Culture of Halifax, Nova Scotia

Posted by Thomas Shaw on April 10th, 2019

Hosting the region's biggest urban population, Halifax, Nova Scotia is definitely an significant cultural centre in Atlantic Canada. Halifax is home to a vibrant arts and culture neighborhood that enjoys considerable assistance and participation from the common population. As the largest neighborhood along with the administrative centre of the Atlantic region given that its founding in 1749, Halifax has long-standing tradition of becoming a cultural generator. Although provincial arts and culture policies have tended to distribute investment and support of your arts throughout the province, at times for the detriment of much more populous Halifax, cultural production within the area is increasingly being recognized for its economic benefits, too as its purely cultural elements. Get more details about concerts list

The Halifax Regional Municipality is within the method of drafting a Cultural Program to guide the municipality's arts and culture development.

Though Halifax just isn't as multiculturally diverse as its bigger Canadian counterparts, this really is gradually evolving, particularly because the municipality and province spot a lot more emphasis on attracting immigrants. Muslims comprise the second-largest visible minority in Halifax, when the biggest visible minority - the historic African Nova Scotian community - also because the extra recently established Greek and Lebanese communities present important influences for regional culture. The city benefits from a sizable population of post-secondary students, such as a significant proportion of national and international students, who strongly influence the neighborhood cultural scene.

Performing arts
Halifax has been the home to live music and theatrical productions practically considering that its founding. Writer-historian Thomas H. Raddall wrote that by the 1780s there were no much less than two theatres, the "old" Grand Theatre on Argyle Street along with the "new" Grand Theatre on Grafton Street. "The plays have been mainly farces of your sort preferred in London at the time…" (note Raddall). From 1876 till its demolition in 1929, plays, concerts as well as operas have been performed in the Academy of Music constructing near the corner of Barrington Street and Spring Garden Road. Reflecting the alter in well-known taste, the Academy creating was torn down to make way for the Capital Theatre, a movie house. The old-style cinema was itself topic to obsolescence, and within the 1970s demolished to create way for an office developing (the Maritime Centre).

Theatre
Halifax is home to a number of theatre groups, essentially the most prominent getting the Neptune Theatre. Even though Neptune was founded in 1963, live theatre had been performed on the present web-site since 1915 when it was reputed to be the initial Vaudeville house created and built especially as a theatre.

Other notable theatre groups include things like the open air Shakespeare by the Sea, Eastern Front Theatre, based in Alderney Landing and Canada's longest constantly running community theatre The Theatre Arts Guild. There are many smaller sized theatre companies, such as OneLight Theatre, Zuppa Circus, Foghorn Theatre and 2b Theatre; at the same time as several community-based theatre groups including the Chester Players plus the Dartmouth Players.

There is a theatre research plan at Dalhousie University and its Rebecca Cohn Auditorium is the largest efficiency theatre for dramatic and musical events in Halifax

Dance
Halifax is the home of a number of dance organizations, the oldest and largest is definitely the Halifax Dance Association. Founded in 1973, Halifax Dance has more than 1400 members and may be the largest dance organization inside the Atlantic region, positioned inside the Maritime Centre on Barrington Street. Halifax Dance offers recreational classes in ballet, modern, jazz, inventive movement, tap, hip-hop and physical theatre. It also offers the Intensive Training Program (ITP) for more serious study of dance, choreography and overall performance. Halifax Dance has quite a few companies-in-residence: Senior Company-in Residence, Gwen Noah Dance, the modern companies Mocean Dance and Verve Mwendo and also the Young Company which tours Nova Scotian schools and annually presents The Nutcracker.

The other big dance organization in Halifax will be the School of Dance at the Maritime Conservatory of Performing Arts.

Halifax's immigrant communities also have an array of dance troupes that perform all over Halifax and Nova Scotia. One of these troupes is Romiosyni Dance Group12 (Greek Community of Halifax) which headlines in the annual Greek Festival and performs throughout the Maritimes. The group is composed of volunteer instructors and dancers who share the love of Greek dance and culture. Their costume collection comes in the many regions of Greece and their repertoire involves a sizable number of traditional Greek dances.

Music

The musical scene in Halifax is broad and richly varied, from European classical to Celtic and Acadian traditional towards the several forms of indie. It is actually the home of Symphony Nova Scotia,13 which dates back to 1897 when it was referred to as The Halifax Symphony. Lots of of its musicians have joint teaching appointments at the Dalhousie University School of Music and also the Maritime Conservatory of Performing Arts. Symphony Nova Scotia's conductor due to the fact 2002 has been Bernhard Gueller.

Halifax is home to a vibrant music neighborhood. Some notable artists to have emerged from Halifax consist of Buck 65, Universal Soul, Classified, Wintersleep, April Wine, and also the Joel Plaskett Emergency. During the 1990s, Halifax was excitedly billed as the next Seattle for the reason that of its vibrant indie rock scene. While it under no circumstances managed to attain Seattle's musical fame, a number of artists did emerge, including Sloan, Thrush Hermit, and Sarah McLachlan. Halifax is the home of your Halifax Pop Explosion, an indie rock festival that draws upwards of 20,000 attendees annually and showcases new and emerging music. Previous performers include things like Arcade Fire, K'naan, The Hold Steady, Pains of Getting Pure at Heart and hundreds more.

In addition, it hosted the 2006 Juno Awards.

The city is occasionally incorporated within the tours of top-grossing concert acts. The Rolling Stones recently held the biggest concert the city has ever witnessed on September 23, 2006, on the Halifax Commons.