Winnipeg Free Press

Winnipeg Free Press (Newspaper) - September 23, 2020, Winnipeg, Manitoba <§> < C M K ■e- PAGE C3 I ■ I ■ WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 23, 2020 • WINNIPEGFREEPRESS.COMARTS • LIFE I ENTERTAINMENT C 3 PHOTOS BY MIKE SUDOMA / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS Dancer Nicole Cappins is part of the NAfro Dance team that has been rehearsing outdoors since July as the company prepares its production of Matope. Riverbank setting inspires surreal dreamscape for NAfro Dance performance DANCE PREVIEW MATOPE • NAfro Dance Productions • St. Norbert Art Centre, 100 Rue des Ruines du Monastere • Sept. 24 and 25, 6 p.m.; Sept. 26 and 27, 3 p.m. and 5 p.m. • Tickets $20 for adults, $12 for children under 12 years of age • Visit nafrodance.com for more information EVA WASNEY CASIMIRO Nhussi has spent a lot of time communing with nature this summer. The artistic director of NAfro Dance Productions has been busy working on a new performance that will take place on the banks of the La Salle River at the St. Norbert Art Centre from Sept. 24 to 27. Matope is a site-specific, outdoor show born out of the restrictions of the coronavirus pandemic. “I can’t go indoors, so I’m going outdoors,” Nhussi says. “This (virus) is gonna be here for some time, so as artists, I thought this is a time to explore a new way, it is time to explore a new direction.” Matope means “mud” in Swahili and is the name of a spirit that comes out of the ground at sunset to visit villagers and announce the changing of the season. The dancers take on the form of spirits and the show starts with bodies breaking through the dirt and emerging from the river. The work carries on as a kind of surreal dreamscape that is unlike NAfro’s typical fare. “It’s really getting out of the box,”MUSIC MATTERS • FROM Cl Hoebig predicts the moment when listeners have settled in their seats and those first few notes ring out through the Centennial Concert Hall after half a year of silence will be highly emotional for her and her musical colleagues. “We’re just so thrilled and can’t wait,” Hoebig says, crediting hard work by Raiskin, WSO executive director Trudy Schroeder and the organization’s adminstrative team for helping the adapted season go ahead. “We are all so grateful to be able to play again and I’m going to have a huge grin on my face that night.” When so many venerable Canadian orchestras, including the Toronto Symphony Orchestra and Vancouver Symphony Orchestra, have simply pushed “pause” on their seasons this year until next January, or beyond, the WSO is in rare company for launching this fall. Naturally, the season will look a little different. Each program is expected to run an estimated 90 minutes, performed without intermission. Masks will be mandatory for a capped audience of 500 physically distanced listeners per show — and that includes the musicians, who will removing their masks after taking the stage and warming up their instruments. All ticketing will be done electronically, with timed entries to the hall to avoid congestion in lobbies. Their latest program, which picks up the Beethoven 250 celebrations in honour of the 250th anniversary of the German composer’s birth — also cut short by COVID-19 — opens with his Egmont Overture, Op. 84 and also includes his Symphony No. 7 in A major, Op. 92, another work of infectious energy and a personal favourite of the composer. MIKE SUDOMA / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS Artistic director Casimiro Nhussi, centre, says the upcoming outdoor production of Matope has been an opportunity for NAfro to explore performance in a new way. he says. Nhussi has choreographed site-specific dances in Mozambique, where he was born, but this is the first time he’s created something similar in Manitoba — and he’s taking full advantage of the environment. The dance company is known for its high-energy live music and drumming, but the instruments will be noticeably absent during Matope. Instead, the musicians will be using branches, rocks and leaves to accompany the dancers. “We’re using what nature can offer,” Nhussi says. “All the performers, they are part of nature.” The show features 12 local dancers, who have been rehearsing on the riverbank rain or shine since July. For Nhussi, the days with inclement weather were the most profound. “Everybody had a good time being out there working in that environment,” he says. “(I) was brought back into my childhood to be sliding and rolling in the mud... and also the beauty as we were creating this piece; there were deer that crossed by and squirrels that were running between the performers.” Preparing for a show has been a welcome distraction from the pandemic. “The creation of the piece and the process itself was really, really good,” Nhussi says. “It really takes out the stress, especially for me, after the Dancer Amara Conde March shutdown. it was really stressful.” Audience sizes for Matope are limited to 40 people with physical distancing in place. Chairs will be provided, but attendees are welcome to bring their own or a blanket to sit on during the performance. The audience will be seated above the riverbank performance area and shows will go ahead regardless of weather, so ticket holders should dress for the forecast. “We can’t stop moving because of the weather,” Nhussi says, laughing. The artistic director is adopting that same flexibility while preparing for the rest of NAfro’s 2020-21 season. The group is scheduled to perform a show in March at the Gas Station Arts Centre, but uncertainty is the only certainty. “We have to move like the weather, because sometimes it can change,” Nhussi says. “We just have to keep our spirits up; we have to be ready to take any opportunity that we can find... we just have to wing it.” eva.wasney@freepress.mb.ca Twitter: @evawasney MAGPIE BEAUTY • FROM Cl Treacy’s works are part of collections at the Winnipeg Art Gallery and the University of Winnipeg, but private collectors, corporations and city businesses also own and display his work. For instance, Treacy’s landscape Island hangs in one of the boardrooms at the city law firm Thompson Dorfman Sweatman. He has focused on landscapes during his 50-plus years as an artist, but his 2017 oil painting Monarchs, which was named a finalist for the Salt Spring National Art Prize, and Magpie Beauty, are a departure. “(There are) only glimpses of landscapes, and landscapes appearing on the sides of boxes,” Treacy says. “It was really fun to do that to get away from pure landscape work.” The different landscapes abound in his 2018 painting Crown, including one on the crown of a man rising from a box, which itself sports a reflected landscape, as well on an another box containing a hooded skeleton. The artist’s father worked for the Hudson’s Bay Co. in northern Manitoba and Ontario, in reserve communities such as Pikangi-kum and Sandy Lake, where a young Treacy became fond of the outdoors and the Canadian Shield in particular. But it wasn’t until many years later he realized he had grown up as a young witness of Canada’s colonial history. “You have the Indigenous reserve nearby and a minimal number of white people,” he recalls. “As a child I grew up around that, and I never understood what context that was about and now as an adult I say, ‘Oh my God.’ I was right in the heart of colonialism and all those things that are emerging now.” In his introduction to the exhibition, Treacy calls himself a magpie gatherer, saying he collects images from magazines and books, gathering them together like a magpie’s chaotic nest of artistic ideas. “I’m putting one cultural artifact, a found image, beside another cultural artifact and the meanings erupt out of that. That’s what fascinated me about the boxes. I could put stuff on the box, and things emerging out of the box. “You don’t want to control meaning, but you want it to be there in all of its variety,” he says. For those who’ve spent a frustrating summer shooing away magpies from barking dogs and hummingbird feeders, you can relax — you won’t find any of the thieving birds here. The title of the show comes a phrase in Writing Ellen West, by Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Frank Bidart. “This is kind of hysterical. There are no magpies in the show. There’s a kingfisher and a crow,” he says with a chuckle. “I struggle with titles that are evocative and make people interested, but I just had to borrow that one. It was great.” alan.small@freepress.mb.ca Twitter:@AlanDSmall GreatTastesMB.ca MIKE SUDOMA / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS WSO concertmaster Gwen Hoebig will treat listeners to a J. S. Bach concerto. Another highlight will be the Manitoba premiere of African-American composer George Walker’s Lyric, for strings, described by Pellicano as “an absolutely lovely piece” written by Walker upon the death of his grandmother. It reflects the WSO’s drive, as with arts organizations around the globe, toward more inclusive, culturally diverse programming, dispelling the proverbial “dead white European composers” ethos long associated with classical music. “Orchestras everywhere are recognizing the need to represent composers, conductors and instrumentalists on our stages from a variety of different backgrounds,” Pellicano says. “This is especially important in North America, as we live in multicultural societies, and we need to be sensitive to all these incredible works we might not otherwise have heard before.” Though he might not be on the podium for his own season opener, Raiskin promises he will be here in spirit. He is in close touch with the WSO artistic and administration teams, as well as individual orchestra members, to lend his support, and give counsel and direction from the Netherlands during these extraordinary times. “I always remember these words by Leonard Bernstein, who said, ‘This will be our reply to violence: to make music more intensely, more beautifully, more devotedly than ever before,’” says Raiskin, who describes himself as “absolutely optimistic,” over the telephone from Europe. “Audiences will get to once again experience live performance, and that precious moment when you are part of this energy and incredible magic,” he says. “We will use our talents and moral responsibility as artists to inspire a sense of hope, and believe that things will surely become better in time. We will continue to play and make music, and it will be even more beautiful.” Opening Night: Beethoven and Bach will be performed Friday, Oct. 2, and Saturday, Oct. 3, at 7:30p.m. at the Centennial Concert Hall. For tickets or further information, visit wso.ca. holly.harris@shaw.ca Is your family sick of the same meals week after week? Do you need quick and easy ways to stir things up in the kitchen? Ellen Pruden, from the Manitoba Canola Growers, joins us in the Great Tastes kitchen this Saturday to inspire "Dinners Made Delicious". She's taking simple family meals up a notch: Tomato Bisque with Grilled Cheese Skewers, Greek Potatoes with Lemon Yogurt Sauce, and a Ginger Shrimp with Gai Lan Stir Fry. Don't miss it! Find all the recipes and stream full episodes at greattastesmb.ca. Brought to you in part by info! -GREATTastes^MANITOBA Local Farms Local Foodsno Tune in to Manitoba's most watched cooking series Saturday at 6:30pm on CTV C_03_Sep-23-20_FP_01.indd C3 2020-09-22 5:09 PM I ;