October. 18th, 2025
Vines Den
7:00pm
My Twilight is a collaborative performance by half-sisters Kyra Philbert and Sierra Philbert. Using the concept of twilight, in its many forms, as the starting point, this work blurs the boundaries between reality and fiction in an immersive exploration of the relationship between the two siblings, born a decade apart. Kyra, raised on New Moon Girl magazine at the turn of the century, is an ambitious perfectionist with multiple degrees. Her younger sister, Sierra, is a carefree adventurous type who moved to London, England, to pursue her dreams of stardom. Taking place as Sierra returns to Vancouver just in time for her birthday, My Twilight invites the audience to join in the celebration as the two siblings reunite. This piece is a performance where family ties, distance, and time apart converge in a space which lingers between the waking world and the liminal hours of twilight.
Description
“Put on your dancing shoes, you are invited to a fancy dress Twilight birthday party! Please dress-up, gifts are optional, cake will be served.”
On a rainy evening, with this invitation in mind, audience members began to arrive at the Vines Den dressed in their personal interpretation of “my twilight”. As people filtered in wearing costumes ranging from colour pallets of the evening hours and interpretations of their “twilight years” to characters from Stephenie Meyer’s The Twilight Saga, each person was given a unique prompt of 60 possible tasks to carry out at their leisure during the event. The prompts were to be directed at the “birthday girl”—though it was unclear if this meant Kyra or Sierra Philbert—and they ranged from giving high-fives or kisses, “accidentally” spilling a drink to starting fake rumours. Inside, the Den was decorated for a party with silver streamers and cotton ball clouds hanging from the ceiling. There were snacks and pop and the audience was invited to chat and hangout as one would at a friend’s birthday party. Things started gradually as people mingled, then conversations began to flourish as prompts like a “have a sporadic dance competition” brought the event towards its climax: the cutting of the cake. Kyra, dressed in a floor-length sparkling blue gown with a wreath of silver stars encircling her head, and Sierra, dressed in a khaki skirt and dark top like Bella Swan in the Twilight books, stood in anticipation as a glorious mountain of a cake was brought out. Baked by Francisco Berlanga and Tiffany Law, the cake was decorated in ombré icing which faded from sunset oranges to midnight blues and was covered in various symbolic objects from The Twilight Saga. The towering desert was delicately placed on the table to await the birthday girl’s first cut. Then a premeditated improvised fight ensued between the sisters as each began claiming it was their birthday and the other was stealing their thunder. As things heated up, as spats between siblings can, the audience shuffled around unsure how to act, simultaneously laughing and expressing concern as the performance slipped between real family dynamics and an absurd comedy. Unbeknownst to the audience, it was their own declared interpretation of the twilight theme shared at their time of arrival which ultimately determined the birthday girl (Sierra), the content of conflict, and its aftermath. Then an interjection of karaoke shifted the mood and returned the event to a party. The cake was cut and distributed as people took turns singing, the party continued on in the liminal space between the rhythms of real family dynamics and the bewitching bond of twilight, in all its forms.
Performers
Kyra Philbert and Sierra Philbert