Sarah Deshaies produces the Andrew Carter Morning Show. Every Friday at 8:20am, she tells you about the big, quirky and off-the-beaten-path events happening in Montreal. Here is this week's list, with links for more information so you can get out and enjoy the city! Submit your event to sarah.deshaies@bellmedia.ca.
Support the greatest figure skaters in the world at the ISU World Figure Skating Championships 2024. The competition was one of the first public events cancelled at the outset of the pandemic in 2020; it was the second time Montreal was due to host the event, nearly 100 years after its first go. The action continues until Sunday at Bell Centre.
Sugaring off season is upon us. Sample free maple goodies at Jean-Talon Market’s Les Sucres. A menu will also include mulled wine and ‘maple poutine’, plus inflatables for kids and axe-throwing for ambitious adults. Live music and DJ set to liven the mood. Saturday, 10am to 5pm. Come early - treats will be reserved for the first 300 arrivals.
And Promenade Wellington in Verdun hosts Cabane Panache, the 12th edition of their sugaring off programming, with tir d’érable, open-air bars, music and lots of family-friendly programming. Go ‘bucheling’ (think curling with blocks of wood), get a mullet haircut or a fake beard (for the kids) learn traditional Quebec folk dancing. DJ Pierre Kwenders perform Friday evening. Friday, Saturday and Sunday.
Still looking to celebrate St Pat’s? The Châteauguay Irish Festival is this Sunday, with the parade departing at 1pm, from Mitchell and Massey, travelling towards Maple and Mercier, ending up at the Agora, with a bagpipe concert, Irish dancing and food until 4pm.
Two art forms that rely on theatricality and intense physicality meet in the ring in Slam! The new show combines the efforts of two Quebec City companies: circus troupe Fip Fabrique and Robert LePage’s Ex Machina. After its opening at LePage’s Le Diamant in Quebec City, the show has just opened at La Tohu, running until April 7.
Plan your next outing with The Outdoor Adventure Show, with exhibitors hawking the latest in camping, fashion, scuba, and travel. Saturday and Sunday at Palais des congrès.
A Lindy hop national champion and PhD candidate named Alice Bourgasser is putting together Jazz Happening, an ‘immersive’ dance and musical performance, with musicians and dancers coming in from the United States and Europe to celebrate the Afro roots of the genre. There are dance masterclasses for all levels, on Friday and Saturday, culminating with Sunday’s main event, at Theatre Plaza.
Festival de la voix has just kicked off, with music programming in the West Island, until April 19. Join a live sing-a-long concert with Dance and Sing with DNR, Friday 8pm. And Nadia Di Lauro and her band team up with Rob Lutes on Sunday.
At the Centaur: Torontonian Diane Flacks performs her one woman show about how she imploded her home life. Guilt (a Love Story) recounts her split from her wife, and the fallout on their children, as well as the community. Flacks reunites with collaborator Alisa Palmer as director; her performance includes a sandbox and a raccoon alter ego. Until March 30.
What’s it like to live in an area polluted by chemical plants? Siblings Vanessa and Beze Gray of the Ojibwe community of Aamjiwnaang First Nation have grown up to be environmental activists in their corner of southern Ontario. A playwright from Scarborough, Kevin Matthew Wong, shares their story in a documentary theatre piece that is engaging and open (watch out for the flying chocolate!). He expands the story to delve into colonialism, history and reconciliation, and the fight against t industry and profit. This is personal, powerful art. Teesri Duniya Theatre presents The Chemical Valley Project at their new Rangshala Studio, at Cité des Hospitaliers, 251 des Pins W. Until Sunday.
Enjoy a terrific Shakespeare spoof in Something Rotten, a fun musical romp about the dodgy origins of the Bard in Elizabethan England. It is a massive undertaking by the St Thomas High School Players, with 100 students involved in all aspects of the show, and a live student orchestra to accompany the performers.The troupe, formerly known as the Lindsay Place Players, are marking 40 years of musicals. Friday, 7pm and Saturday, 2 and 7pm. Tickets at the door.
Imago Theatre company shifts to the cinema with a weekend-long screening of Space Girl, an imaginative story about Lyra, an astronaut influencer whose journey back to Earth is proving to be perilous. The show, which explores colonization in the cosmos and the billionaire space race, was directed by Imago AD Krista Jackson in Winnipeg last year, and the filmed version will be at Concordia’s VA-114 cinema, with multiple screenings on Saturday and Sunday.
Internationally-celebrated contemporary dance company Netherlands Dans Theatre is marking its 65th anniversary this year. The troupe, directed by Canadian Emily Molnar, waltzes into Montreal with a triptych, including a new work choreograophed by Sharon Eyal and Gai Behard. Théâtre Maisonneuve, on Friday, 8pm and Saturday, 2 and 8pm.
The MSO is celebrating the 10th birthday of the Grand Orgue Pierre-Béique gets its first outing this weekend at Maison symphonique, with a rich set of events. Up first, the OSM’s youth wing performs a program of Bach, Vierne, Walton and Coulthard, with organist Maria Gajraj, Saturday, 2:30pm. Thomas Ospital performs the music to Charlie Chaplin’s The Immigrant, along with two Norman McLaren shorts, Neighbours and Spook Sport, Saturday, 7:30pm. Then, Sunday at 11am, Jean-Willy Kunz will perform on the organ along with 14 brass and three percussionists to perform a reinvented form of Holst’s famed Planets. Then Ken Cowan will get a crack at the organ, with music from over three centuries, at Sunday, 2:30pm.
Old Montreal’s culinary event Happening Gourmand is back. Sup on three-course table d’hote menus set at $39, $49 and $59, or choose from a two-course table d’hote weekend brunch menu. Participants include Italian eatery Bevo, Kyo Bar Japonais, French brasseries Gaspar and Modavie, and Maggie Oakes. Until March 30.
Friday’s music picks: Kid Francescoli at Beanfield, 8pm. Dirty Loops at Le Studio TD, 8pm. SABAI at Bar le Ritz, PDB. Less Than Jake at L’Olympia, 8pm.
Saturday’s music picks: Alestorm at MTelus, 7pm. Mahalia, Beanfield, 8pm. Jeremie Albino at Bar Le Ritz PDB, 8pm. Zingara at Le Belmont, 10pm.
Sunday’s music picks: Aussie indie rockers Teenage Dads, 8pm at L’Escogriffe. Marlon Craft at Bar Le Ritz PDB. Montreal singer-songwriter Sanda Juster launches her album, Stripped, with “carnivalesque activities”, at the Wiggle Room, 7:30pm. Sonic Symphony treats you to the many themes from over three decades of Sonic the Hedgehog, while video game footage will be screened above the symphony. Salle Wilfrid-Pelletier, 7pm.
Basketball player turned comic Henry Sir is headlining at The Comedy Nest, with support from Rachid Badouri, Matt Shury, Carly Baker and more! Friday and Saturday, 8 and 10:30pm.
High-energy comic Matteo Lane performs his Al Dente tour at L’Olympia Saturday, 7 and 9:30pm and Sunday, 6 and 8:30pm.
Still tickets left for the Saturday, 8:30pm edition of Modeste, Mike Ward’s nearly-sold out run at Club Soda.
Dr Sketchy invites Elle Diabloe to pose for Scooby Tunes, a cartoon-themed live drawing session. All levels of artists welcome! Sunday, 2-5pm at MainLine Theatre.
At burlesque headquarters The Wiggle Room: owner Frenchy Jones hosts two nights of magic: AC/DC Vs. Queen Burlesque, Friday, 9pm with Celesta O’Lee, Sugar Vixen, Minx Arcana and SugarPuss. Sugar Vixen returns Saturday, 9pm for Moulin Rouge, along with Satin Simone, Cat Zaddy, and Olive Costello.
ONGOING EVENTS
The Arsenal in Griffintown has relaunched a mega-popular dance extravaganza that melds circus and electronic music over a sprawling landscape. Brigitte Poupart’s Jusqu'à ce qu'on meure (Until We Die) opens with the sound of a crash, with dancers spaced out in separate vignettes. The action is fluid, moving from corner to another, with the dancers mingling through the crowd. Daring acrobatics, lasers and spacy monologues follow, ending with a triumphant tone and dance party. Until March 30.
The Montreal Science Centre hosts a gallery of hilarious animal photos from every continent in the first Canadian appearance of the Comedy Wildlife Photography Awards. The images, captured by professional photographers, are divided into six climates, including polar regions, tropical forests and the savannah. Pair your outing with a visit to one the Centre’s ongoing exhibitions or an IMAX film. Until Sunday.
Explore the beauty and diversity of our natural world in Root for Nature. This new, 90-minute show is a “nature hike” indoors, conceived as a powerful piece of edutainment inspired by the COP15 biodiversity talks hosted by Montreal in late 2022. This collaboration between National Geographic and OASIS Immersive Studios will take place in the same location as the UN conference, at the Palais des congrès. Also at the venue: Dreaming of Asia is a stunning exploration of Chinese and Japanese culture, making its North American premiere at OASIS Immersions. French digital art studio Danny Rose has crafted four different experiences, including a look at shadow puppet theatre.
The Horizon of Khufu: A Journey in Ancient Egypt is a virtual reality experience that brings you into the giant pyramid in Giza, a 146-metre high pyramid built nearly 3,000 years before the Common era. Noted Egyptologist Peter Der Manuelian will be your guide. Studio PHI has brought in this for a North American first. Until May 31, in the Old Port at 2 rue de la Commune.
The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts explores how nature inspired two great artists of the 20th cnetury. Georgia O’Keefe and Henry Moore: Giants of Modern Art is an exhibit curated by the San Diego Museum of Art; it recreates both artists’ studios down to minute detail. Admire O’Keefe bodacious flowers and landscapes, contrasted with Moore’s sculptures inspired by stones and bones, and his Helmet heads. Until June 2.
The Arsenal hosts Immersive Disney Animation, which spotlights House of Mouse characters and music, including movies like Frozen, The Lion King and The Little Mermaid. At Arsenal Contemporary Gallery until May 4.
Visit the ongoing 14th edition of Luminothérapie, a display of outdoor light installations in and around Place des Festivals, including the larger-than-life flower installation Astera. Bring your skates (or rent a pair) for a turn around the refrigerated rink at Place Tranquille. The rink has an interactive projection nightly at 6:30pm: Au Bord du Lac Tranquille captures the flora and fauna of the St Lawrence, playfully moving along with your feet.
The McCord Stewart Museum’s excellent and informative Indigenous Voices of Today: Knowledge, Trauma, Resilience. The show profiles the 11 nations living within the borders of Quebec, with testimonies and carefully curated objects. Two of the McCord’s current shows include Becoming Montreal is about the depictions of the city in the 1800s, and Wampum: Beads of diplomacy, which displays over 40 wampum belts from different collections, underscoring their symbolism and history.