What’s Up: Clara Hughes, animation, Rumble in the Burt, Send+Receive, Lotai as Chappell Roan, scary movies

Clara Hughes book launch

• McNally Robinson Booksellers, Grant Park (1120 Grant Ave.)
• Tonight, 7 p.m.
• Free
• One of Canada’s most decorated Olympians returns to her hometown tonight to launch a new memoir about her healing journey, the roadblocks along the way and the search for new beginnings.

Clara Hughes, who was born in Winnipeg and now lives on Vancouver Island, launches her new memoir Learning to Breathe at 7 p.m., when she’ll be joined in conversation by Shelagh Rogers, the former host of CBC Radio’s The Next Chapter.

Learning to Breathe is Hughes’s second memoir, following the publication of 2017’s Open Heart, Open Mind. Her latest sees the six-time Olympic medallist detail her use of psychedelic-assisted therapy to deal with physical and emotional ailments, navigating menopause, forging new relationships and more.

Buy on mcnallyrobinson.com

Hughes is the only athlete to win multiple medals in both the Summer and Winter Games (in cycling and speed skating, respectively), and is a member of both the Order of Manitoba and the Order of Canada. She’ll discuss Learning to Breathe with Rogers before signing copies at the store. The free event is also available to stream on McNally Robinson’s YouTube page.

— Ben Sigurdson

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Moving / Still: Animation at the Winnipeg Film Group

• Cinematheque (100 Arthur St.)
• Saturday, 7 p.m.
• Tickets $11.50 here

Local animator and experimental filmmaker Jim Pomero has curated a fresh, 87-minute program of short animation films from filmmakers associated with the Winnipeg Film Group, spanning from the early 1970s through 2022.

“By the time the Winnipeg Film Group was founded in 1974, three of its 13 founding members Leon Johnson, Richard Condie and Brad Caslor were already recognized as animators who helped establish animation as a central anchor within the organization’s history,” an official release reads.

Selections include a variety of styles and formats, from the psychedelic photograph animation of Johnson’s 1973 film okeedoke to Ed Ackerman and Gregory Zbitnew’s experimental short 5¢ A Copy from 1980 to Patrick Lowe’s 2000 parody of 1960s National Film Board experimental films A Bit Transcendental, among others. The shortest films clock in at just over a minute, while Neil McInnes Transformer (1980) is the longest at 11 minutes, with the bulk running from three to five minutes.

The screening will be followed by a discussion with filmmakers.

— Sheldon Birnie

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Rumble in the Burt

• Burton Cummings Theatre, 364 Smith St.
• Sunday, 7 p.m.
• Tickets $31-$52 at Ticketmaster

Expect the unexpected at this no-holds-barred brawl as Jody Threat, (Sweet) Bobby Schink, Tyler Colton, Devon Monroe, the Matriarch and Mo Jabari lay the smackdown on stage at Winnipeg Pro Wrestling’s fourth outing at the Burt.

Keep your eyes peeled and your cheers at ear-splitting decibels for Mr. Punch Kick Chop himself, Tarik, coming in hot in his quest to shake off challengers and earn a shot at the WPW Championship later in the season.

Sunday’s showcase promises to pack enough power, flair and razzle-dazzle to floor the audience as the pros pummel, pound and punch in their grapple for glory. Will the fighters play by the rules, or will they cross the lines to secure victory?

Only one thing’s for sure – it’s going to be one heck of a high-voltage wild ride. Check wpgprowrestling.com for the full list of grapplers joining the fray.

— AV Kitching

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Send+Receive

• Various locations
• to Sunday
• tickets at sendandreceive.org

For 28 years, send + receive has celebrated sound and those who endeavour to make it, bringing artists and experimenters from around the world to the city to make some noise.

This year’s fest kicks off tonight at the West End Cultural Centre with performances by the record-bending artist Maria Chavez, an “abstract turntablist” who manipulates sound and time by using a double-needle, allowing her to play to different segments of a single record at the same time.

Chavez is joined on the bill by Miracle Wastes, a scrappy “glitchy noise” improvisatory duo, and Winnipeg’s Barn Sour, a.k.a. Pat Klassen, a longtime festival goer who’s making his first appearance in the lineup.

On Friday night at the South Sudanese Community Centre (129 Dagmar St.), Chavez returns for a DJ set, with performances by Cairo-based electronic producer 3Phaz and Winnipeg trio Compost.

Saturday night’s show at the WECC — featuring saxophonist Karen Ng, avant-pop duo Sweet Lips and video artist Colby Richardson — will appeal to anyone with an ear for oddity. That’s because fellow performer Matt Robidoux’s primary instrument is a “corn synth,” a “modular system that interprets physical input from two ears of corn cast in aluminum.”

“The instrument was invented during (a residency) in Wisconsin, where I cast two corn cob mouldings in aluminum at a metal-pouring workshop in a cornfield,” according to his festival writeup.

“Movement and touch determine the parameters of pitch, velocity and duration. This makes for an accessible instrument, at once charming and absurd, while also a merging of my practice creating space for unrestricted musical improvisation.”

Something to nibble on.

— Ben Waldman

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Lotai as Chappell Roan

• Canada Life Centre
• Friday, 7 p.m.
• Tickets $30-$40 at Ticketmaster

Cover bands exist everywhere, but Winnipeg has elevated the tribute concert to a place of unique obsession. For a city that bristles when Toronto looks down its nose at us but acts like a fawning schoolboy any time a celebrity or TV show deigns to mention us — it may seem fitting, or a little sad, that we sometimes celebrate imitation more than originality.

And indeed yet some of our tribute concerts are so well produced, so steeped in theatricality and talent, that they’re darn irresistible.

The most notable of these is Real Love’s Bands as Bands, which, if you haven’t guessed, asks local bands to cover much bigger bands. You never know which local band might play Limp Bizkit, Coldplay or Katy Perry — in turn, revealing something about their own guilty pleasures or unexpected inspirations. It’s been a big hit and mostly a boon to the local music scene.

There are a couple Bands as Bands shows on the immediate horizon, and one of them features Lotai (originally Bush Lotus) as Chappell Roan during Friday’s Manitoba Moose game.

Led by Arielle Beaupré, Lotai — with strong musicians such as Corey Hykawy, Brian Gluck, Shawn Dearborn and Erin Lamb by Beaupré’s side — will undoubtedly bring all the melodrama and fun that characterizes Gen Z’s favourite pop ballad songstress.

Before attending, check out Lotai’s EP of folk-pop originals, Floating Kitestrings, produced with help from the local wunderkinds of House of Wonders, which hovers gently, often en Francais, in a much more introspective space.

— Conrad Sweatman

 

Scream and Halloween

• The Park Theatre, 698 Osborne St.
• Tuesday, 6:30 p.m.
• Tickets $19 at myparktheatre.com

Two killers, no filler.

Sookram’s Brewery and the Park Theatre bring Ghostface and Michael Meyers together for a double feature of two slasher classics: Wes Craven’s Scream (1996) and John Carpenter’s Halloween (1978).

The former movie, which screens first at 6:30 p.m., was heavily inspired by the latter, which starts at 9 p.m. In fact, the doomed teenagers in Scream are actually watching Halloween in the final act of the film.

Each ticket includes a specially brewed 16 oz pour from Sookram’s Brewery. As such, this event is 18+. Doors open at 6 p.m.

— Jen Zoratti