Exhibition celebrates life stories of COVID’s earliest, most isolated victims

In the spring of 2020, Megan Davies was confronted by a terrifying number: 82 per cent of Canada’s first-wave COVID-19 deaths were residents of long-term care facilities.

Theatrical flying service helps 'Peter Pan' performers soar high above the stage

In Peter Pan, you can fly if you think of a wonderful thought. Any happy little thought. All it takes is faith, trust and pixie dust — and Harry Christensen.

It’s a Saturday afternoon and Christensen, a flying director with the theatrical flying service Flying by Foy, is in town from Las Vegas teaching RWB company members how to take flight for this week’s production of Peter Pan, which runs from May 3 to 7 at the Centennial Concert Hall.

Established in 1957 by Peter Foy, Flying by Foy has sprinkled the proverbial pixie dust on thousands of productions of Peter Pan, including four Broadway iterations and the NBC television production of Peter Pan Live!

Christensen, who has been flying with Foy for almost 25 years, has history with RWB’s Peter Pan. When choreographer Jorden Morris set about adapting the J.M. Barrie classic about the boy who never grows up, Flying by Foy sent Christensen to help create the flight sequences for the ballet, which made its première in Winnipeg in 2006.

Laughs galore as performers from all backgrounds hit city stages

It’s possible there’s never been a better time to be funny in Winnipeg.

New comedy nights and venues keep popping up in settings old and new, with open-mic nights and showcases featuring comics in all genres and of all ages and backgrounds.

Free Press arts and life writers talked to a cross-section of those involved in our city’s diverse comedy scene — from old-school orators to fresh-faced folks plying their jokes in both English and French, from the city’s Indigenous comedians to those playing host to this cavalcade of comics — to find out just what is tickling the city’s proverbial funny bone.

Adding to the abundance of local laughs is the return of the Winnipeg Comedy Festival, which starts Tuesday and runs through May 7. It seems Winnipeggers truly will, for once, get the last laugh.

Researcher working on memorial to honour people lost in Lake Winnipeg

Two fishing partners and their dog team, lost through the ice in 1908. A fatal lightning strike to a fishing net in the 1920s. In at least two cases, appendicitis. Shipwrecks. Fires.

These are just a handful of the harrowing stories Heather Hinam has uncovered in her work as a researcher on a memorial that will honour the fisherfolk who have lost their lives to Lake Winnipeg.

The New Iceland Heritage Museum tapped Hinam, a naturalist, artist, interpretive specialist and owner of Second Nature Creative Interpretation, to research the outdoor memorial, which will be located at the museum’s Lake Winnipeg Visitor Centre in Gimli.

So far, Hinam has collected more than 80 people for the memorial, though not all of them have names or dates attached to them yet. She’s trying to go as far back in history as she can, interviewing elders, local historians and, in some cases, family members of victims, as well as combing through newspaper archives and obituaries. The work is meticulous and slow.

WCD’s Retuning explores the joy and perils of the changing nature of art and life

What does it mean to retune something?

The dictionary has some insight. You can tune something again or differently, return or redo. You can readjust a key, a pitch, a frequency.

But what about our bodies and minds? If those are the instruments we use to express ourselves in the world, then they, too, can be retuned.

RWB's next season is a work of, and ode to, CEO André Lewis’s 50-year career

A new season at the Royal Winnipeg Ballet always bears the fingerprints of André Lewis.

New Qaumajuq exhibition spans more than 2,000 years across circumpolar Arctic

Darlene Coward Wight has been the curator of Inuit art at the Winnipeg Art Gallery — and now, Qaumajuq — since 1986.

Pushing boundaries in pointe shoes

When you think of the Royal Winnipeg Ballet, you probably think of beautiful, classical story ballets such as Swan Lake or Romeo and Juliet. Maybe you think of ballerinas in pointe shoes dancing to Tchaikovsky, as performed by the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra, on the stage at the Centennial Concert Hall.

The art of Indigenous truth and joy

Marie-Anne Redhead is passionate about supporting Indigenous artists, and about sharing their work, too. Important qualities to have in her new role at the Winnipeg Art Gallery.

Jill Sawatzky was sure her phone was glitching when she received a request to outfit Miriam Toews for the Oscars

On a Friday night in early February, Jill Sawatzky, the designer behind the Winnipeg clothing line Tony Chestnut, received a message.

Swan Lake returns to the Centennial Concert Hall

Late February sunlight streams into the studio as the Royal Winnipeg Ballet principal artist Elizabeth Lamont rehearses for Swan Lake. She, along with fellow principals Chenxin Liu and Alanna McAdie, is dancing in the dual lead role of Odette/Odile — a part that not only requires emotional dexterity, but the technical ability to whirl through the ballet’s iconic sequence of 32 fouetté turns as Odile.

Author offering a collection of body-horror stories, about women who ‘haunt and are haunted’

Which is scarier: dying, or living forever?

Little known work of Philip Glass fused with dance meditation on nature of time

Walking into a rehearsal for Looking Glass, a new work by Israeli choreographer Idan Cohen commissioned by Winnipeg’s Contemporary Dancers, is like stepping back in time. Or, perhaps, forward.

Pathways to Performance helping RWB to support change and Black ballet creators

When George Floyd, an unarmed Black man, was brutally murdered by a Minneapolis police officer in 2020, the systemic racism that exists in predominantly white institutions was brought to the fore. And that includes ballet.

Women Talking evokes rage, humour and hope with its powerful script, brilliant acting

Difficult, harrowing, poignant, enraging, sometimes funny, maybe even hopeful: Women Talking, Sarah Polley’s Oscar-nominated adaptation of Miriam Toews’ 2018 novel of the same name, stirs a variety of emotions.

Hopefuls audition to make the grand jeté into the RWB school’s professional division

In the Royal Winnipeg Ballet’s studios on Graham Avenue, in the very space where company dancers hone their craft and rehearse for the season’s performances at the Centennial Concert Hall, 18 students are hoping to make their dance dreams a reality.

Kids bringing magic back to RWB’s 'Nutcracker'

A production of Nutcracker without children in it just doesn’t quite feel like Nutcracker.

Christmas playlist has highs and Lows

No one would dispute that Mariah Carey’s juggernaut All I Want For Christmas Is You is at the zenith of holiday jams, but there are many other seasonal songs worthy of a place in heavy rotation.

Maintaining dancers’ pointe shoes is the foundation ballet is built upon

To audiences, ballerinas' pointe shoes represent grace and beauty, effortlessness and impossibility. For dancers, pointe shoes are both a source of mastery and a source of pain, of blood and blisters and bunions. They are a rite of passage for the young ballet student and, later, a ritual for the company dancer.

Choreographer uses nudity to focus on movement, expression and energy

It’s mid-afternoon at the Rachel Browne Theatre and dance artist Irene Martinez is slithering, slowly, across the floor.

Sweet, sweet verdicts

Testers dig in to classic and new-school Halloween goodies to pass ultimate judgment: trick or treat?

Spooky tunes for boys and ghouls

Halloween dominates October like Christmas dominates November and December, but while the yuletide soundtrack is vast and never-ending, with songs in every genre imaginable, All Hallow’s Eve is sorely lacking in musical accompaniment.

Husky’s owner eking out best last days with her very good boy

Steal a piece of meat (No. 2). Play hide-and-seek (No. 7). Have my friends over for a play date (No. 12).

Indigenous playwrights shape stories as part of Pimootayowin Creators Circle

Pimootayowin is an Anishinaabemowin word meaning “journey.”

Winnipegger struggled to stay mum about Amazing win

They took planes, trains and automobiles across 20,000 kilometres and 24 cities from coast to coast. They solved brain-teasing puzzles and completed challenges that put their strength and endurance to the test. She jumped out of a helicopter. He did an obstacle course — on roller skates.

Folklorama in the family

IVAN Tkach and his sister Isabel are in warm-up clothes, rehearsing to an empty hall with their ensemble, Zoloto Ukrainian Dance. In a little over two hours, they will be resplendent in their dance costumes — Ivan in sharovary, those voluminous pants; Isabel with a vinok, the ribboned flower crown, perched on her head — performing to a full house at the Spirit of Ukraine Pavilion at Folklorama. They will dance in three shows tonight, and are half-way through a weeklong, 23-show run.

African-Canadian artist Esmaa Mohamoud uses sport to look at how Black bodies are made visible and invisible

Of all the striking, large-scale works that compose Esmaa Mohamoud’s landmark solo touring exhibition To Play in the Face of Certain Defeat, on view at the Winnipeg Art Gallery until Oct. 16, Glorious Bones is perhaps the most compelling.

Free Press Folklorama Bingo card invites Winnipeggers to take in two-week cultural festival one square at a time

There are exactly 24 pavilions taking part in this year’s Folklorama, which kicks off Sunday and runs until Aug. 13.

For 50 years, the RWB’s Ballet in the Park has been a summer tradition

Every summer since 1972, Manitobans have gathered in Assiniboine Park for the Royal Winnipeg Ballet’s en plein air exhibition, Ballet in the Park.

Winnipeg performer part of dynamic duo on Amazing Race Canada

Winnipeg performer part of dynamic duo on Amazing Race Canada

Kidsfest a belated chance for Fred Penner to celebrate The Cat Came Back

Fred Penner has been celebrating the 40th anniversary of The Cat Came Back — the debut album whose title track launched his career as a beloved children’s musician — for two years now.

You see, the milestone was to be officially commemorated with a tour in 2020, but we all know how that year went down.

“We managed to squeeze Calgary under the line, and then we got up to Edmonton at the Winspear Centre, and we had 1,000 people ready to go and about two hours before the performance, the Alberta health authority pulled the plug,” says Penner, 75, over the phone from British Columbia, where he’s playing a few catch-up Cat Came Back dates.

The tour will bring him back to Winnipeg this week for the Winnipeg International Children’s Festival, also known as Kidsfest, at which he will be performing for what he believes is the 36th time.

Author Georgia Toews' debut novel to launch this week

When Georgia Toews first started writing fiction, she was trying to hide.

She didn’t want to see herself on the page, so she wrote a family drama set on a farm, with a science-fiction bent.

“I was terrified to really put so much of myself into the story,” she says via Zoom from her home in Toronto. “That first draft was me trying to be so metaphorical, and just not writing like I have the ability to in these strange, sci-fi, dystopian ideas.

“It wasn’t saying what I needed to say, because I wasn’t being honest.”

Ontarian creating replica 'Gimli Glider' cockpit for landing's 40th anniversary

The Gimli Glider continues to hold many people’s fascination, in no small part because it’s a rare aviation disaster story with a happy ending. But most people’s fascinations with the Gimli Glider do not involve an elaborate, years-long restoration project of a Boeing 767 cockpit they have in their garage.

Graphic designer Shaun Vincent’s projects tell story of spirit and significance

The first thing to know about Shaun Vincent is that he’s a hands-on kind of guy.

When we meet on a morning in May, he’s not behind a desk or drawing table — places where you might expect to find a graphic designer, and the founder and creative director of an eponymous creative marketing firm.

No, he’s fixing a window in the boardroom at Vincent Design Inc., which is located on the third floor of the Social Enterprise Centre, a collaborative workspace in a renovated warehouse in Winnipeg’s North End. It’s one of the first nice days of spring, and he wants to let in some fresh air. The blue sky is framed out behind him and, when the window finally relents, it’s like an exhale. The warm breeze rushes in, carrying the rumble and screech of passing trains.

Over the past 15 years, the 45-year-old Michif designer and his team have emerged as leaders in modern Indigenous design, creating visual identities for a host of clients, including Canadian Geographic, the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation, Keewatinohk Inniniw Minoayawin Inc., Ndinawe and dozens of others.

All that Cinderella jazz

There’s a wicked stepmother and a fairy godmother. There’s a beautiful girl worked to the bone, a handsome man waiting for her at a ball and a spell that ends when the clock strikes midnight.

You might think you know this story. But Val Caniparoli’s A Cinderella Story — a Royal Winnipeg Ballet fan favourite that returns to the Centennial Concert Hall this week — isn’t the usual glass-slipper take on a well-known fairy tale. This whiz-bang rendition is inspired by the groundbreaking 1957 Rodgers and Hammerstein live television musical starring Julie Andrews.

Now, here’s where things get a little meta: Caniparoli’s ballet is actually set in the 1950s, with retro costumes, a dance vocabulary that includes jazz and tap, and themes from Richard Rodgers’ songbook as arranged for a live jazz orchestra by Winnipeg’s best-known big bandleader, Ron Paley.

In fact, when André Lewis, artistic director of the Royal Winnipeg Ballet, approached Caniparoli about choreographing a Cinderella ballet for the company in the early 2000s, he only had one stipulation: not Sergei Prokofiev’s. The Russian ballet, which premièred in 1945, is beautiful, no question, but Lewis wanted something fresh. Caniparoli was just the man to deliver.

Traditional Inuit tattooing a sacred practice that tells a personal story

When Mumilaaq Qaqqaq, the former Member of Parliament for Nunavut, won her seat in the 2019 federal election, she made waves: here was a young (then just 25) Inuk woman poised to be a voice of change, and she was the only candidate to have visible tattoos on her face.

“What I look like already is very different from what you’re used to seeing in politics,” she told Fashion Magazine at the time.

Kakiniit — traditional Inuit tattoos — are an important part of identity and expression, particularly among Inuit women. They are also a sacred practice that was nearly erased by colonization. The Catholic Church saw them as evil and missionaries banned the practice, depriving generations of this rite of passage and community.

Within the last decade, however, there’s been a resurgence in Inuit women reclaiming kakiniit. On Instagram, you can find photos of young Inuit women from across Inuit Nunangat proudly wearing markings that were once forbidden.

Actors find connection as sisters in adaptation of Miriam Toews’ All My Puny Sorrows

When we talk about “onscreen chemistry,” it’s often in the context of romantic leads.

But Canadian actors Alison Pill (The Newsroom) and Sarah Gadon (Alias Grace), who star as sisters in All My Puny Sorrows, writer-director Michael McGowan’s affecting adaptation of Miriam Toews’ stunning semi-autobiographical 2014 novel of the same name, have sizzle in spades. (The film has been a hit on the festival circuit, and picked up a handful of nominations and two wins at the Canadian Screen Awards on Sunday night.)

As it turns out, Gadon and Pill have known each other since they were kids in Toronto and thrilled at the chance to finally work together.

“I had a sneaking suspicion that we would work well together at this point in our lives,” Pill says via Zoom. “And it was even better in that regard than I expected or could hope for. She just makes me a better artist and creator.”

Pandemic planning has made RWB more flexible as it announces new season

The Royal Winnipeg Ballet has certainly been kept on the tippy-toes of its pointe shoes over the past couple of seasons.

Cancellations, interruptions and pivots to digital were the hallmarks of the company’s 2020/21 and 2021/22 seasons, which were altered or abbreviated by the COVID-19 pandemic. Planning for the future is always an act of hope, especially so in times of uncertainty. But, if you ask the RWB’s artistic director and CEO André Lewis, it’s also necessary.

“We have to continue planning,” he says. “We have to continue envisioning what we want to do. We have to remain hopeful, and we are. And I want to feed our dancers artistically.”

And so, it’s full steam ahead with a 2022/23 season, which is being presented under the theme “illuminate your world.” The company’s forthcoming 83rd season is something of an RWB greatest-hits package, composed of favourites old and new that will brighten and enlighten.

Arts institutions work to better represent city’s diversity

Jauvon Gilliam was born and raised as an only child in Gary, a rust-belt Indiana city home to a predominately African-American working class. Located roughly 50 kilometres southeast of Chicago on the edge of Lake Michigan, Gary was once known as the “magic city,” anchored by the largest steel plant in America.

By Gilliam’s childhood in the 1980s, Gary had begun its decline along with America’s steel industry. Economic struggle led to poverty, and poverty led to violence.

“My dad used music to keep me away from the guns and the drugs,” Gilliam, 42, says over the phone from Washington, D.C. “Gary was, at that point in time, very rough and tough, and so he used music to keep me safe.”

Music didn’t just keep him safe. It became his life. And, in 2002, at the age of 21, he won an audition: that of principal timpanist in a symphony orchestra.

Tiny hats, big hearts

There’s a famous scene in the 2000s political drama The West Wing in which White House communications director Toby Ziegler (Richard Schiff) becomes a dad, and muses that he didn’t realize babies came with hats.

“You guys crack me up,” he says, meeting his newborn twins for the first time. “You don’t have jobs. You can’t walk or speak the language. You don’t have a dollar in your pockets but you got yourselves a hat so everything’s fine.”

The hats babies come with serve a clear utilitarian purpose: to keep newborns — especially those who were born early — warm and snug as they transition to life outside of the womb. But baby hats can also be tiny emblems of community comfort and care, particularly those lovingly knit by volunteers these babies will never meet.

Some of those volunteers are still kids themselves. When the first snowflakes of winter fell in November, a group of students at John Henderson Middle School began their school day at the loom. Knitting is an activity included in a program that began in 2019 called Interactive Start, in which students can start their day by doing an activity or exploring a new hobby without the stress of being graded on it.

Michael Redhead Champagne writes book for young readers

Michael Redhead Champagne is an award-winning community organizer, public speaker, writer, volunteer and advocate — and now, the Ininew multi-hyphenate can add children’s book author to the list.

Champagne, 34, has written a children’s book called We Need Everyone, which will be out in September via HighWater Press, an imprint of Portage & Main Press. Illustrated by Tiff Bartel, the book invites children to identify their unique gifts and empowers them to share those gifts. It’s as the title says: a strong, healthy, vibrant community needs everyone.

Champagne has motivated and inspired youth throughout his career, and he’s wanted to write a children’s book ever since he penned his first story, Mr. Big Face, in kindergarten. But the book is more than a personal goal realized; it’s also a logical extension of his previous work focused on youth suicide prevention, including serving on the Kids Help Phone Indigenous Advisory Council and the Kids Help Phone texting advisory council.

Growing up in Winnipeg’s North End and as a member of Shamattawa First Nation, he’s seen the challenges facing Indigenous kids and their families, as well as a suicide epidemic that has claimed the lives of far too many children. But he’s also seen their gifts.

Better friendships begin with a better you

Our friendships are among the most important, formative, joyful and fulfilling relationships we can have as humans. As the saying goes, friends are the family we choose.

Still, despite how vital those social bonds are, there’s not much of a framework for when our friendships are emptying our proverbial cup instead of filling it. There’s all manner of advice — and formal therapy — for navigating romantic relationships, but what about our best friends forever?

How do you manage conflict — or even simple disagreements — constructively with your pals? How do you navigate (instead of avoid) difficult conversations? How do you make new friends outside of school or work, especially as an adult?

And how, if it comes down to it, do you break up with your friends?

Readers share tales of beloved family ornaments

Precious family heirlooms. Kindergarten crafts made from Popsicle sticks and glitter. Keepsakes from a baby’s first Christmas.

The ornaments that are hung on fir boughs with care are more than mere festive decorations. They are tissue-wrapped memories brought out once a year, which is what makes them so very special.

We asked Free Press readers to reflect on their most beloved baubles. Some responses have been lightly edited for clarity.

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How the arts community is rebounding, adapting as the pandemic drags on

Call it a window of entertainment opportunity.

Earlier in December, before the Omicron variant of COVID-19 became the latest hot topic during the pandemic, Free Press entertainment journalists, armed with vaccination cards and curiosity, ventured out to nightclubs, theatres and concert venues to learn, and to learn again, what a night on the town was like.

For many, an evening of music, acting, comedy or dance proved to be an escape — for a couple of hours, at least — from the pandemic that has affected every part of our lives since its appearance in Manitoba in March 2020.

Vaccination cards and IDs were shown at the doors, but mask use was as varied as the entertainment on offer. For some, letting their hair down meant taking their masks off too, while for others, the masks stayed on until they walked outside again.

RWB dancers and students reflect on the significance of performing Nutcracker’s Clara

In ballet, there are certain iconic, career-making lead roles dancers start dreaming of performing the moment they first slip on pointe shoes. Juliet, of Romeo and Juliet, is one such part. So, too, is the dual role of Odette/Odile in Swan Lake.

And, of course, Clara in Nutcracker.

Seeing the Royal Winnipeg Ballet’s uniquely Canadian take on the Christmastime classic, choreographed by Galina Yordanova and Nina Menon to Tchaikovsky’s singular score, is a holiday tradition for generations of Winnipeg families.

But performing in the coveted role of Clara — the girl who dreams of becoming a ballerina and dancing with her Nutcracker prince — is also a storied tradition. The role of Young Clara offers professional division students the chance to perform onstage with the company, while grown-up Clara is a role in which many dancers make their principal role debut.

Inuit sculptor honours creative mother in massive piece outside WAG’s Qaumajuq

ELIE — Goota Ashoona prefers to work outside.

That’s where she first learned to make her art as a child growing up in an Inuit outpost camp on the shores of Baffin Island, Nunavut, transforming snow into miniature igloos and polar bears under a sky that danced at night.

Today, Ashoona is seated at her outdoor workbench at her home much further south near Elie, her tiny 4-foot-11 frame bundled into a bright-blue hoodie emblazoned with the word “Nunavut” against the red inuksuk and the blue star (the Niqirtsuituq, or North Star) from the territorial flag. She’s surrounded by trees and, beyond them, open prairie.

It’s early afternoon in the small community about 45 kilometres west of Winnipeg, but already, the November sunlight is long and low. Ashoona is carving faces, among her favourite things to carve, into beluga whalebone. It’s silent out here, save for the whine of her rotary tool.

There’s a reason pickleball is the hottest court sport around

Welcome to Jen Tries, a semi-regular feature in which Free Press columnist Jen Zoratti will try something new and report back. In this instalment, Jen Tries… pickleball.

It’s 3 p.m. on a Tuesday afternoon, and the gymnasium at Sturgeon Heights Community Centre is echoing with the pleasing, rhythmic “pop” sound of paddles making contact with pickleballs — neon plastic balls with holes, not unlike a wiffleball. Members of Winnipeg West Pickleball have just taken to the courts, where they will play for the next couple of hours.

It was that sound that first hooked Rose Sawatzky. Sawatzky, 49, is not only a bona fide pickleball champion — she was ranked No. 1 in Canada within a year of first taking up the game during a trip to Arizona in 2017 — she’s also an organization director for Pickleball Canada and a certified instructor who has kindly agreed to school me in what has fast become the hottest sport at community centres all over the continent.

Pickleball is a badminton-meets-ping-pong-meets-tennis hybrid that can be played indoors or outdoors. According to pickleball lore, it was made up by three Washington State dads in 1965 and named after Pickles the dog, who liked to chase balls. (There’s some low-stakes debate about the origin of the name; others say it comes from a crew term for a boat full of thrown-together rowers.)

Black Ballerina’s big questions, big dance mix

When you Google the title of Syreeta Hector’s groundbreaking contemporary solo work Black Ballerina, the search immediately returns results for Misty Copeland — who, in 2015 (yes, 2015), became the first African-American ballet dancer to be promoted to principal dancer in New York City’s American Ballet Theatre.

Hector has noticed this, too. “Yes — and it’s so interesting because there were actually Black ballerinas before Misty Copeland,” the dance artist and educator says over the phone from her home in Toronto.

And that’s sort of the point. Hector, 37, wanted to create a work that explored her identity as a Black Indigenous woman in relation to classical ballet, a Eurocentric artform that remains stubbornly white. What does it mean to love an artform that doesn’t always love you back?

The full-length version of Black Ballerina, which debuted virtually in 2020 to critical acclaim, will make its live Winnipeg première this weekend at the Rachel Browne Theatre, presented as part of Winnipeg’s Contemporary Dancers’ 2021-22 season. The genre-spanning, full-length work pulls inspiration from everywhere, reflecting all parts of Hector’s dance experience. (At one point, she performs in one pointe shoe and one sneaker.)

Local designer Roberta Landreth’s album covers are music to our eyes

She’s a Juno Award winner whose name appears on dozens of albums.

But Roberta Landreth is not a singer-songwriter, nor is she in a band. “I played flute through high school, then took violin lessons once upon a time for a year,” she says. “I think I was 19 and absolutely horrendously bad.”

She gets music, though. You could say Landreth, 35, is a sought-after Winnipeg graphic designer who specializes in creating the kinds of album covers and gig posters you want to frame, but there’s more to her job than that.

She creates an artist’s visual identity and iconography. She tells the story of the music in shape and colour.

New building gives RWB students a place to call home, space to dance

The sprung studio floor is still packed up on pallets, and the paint is still drying on the walls.

But in a little under two months, boarding students in the Royal Winnipeg Ballet School’s Professional Division will have a brand new home away from home in the heart of downtown Winnipeg.

The $15-million project is a collaborative effort between RWB and True North Real Estate Development, designed by Architecture49 and built by PCL Construction. The new five-level facility at 225 Edmonton St. — which includes the student residence, as well as classrooms, studio space, a state-of-the-art commercial kitchen and more — was built on top of the existing RWB parkade, and seamlessly connects to the RWB studios via an enclosed passageway.

In addition to being an expansion of the RWB campus, the new facility replaces the old residence, which had served RWB students since 1995. Overseen by RWB School director Stéphane Léonard, the new building’s design had dance students at its centre.

Digital expert believes Facebook can be fixed

Taylor Owen gets a little sick of talking about Facebook sometimes.

These days, however, conversations about Facebook are hard to escape. The social media giant has been under intense scrutiny over the past several weeks, thanks in large part to the stunning revelations from Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen. When it comes to the spread of hate and misinformation on a massive, global platform — which has real-world, offline consequences — people are asking: how did we get here? And what does accountability look like?

That’s where Owen comes in.

Owen is a Canadian expert in digital media ethics. He is the Beaverbrook Chair in Media, Ethics and Communications, Associate Professor and founding director of the Center Media, Technology and Democracy in the Max Bell School of Public Policy at McGill University in Montreal, where he is also an associate professor. He’s also the host of Center of International Governance’s Big Tech podcast, and is a regular commentator for the Globe & Mail.

School of Contemporary Dancers showcase their skills

In the darkness of the Rachel Browne Theatre, contemporary dancers Shayla Rudd and Sophie Milord are rehearsing a kinetic new work.

At first, their movements are sharp, specific and rigid, driven by an unsettling score. And then: Rudd lets her hair down, and the pair begin dancing with abandon. It’s a dance about crossroads and choices, and they’ve chosen to live.

The as-yet-untitled duet will cap off Winnipeg’s Contemporary Dancers’ Emerging Artist Initiative, a one-night-only showcase of up-and-coming talent and new choreography from WCD artistic director Jolene Bailie. A partnership between WCD and The School of Contemporary Dancers, Friday night’s performance at the Rachel Browne Theatre will feature recent grads or soon-to-be grads.

For the dancers, the show is a welcome return to, well, everything, from rehearsal to live performance.

94.3 pulls morning show plug, fires on-air personalities

There's a saying in radio, says longtime host Kelly Parker of 94.3 The Drive, that you're not really in radio until you've been fired.

"It took me 33 years to break in, and now I'm here," he quips.

Yes, make that Kelly Parker, formerly of 94.3 The Drive. Parker, along with morning show hosts Tom McGouran and Vicki Shae, as well as fellow on-air host Alix Michaels, found out Wednesday they would no longer be working at the classic rock station, owing to what many suspect is an upcoming format change.

"That all stays very close to the vest," McGouran says.

After a topsy-turvy 18 months, RWB prepares for a moving return to the stage

It’s been a long year-and-a-half for the Royal Winnipeg Ballet.

After the pandemic wiped out what was supposed to be a jubilant 80th season in 2020/21, the company had to figure out how to keep on dancing. Dancers rearranged living-room furniture to accommodate grand jetés in those early, Zoom-led days, which were followed by months of masks, cohorts, distancing — tricky, for a contact art — and virtual performances.

And so, when the RWB finally takes the stage — live and in person — at the Centennial Concert Hall on Thursday night to open its 2021/22 season with the mixed program Perpetual Motion, you can expect a few tears.

“It’s going to be a very emotional first show back,” says second soloist Katie Bonnell. “This is our lives. We put so much of ourselves into this. And it’s been a long 18, 19 months just hoping and praying and waiting for this moment, and it’s finally here. Yeah, I’m gonna be a mess.”

Activism, fight for medical rights drove creation of Women’s Health Clinic four decades ago

In September, Texas passed the most restrictive abortion law in America.

It bans abortions after six weeks, a point at which many women don’t know they are pregnant. It’s a preview of what America would look like if Roe v. Wade was struck down, a chilling reminder that these hard-won reproductive rights could be eroded at any time. (The law was temporarily blocked this week by a federal judge.)

Last week, a rally for reproductive justice assembled at the Manitoba Legislature here in Winnipeg, to both speak out against the regressive law passed south of the border as well as ensure that nothing like that ever happens here. One woman raised a sign that read: “my arms are tired from holding up the same f---ing sign since 1970.”

These renewed conversations about reproductive rights echo the ones that were taking place in the early 1980s when abortion was a crime in Canada — conversations that led to activism and action and, eventually, to a small, feminist, pro-choice clinic in the centre of Canada called Women’s Health Clinic.

Salon closures during pandemic encourage women to proudly embrace their grey hair

Until recently, Monique Doyle had been colouring her hair for so long, she couldn’t remember what her natural shade was.

Doyle, 50, started going grey in her 30s. For decades, she went to the salon every six weeks to have her mane transformed into a rich auburn. A couple years ago, she had made the decision to stop colouring over her silver strands, and her hairdresser was easing her into the transition.

But then the pandemic hit, shuttering salons and leaving her with more regrowth than she’d seen in years.

“The first few months were tough,” Doyle says. “I hated seeing my roots. It was always something that used to stress me out. I couldn’t stand seeing the line where you could see it growing out. It bothered me.”

New WAG exhibit looks at Indigenous worldviews on water

During the Standing Rock protests against the Dakota Access Pipeline in the United States in 2016 and 2017, a Lakota phrase became synonymous with the movement: Mni Wiconi, or “water is life.”

Water is life. Water is sacred. Those ideas are at the heart of Naadohbii (To Draw Water), a new, tri-national exhibition opening today at the Winnipeg Art Gallery that explores and reflects on Indigenous worldviews on water.

Curated by Jaimie Isaac, the former curator of Indigenous and contemporary art at the WAG, along with Reuben Friend and Ioana Gordon-Smith, director and curator, respectively, at Pātaka Art + Museum in Wellington, New Zealand, and Kimberley Moulton, senior curator of South Eastern Aboriginal Collections at Museums Victoria, Australia, Naadohbii features contemporary interdisciplinary artwork by more than 20 Indigenous artists from across Turtle Island (North America), Australia and Aotearoa (New Zealand).

Naadohbii also marks the inaugural Winnipeg Indigenous Triennial. Every three years, the WAG-Qaumajuq will present a large-scale Indigenous exhibition.

Take a break from honouring figureheads: Indigenous artists

WHEN statues come down, it’s only natural to ask questions: who did they depict, what did they represent, who did they honour, who did they harm, which stories did they tell, which ones did they erase? Who decided to put them up in the first place?Those are good questions to ask, and they’ve been percolating in Manitoba since July 1, when a pair of idols depicting Queen Victoria and Queen Elizabeth II, two British monarchs, were taken down by protesters who had split off from a peaceful Canada Day march in support of residential school survivors at the province’s legislative building.

As always happens when questions are asked, everyone concerned seems to have an answer: put them back, leave them down, keep them there as is. The province’s answer thus far has been to pledge the statue of Elizabeth will return to the east lawn, where it stood since 2010, and to restore the Queen Victoria statue to be placed elsewhere on the grounds. There have also been preliminary conversations about placing a statue of Chief Peguis, who signed the first treaty with Lord Selkirk in 1817, on the grounds in Victoria’s statue’s stead.

For more answers, and more questions, the Free Press spoke with playwright Tomson Highway, author David A. Robertson, artist and curator Daina Warren, Winnipeg Art Gallery curator Jaimie Isaac, musician Vince Fontaine, and artist Kenneth Lavallee, who was inspired to conceptualize a sculpture — of sweetgrass in a shell — to replace the one of Victoria the very day the statue came down.

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Grad dresses a stark reminder of students' losses this year

Alexa Craig knew she’d found The Dress the moment she stepped into it.

It was a crisp day in late fall, and she and her mom had only begun shopping for grad dresses. But it was the third dress in the first store that ended up being the runaway winner: a sparkly plunge-neck stunner in fire-engine red.

“I actually I couldn’t bring myself to get out of the dress because I liked it so much,” says the 17-year-old Collège Béliveau grad during a Zoom call in June. Craig is sitting on her bed, doing yet another virtual call in a year defined by them. Affixed to the corner of her white bedframe is a bright green circle. “I’m COVID-19 vaccinated.”

The vaccination sticker, the grad dress — these were supposed to represent the light at the end of the tunnel after months of remote learning, anxiety and uncertainty owing to a pandemic that still has us in its jaws. But Craig is now one of thousands of Winnipeg grads who said yes to the dress only for public health to say no to public gatherings amid stubbornly high case counts and test positivity rates. For the second June in a row, the pandemic has stripped graduates of that North American rite of passage, the grad dinner and dance, that marks the end of childhood and the beginning of adulthood.

New executive director has big dreams for WSO

Angela Birdsell was in grade 3 or 4 when she saw the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra for the first time.

It was during a school field trip to an afternoon rehearsal at the Centennial Concert Hall, which, in the 1970s, was still fairly new. Birdsell, who would have been just eight or nine at the time, was struck by the grandness of the hall, the plushness of the blood-red carpet and those pleasing rows of red seats.

But it was the moment when the musicians raised their instruments that left the most indelible impression.

“I remember just being electrified by the sound of the orchestra tuning up,” she says. “It just opened my little psyche to a whole other world out there.”

Treasured keepsakes, fond memories help keep those lost to COVID-19 close

More than 1,000 Manitobans have died from COVID-19.

Many of these people died alone, with goodbyes mediated by the glass of a window or the screen of an iPad. Pandemic restrictions have also disrupted funerals and celebrations of life; the traditional ways in which we mourn — and honour — those we’ve lost have not been available to us.

Those who died came from all walks of life and from all corners of the province. They are more than a stark number. They are mothers, daughters, fathers, sons, aunties, uncles, friends and colleagues.

They had full lives. They were loved. They should be remembered.

Labours of love

Mothers feed us, bathe us, clothe us and comfort us. And when they’re not busy raising their own children, many mothers also spend their days taking care of others.

During the coronavirus pandemic, the demands of motherhood and caregiving have increased exponentially — a reality that has been taken in stride for those who are now frontline workers at home and on the job.

Ahead of Mother’s Day, reporters Eva Wasney and Jen Zoratti spoke with five local moms to find out how they’re coping with the stress of parenthood, while also administering lifesaving medical attention, keeping childcare centres open, teaching the masses, looking after elders and helping bring new life into the world.

Their stories are wholly void of rest, but they are full of resilience, purpose and selflessness.

Making art, motherhood not mutually exclusive

It was the late British literary critic Cyril Connolly who famously said, “There is no more sombre enemy of good art than the pram in the hall.”

This quote — uttered by, it should be noted, a white man who was born in 1903 — has become one of more enduring (and terrifying) ones about artmaking and motherhood, setting up an either/or binary of choice between two identities that require sacrifice, time, creativity and dedication. Under this framework, not only are art and children direct competitors, they’re “sombre enemies.”

A group of Winnipeg artist-mothers has been pushing back against that pernicious idea for more than a decade. Founded in 2010, the Artist Mothers group at Mentoring Artists for Women’s Art has been a space to create art, exchange ideas and feedback, and talk about the group’s unique experiences.

Longtime Artist Mothers members Sandra Brown and Loricia Pacholko will be joining Free Press Alison Gillmor in conversation for this month’s First Fridays Online Art Talk on May 7 at 7 p.m. They will be chatting about these preconceptions about artmaking and motherhood (see: Connolly’s pram), the challenges — and rewards — of combining these two worlds, and the 10-year anniversary of the group.

Exhibition honours victims of historical violence while inspiring future action

At first blush, they look like regular coffee cups, stowed in neat stacks. There are thousands of them, and they are all different — some have roses climbing the sides, others are stark white — evoking kitchens and café tables, and the intimate conversations, connections and rituals those spaces allow.

For well over a decade, Bosnian-American artist Aida Sehovic has been collecting fildzani, the little porcelain cups traditionally used for coffee service in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Her goal: a cup for every one of the 8,372 Bosnian Muslim men and boys who were killed in the genocide in Srebrenica in July 1995.

Sehović’s installation, STO TE NEMA (“Why are you not here?”), is part of Artivism, an exhibition opening at the Canadian Museum of Human Rights that highlights the work of six different artists and art collectives, from six different regions in the world, whose artworks are both a response to identity-based mass atrocity as well as a tool of activism to prevent it.

For those suffering from long COVID, life-altering symptoms can continue for months

It started with a pain in her ribs.

On the morning of Monday, Dec. 7, Katie, 33, got up, worked out and went to work. But later in the day, when she sat down to do some sewing, she felt the pain on her right side, just beneath her sternum. After she went to bed, the pain got progressively worse.

She thought she might have dislocated a rib. She did not think she had COVID-19.

“I didn’t have any other symptoms; I could still taste and smell,” Katie, who asked to be identified just by her first name, said via Zoom in early April. “I didn’t have a fever, I wasn’t coughing. But what I did still have was that rib pain. And because the pain was so severe by this point, it actually made it difficult for me to take a deep breath. So based on that lone symptom, I decided that I should go get tested.”

Pandemic-focused digital art project explores dread, hope

For many people, living in a pandemic means living in a near-constant state of anxiety.

There’s the doomscrolling, the low-key dread of daily case counts. There are the immediate worries, about loved ones contracting the virus, about keeping ourselves safe, about job loss, about the burnout of front-line workers and teachers, parents and caregivers.

And then there are the macro worries: what will our world look like after this is over? How will our lives be forever altered?

University of Manitoba professor Joanna Black, along with research assistant Sarah Paradis, has been working in collaboration with Pam Patterson and Daniel Payne from the Ontario College of Art and Design University (OCADU) on creative research involving 38 bachelor of education students from the U of M to address all of these stressors and more in COVID-19 Anxiety in the Age of the Anthropocene.

Singles struggle to balance health concerns with need for human connection

Early on in the pandemic, when “now is the time to stay home,” Jessica decided to go on a FaceTime date with a Tinder match — mostly just for fun.

“There was a specific time; I poured myself a glass of wine,” recalls the 39-year-old Winnipegger over Zoom.

And then she waited. She waited some more. Then she texted him.

“I was like, ‘So, you’re gonna call me?’ and he was like, ‘Oh, no, I’m actually watching Captain America and the room is too dark so I can’t call you.’”

Curating COVID: artifacts sought for posterity

Last March, Roland Sawatzky gazed out his office window at the Manitoba Museum. The province had just announced its first COVID-19 cases and, already, Sawatzky recognized history unfolding.

“I saw the streets empty for the first time in my life — totally empty,” he recalls. “And I was sitting there at my desk, and I knew I would be going home soon, too. And I thought, ‘how are we going to remember this in a physical way?’”

Sawatzky is the curator of history at the Main Street institution, so it stands to reason that he would think, well, like a curator of history. Fresh in his mind, too, was the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic; when Sawatzky went looking for artifacts in the Manitoba Museum’s collection to commemorate the 100-year anniversary in 2018, he discovered there were none. “It killed between 50 and 100 million people in the world, and we had not a single artifact,” he says.

That’s why the Manitoba Museum has put out a call for offers of artifacts from the COVID-19 pandemic from the public, so that history can be preserved for future generations. Sawatzky has been impressed with what has been submitted so far.