High Performance Rodeo
Join us January 12 - February 1, 2026
DIVERSE VOICES
Challenge your worldview with powerfully inventive performances. See mesmerizing dance and smart-ass cabarets, or musical magic and startling world premieres. It happens in basements, bougie box seats and dozens of other locations. Surprise yourself with new discoveries.
CREATING COMMUNITY
Marvel as Calgary’s creative community continues to blossom, even in cold January. Established international artists mingle with burgeoning local talent, volunteers corral newbies into the Rodeo arena, and everyone lingers in the Laycraft Lounge.
BEAUTIFUL YOUNG STUDENTS
Gift your students new connections that will invigorate their learning. Watch as their relationship to theatre grows and deepens with free admission to shows, weekly artist talks, workshops and gatherings. Find out more about our Beautiful Young Students program.
CHAMPIONING CREATIVITY
For three wild weeks in January, One Yellow Rabbit presents the High Performance Rodeo, an international festival of live art. It’s a chance for Calgarians to watch touring performances from across Canada, acclaimed international shows, and new and experimental work from artists here at home. The programming is bold, cutting-edge, funny, frank, and full of heart. From theatre to dance, music to film, free lunchtime concerts and late-night cabarets, there’s something for everyone.
The Rodeo takes over downtown Calgary, defying description and tickling the tastebuds of arts and culture lovers. Audiences brave the January cold, or revel in the chinook heatwave, comb over the festival guide, and come out to play. The High Performance Rodeo is all about championing creativity, building community, celebrating diverse voices, and promoting self-expression.
A LOOK BACK TO THE BEGINNING
In 1987, Michael Green launched the first “One Yellow Rabbit Secret Elevator Experimental Performance Festival”. Intrepid audience members called a number for directions, met at a mystery location, were ushered into a darkened elevator, and transported to a make-shift venue that was, by day, the One Yellow Rabbit office. That first year, artists tried out new writings, played compositions on toy pianos, climbed out windows, and invited audience members to party of the rooftops.
Over the next three decades, the High Performance Rodeo grew, establishing itself as a small but important forum for innovation and experimentation, placing Calgary artists at the fore. The festival cultivated an atmosphere of collaboration and experimentation, quickly attracting artists from across Canada, the USA, and beyond. OYR taught Calgary theatre practitioners and theatre audiences to be open to the novel and choose the unexpected. This international festival in the middle of the prairies knocked down barriers, both creative and geographic. The choice to build this festival here in this city is one the Avenue Magazine called one of the “20 Decisions that Shaped Calgary”.
From Rodeos Gone By
Submit a show
Do you have the perfect show for the High Performance Rodeo?
Something to tantalize the tastes of arts and culture lovers?
