This will be a busy week for Janice Messam. She's in charge of 76 young ballet dancers taking part in performances of Nutcracker at the National Arts Centre. Messam will be in the NAC every night with the kids preparing them and then watching as they take
The Royal Winnipeg Ballet is celebrating its 80th season this year and André Lewis has been part of the company for 45 of those 80 years. The Gatineau native has been artistic director for 25 years and was a dancer for another decade. He has also
Séan McCann likes rolling rocks uphill. He believes in making a difference and he wants to do it. That's why you'll find the former member of Great Big Sea and current resident music man in Ottawa hosting benefits and working for a good cause or
It would be interesting to know what the lake thinks about it. But lakes don’t usually speak, unlike the two people warring over the use and meaning of fictional Otter Lake in Drew Hayden Taylor’s Cottagers & Indians, now on at the Great Canadian Theatre
Sometimes when John Armstrong composes a piece of music, he knows what it is going to be from Square One. "It just unfolds and ends up the way I planned," he said. Other times not so much, added the guitarist, composer and uOttawa music professor. There are
On Wednesday, NACO presented the Canadian premiere of a new double concerto for violin and cello by Israeli composer Avner Dorman, written for Pinchas Zukerman and Amanda Forsyth. The work was co-commissioned by NACO, the Boston Symphony Orchestra and the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra to celebrate
It occurs to me, as I walk through the new exhibition on monsters at the National Gallery, that while we always fear monsters, what we fear as monsters changes as we shuffle along the trajectory from birth to death. Lurking beneath the beds of children, or
“There is something about this that’s, that’s so black, it’s like, how much more black could this be?” asks the incorrigibly idiotic Nigel Tufnel in the movie This is Spinal Tap. “And the answer is, none . . . none more black.” I’m thinking about Tufnel’s
Wallis Giunta has sung more than a few Messiahs but never quite like the one she'll perform with the Ottawa Choral Society on Nov. 30. The mezzo won't be telling the good news to the people of Zion in this show. She'll be singing about a
Adam Shoalts knows that toenails do grow back over time. His were badly damaged while walking through the freezing water of the Coppermine River, pulling his canoe against the rapidly moving current. "The rocks got me," he told ARTSFILE, "all the little jagged rocks under the
