CULTURE

Winnipeg Heats Up

By Karen Burshtein

Our picks for keeping warm with Canada’s hottest arts scene.

How can such a cold city have such a hot arts scene, you ask? Sure, winters can be harsh, but all those long, cold prairie nights tend to stir the creative juices, making Winnipeg’s artists and arts organizations among Canada’s best. Just ask British author Ben Elton and composer Andrew Lloyd Webber. The duo chose Winnipeg for the North American premiere of their musical The Boy in the Photograph last year. It may be Guy Maddin’s Winnipeg, but creative types from all over the world are getting a piece of it.

Indeed, in suburban basements and indie galleries, on mainstream stages and at makeshift venues, everybody seems to be making art. Or celebrating it. Or attending it. It’s not uncommon to find experimental theater performances packed to the rafters even as the mercury dips into the negative double digits. As the city’s new website boasts, there’s culture on every corner. All of which adds up to what Winnipeggers, in a rare lapse in modesty, insist has become one of North America’s premier cultural destinations. And this fall’s memorable culture calendar will definitely make you warm up to Winter-peg.

Winnipeg will be mucho caliente, thanks to two Cuban-themed events. The first, at the beautifully restored Pantages Theatre, is Juan de Marcos with the Afro-Cuban All Stars, a group that’s been central to the booming worldwide popularity of Afro-Cuban music. And at the Winnipeg Art Gallery, Cuba Avant-Garde encompasses the full scope of Cuban Modernism with works from one of North America’s most important private collections of Cuban art.

In French-speaking St. Boniface, spicy social satire is served up at the Cercle Molière, the oldest permanent theater company to offer uninterrupted programming in Canada. They’ll be presenting L’Inscription, a play by French comic auteur Gerald Sibleyras that skewers upwardly mobile Parisians. And if it’s heartwarming theater you’re after, don’t miss the featured attraction at the Manitoba Theatre Centre (where Keanu Reeves played an anguished Hamlet a few winters ago). Joe Landry’s It’s a Wonderful Life is Frank Capra’s classic 1940s feel-good film charmingly readapted as a live radio play.

On the classical music front, Alexander Mickelthwaite, the bright young music director of the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra, recently came to Winter-peg from L.A., apparently convinced that what this city lacks in climate, it makes up for in culture. His northward migration was inspired, in part, because he was so impressed by the WSO’s New Music Festival, one of the most respected of its kind in North America. This series features a world premiere by composer-in-residence Vincent Ho that’s based on his extraordinary trip to Canada’s Arctic aboard the Canadian Coast Guard Ship Amundsen.

Another great annual event that takes place in the fall is the Manito Ahbee Festival, which turns Winnipeg into a hub of aboriginal culture and artistic talent every November. The Winnipeg Aboriginal Film Festival, which follows later in the month, offers some of the best in indigenous filmmaking from across Canada, the U.S. and the world.

Last, but certainly not least, is Winnipeg’s most famous cultural institution, which really starts to heat up in the fall and winter. The Royal Winnipeg Ballet is one of North America’s premier ballet troupes. Even the Queen thinks so. In 1953, the RWB was the first ballet troupe to receive a royal designation from Her Majesty. This Christmas, the company presents the perennial favorite The Nutcracker Suite. Set to Tchaikovsky’s traditional score and choreographed by Galina Yordanova and Nina Menon, the two-hour spectacle delights with gorgeous sets, lively costumes and lots of homegrown references: It’s set in a turn-of-the-century prairie house, and one scene even features a pickup hockey game.

(Karen Burshtein is a food and culture writer who splits her time between Winnipeg and Paris.)

TOP IMAGE: MANITO AHBEE
DANCER: FOLKLORAMA, ANDREW SIKORSKY
SON OF WATER, TALKING TO FISH:
MANUEL MENDIVE HOYO, THE FARBER COLLECTION, COURTESY OF CUBA AVANT-GARDE INC.
MUSIC: WSO / NEW MUSIC FESTIVAL
BALLET: BRUCE MONK