What’s up

Flatlander’s Beer & Beverage Festival

• Canada Life Centre, 300 Portage Ave.
• Friday, 7-10 p.m; Saturday, 1-4 p.m. and 7-10 p.m.
• Tickets $49.95 plus fees via Liquor Marts or Ticketmaster

The sound of cans being cracked open will be echoing through the concourse and ice-level areas of Canada Life Centre on Friday and Saturday as the Flatlander’s Beer and Beverage Festival returns.

Over 500 products will be poured at this year’s event, more than 150 of which will be new to the province or festival exclusives. Around a dozen locals are pouring at this year’s festival, including Dastardly Villain, Little Brown Jug, Brazen Hall and Winkler’s Heritage Farms, with a range of Canadian and international brews being poured throughout the concourse level.

Recent years have seen Flatlander’s broaden its scope to include seltzers, ready-to-drink cocktails, ciders and more — for 2026, these drinks make up around half of all products being poured. Pre-made caesars, hard iced teas, gin smashes, canned margaritas, boozy seltzers and more will be on offer on the event level, including products from Winnipeg’s Shrugging Doctor and Winkler’s Dead Horse Cider Co. and Fort Garry offshoot Hector’s Hard.

In addition to the Friday and Saturday evening events, which run from 7 to 10 p.m., a matinee tasting runs from 1 to 4 p.m. on Saturday. There will also be concessions for purchase as well as games and prizes.

Tickets are $49.95 plus fees from Ticketmaster, or are available at your local Liquor Mart. Proceeds from the event benefit the True North Youth Foundation’s core programs — the Winnipeg Jets Hockey Academy, Project II and Camp Manitou.

For more on the festival, including a list of products being poured, visit flatlandersbeerfest.com.

— Ben Sigurdson

 

On the Edge

• RWB Founders’ Studio, 380 Graham Ave.
• June 3-5, 7:30 p.m.
• Tickets start at $40 at rwb.org

Here’s your chance to see the next generation of ballet stars to emerge from the Anna McCowan-Johnson Aspirant Program, the two-year, post-secondary training program for advanced-level classical ballet students in the Royal Winnipeg Ballet School’s Professional Division.

This year’s On the Edge, an annual showcase held in the Founders’ Studio at the RWB’s Graham Avenue campus, will feature The Scherzo from A Midsummer Night’s Dream, choreographed by RWB artistic director Christopher Stowell. Other program highlights include a performance of George Balanchine’s Who Cares? as well as creations by RWB principal dancer Stephan Azulay as well this year’s Pathways to Performance fellow Melvin Lawovi.

Pathways to Performance is a partnership program by Memoirs of Blacks in Ballet that links Black choreographers to dance companies. Lawovi, who is also an American Ballet Theater dancer, is the fourth choreographer commissioned to create a new work on the Aspirants through this program.

— Jen Zoratti

 

Josiah Galleries Art Show

• Warehouse Artworks, 222 McDermot Ave.
• Opens tonight, 6-9 p.m., runs until the end of June
• Free

Most known for his playful and imaginative take on Winnipeg neighbourhoods, Josiah Koppanyi will be showing 12 new works and 10 earlier pieces in this month-long solo exhibition.

The self-taught artist’s distinct style is meant to evoke feelings of nostalgia. Whimsical, colourful and jam-packed with details, his paintings are “caricatures which accentuate key features of a neighbourhood,” as he describes them.

“I try to capture the general feel of the neighbourhood, but I don’t like to capture accuracy. I leave that for photographs,” he says.

— AV Kitching

 

Prairie Spirit and Detective!

• Mystery location
• Saturday, 8 p.m.
• $15

There’s Winnipeg band Prairie, local church Prairie Spirit — and now also Winnipeg band Prairie Spirit.

There’s nothing wrong with variations on a theme if it’s a rich one, and Prairie Spirit are mining resources of which we Manitoba denizens have an abundance: “the open space, the cold winters, the isolation,” according to their bio.

Sonically, the results sound like King Krule or Sonic Youth — jazzy changes hammered out with the IDGAF energy of old punk rockers — only a little more like weather might be the thing making them angsty.

They’re joined at this concert by At Last, Detective!, an art rock ensemble that takes inspiration from EC Comics, distributors of Tales from the Crypt and other pulpy noir and horror fare.

Adding to the sense of mystery: tickets are available only in advance, and audiences are invited to track down the event poster on either band’s Instagram page and follow the instructions to uncover the event’s exact co-ordinates.

— Conrad Sweatman

 

Mas Aya, Osmanthus and Psst

• West End Cultural Centre, 586 Ellice Ave.
• Saturday, 7:30 p.m.
• Tickets: $25 at clusterfestival.com

The 17th edition of the Cluster Festival continues across the city this weekend, with Saturday night’s Return Signal program expected to inspire awe and intrigue.

Opening the night is Mas Aya, a Latin-infused electronic jazz project from Brandon Miguel Valdivia, a percussionist who’s collaborated with Polaris Prize winners Lido Pimienta and Jeremy Dutcher, as well as ambient legend Laraaji. Osmanthus, a duo from Calgary, will pick up the signal with their performance piece Lanie Wosku, which blends violin, synthesizer and algorithmic desire for an improvisatory set.

Winnipeg audiences might have already heard whispers about Psst, a collaboration between former Winnipeg poet laureate Chimwemwe Undi, multi-disciplinary artist Zoë LeBrun and the chamber punk duo Savant Flaneur.

Previously mounted as a Nuit Blanche installation and again last December at the Handsome Daughter, Psst is a participatory sonic experiment which invites attendees to divulge their secrets into a giant listening ear. “Their secrets, whether good or bad, get turned into lovely music, a massive, choral sound,” says Gage Salnikowski, whose code translates the spoken word into randomized sound. As the music is played, micro-poems by Undi are read and projected, destigmatizing the vocalization of private thoughts to encourage others join an agnostic chorus of abstracted speech.

LeBrun is the mind behind the ear. “My role in the first iteration of the project was as a sculptor actually. I was brought on to create what would hold the microphone and be the interface between audience and the booth, and when we were talking about what to make this object, the obvious thing that jumped out was the ear,” says LeBrun, who used photos of her own lobes as inspiration. “I ended up making two, almost-four-foot-tall ear sculptures, crafted with aluminum foil as the base, layered with quilt batting and this beautiful magenta velvet on top to make sure it was soft.”

— Ben Waldman