatre, art and fashion in Edmonton

Rubaboo Indigenous Arts Festival runs through Oct. 11 in Edmonton, with its final days including visual art, cabaret, Elon Muskrat and the closing Deadly fashion event.

Photo credit: Edmonton Downtown

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Rubaboo Indigenous Arts Festival has four days left in Edmonton, with the final stretch moving from a visual-art exhibition at CO*LAB to cabaret, theatre and a closing fashion show at CKUA’s Beresh Arts Den.

Presented by Dreamspeakers Festival Society, Rubaboo brings together Indigenous theatre, music, dance, visual art and other forms. Dreamspeakers says the festival is intended to give Indigenous artists a platform, encourage collaboration and support the development of new work. For anyone arriving late in the run, the remaining program is compact enough to approach as a series of individual artist-discovery events instead of trying to catch up on everything that has already happened.

Thursday and Friday at CO*LAB, the Imagining Indigenous Art Show continues with work by JCat, EdmonToms Art by Tom Baril, including beadwork, and THORN, a third-person psychological-horror digital art installation by Oshki Games Ltd. Current festival listings put the show at 6 p.m., with pay-what-you-wish admission.

Friday evening, Cabaret Hokay Hey brings Donita Large & The Small Band to CO*LAB alongside burlesque, poetry and other performance. Admission is $15. Published local listings disagree on the exact start time, so readers should check Rubaboo’s current ticket listing before heading out.

Saturday’s theatre offering is Elon Muskrat, Josh Languedoc’s solo work blending oral storytelling and theatre. It is scheduled for 7 p.m. at CO*LAB, with $20 admission. Languedoc describes himself as an Anishinaabe playwright, producer, teacher and storyteller and a member of Saugeen First Nation. The play uses political satire and a story world populated by animals to examine money, power and reconciliation. Its creative team includes Kenneth T. Williams, a Cree playwright from George Gordon First Nation, as a director and dramaturg, along with Heather Bouchier as costume designer.

Bouchier appears again Sunday in Deadly, Rubaboo’s closing fashion event at CKUA’s Beresh Arts Den, alongside Rhonda Johnson of Acahkos Designs and Little Feather Couture. Deadly begins at 6 p.m.; admission is $20. That’s a Wrap Party follows at 8 p.m. and costs $10, or is included with admission to Deadly. Banff Centre identifies Johnson as a First Nations Cree multidisciplinary artist and fashion designer, while Bouchier describes herself as Plains Cree from Beardy’s & Okemasis Cree Nation in Saskatchewan and has been based in Edmonton since 2005.

CO*LAB is at 9641 102A Ave. and describes itself as an accessible community arts space, although its current website does not publish detailed physical-access specifications. CKUA, at 9804 Jasper Ave., says the Beresh Arts Den has accessible washrooms. Dreamspeakers routes current Rubaboo ticketing and event information through its live festival portal, which is the best place to check availability and any last-minute schedule changes.

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