The Social Page: Swish soirée

Brandon laying groundwork for Arabian championship

BRANDON — It’s time to dish the dirt on what’s about to happen at Brandon’s Keystone Centre.

Hundreds of horses and hundreds more spectators are about to descend on the site for Canada’s National Arabian Championship Aug. 6 to 15, and before that happens, the staging surface has to be perfect.

“We have been working on this day in and day out,” said Devin Epp, sales manager in the Ag Centre at the Keystone Centre.

Since July 24, staff have been working on a 24-hour schedule to build the competition floor. Dirt was hauled into the arena and has since been worked into place with tractors and hand-pushed equipment.

On eve of Folklorama, Ghana pavilion scrambles to replace stolen outfits

Volunteers from Folklorama’s Ghana pavilion scrambled to replace cultural costumes for about 40 young dancers after the outfits were stolen in Winnipeg days before the annual festival begins.

Two plastic storage bins containing the costumes, to be worn by children and teenagers, were taken from the trunk of a parked car on Banning Street, near Notre Dame Avenue in the West End, likely late Wednesday or early Thursday.

“I felt sad that this has happened. I felt completely devastated for the mother who had them in her car,” said pavilion co-ordinator Abigail Larson. “The initial feeling of sadness changed to, ‘OK, how do we make this a positive?’”

The costumes belong to the Ghana Union of Manitoba Dancers, whose members have rehearsed for months for Folklorama, which begins Sunday.

Nemat’s novel chronicles grandmother’s harrowing life in Russia and Iran

Mistress of the Persian Boarding House is the most enjoyable book I have read in the more than 15 years since I began reviewing books for the Free Press.

Author Marina Nemat’s prose, inspired by her paternal grandmother’s life, flows smoothly, like a babbling brook down a mountain.

Nemat is an Iranian-born Canadian writer and human rights activist known for her bestselling memoirs Prisoner of Tehran and After Tehran: A Life Reclaimed. Arrested at 16 for opposing Iran’s post-revolution regime, she endured torture and forced marriage in Evin Prison before emigrating to Canada in 1991.

Nemat’s grandmothers were both Russian, and she was brought up in a Russian Orthodox Christian family in Tehran. With their Iranian husbands, whom they had married before the Russian Revolution of 1917, both grandmothers fled from Russia to Iran as part of a massive wave of migration.

The Social Page: Swish soirée

Swish Model Management held its 10th anniversary party and launch of Swish Magazine at The HUB Rooftop at the Metropolitan Entertainment Centre on Aug. 10. The event was hosted by Culture Card and models wore apparel by Eph Apparel, Lennard Taylor Design Inc. and Flaunt Boutique, with hair by John Graham of Aevi Spa Salon Boutique and makeup by Grace Stewart. DJs Jamil Williams and Farrison Hord entertained the crowd. Swish Magazine will be a platform for emerging local artists, writers, photographer and models to showcase their talents.

Kreviazuk, in her own voice

Chantal Kreviazuk is in the midst of a very busy year.

In May, the Winnipeg-born singer-songwriter released her 11th studio album, In My Own Voice — a project that reclaims and reimagines a selection of hit songs she’s written for some of the world’s biggest artists.

The 12-track album features Kreviazuk performing ethereal covers of Pitbull’s Feel This Moment, Drake’s Over My Dead Body and Gwen Stefani’s Rich Girl, among others.

But she didn’t stop there.