what to do today in Montreal Georgia O'Keeffe Henry Moore Museum of Fine Arts montreal calendar 2024

Series I White & Blue Flower Shapes (1919) from the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum

Dance, Theatre, Visual Arts

Montreal arts calendar for Spring 2024

by Savannah Stewart

This season’s arts calendar features Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality, cutting edge theatre, stunning dance spectacles and modern art icons.

A Montreal arts calendar for the transitional season.

Agora presents an encore of Daniel Léveillé’s award-winning risquée dance performance Amour, acide et noix, featuring four nude male dancers in a piece about “loneliness, but also and above all of the infinite tenderness of touch as a balm against the harshness of life.” First performed in Montreal in 2001, the show has toured the world and returns to this city, at Edifice Wilder. Amour, acide et noix is at Agora de la Danse (1435 Bleury) from March 13– 15

Colored: The Unknown Life of Claudette Colvin

The PHI Centre’s latest AR experience introduces the audience to Claudette Colvin, a civil rights activist whose name has been eclipsed, and whose act of protest has been all but forgotten. The experience brings us to segregated Montgomery, Alabama, to witness Colvin’s life and story with the help of HoloLens 2 headsets. Nine months before Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on the bus to a white passenger, Colvin did the same. And the rest is history. Colored: The Unknown Life of Claudette Colvin continues at PHI Centre (407 St-Pierre) through April 28

Sensing the Unspoken

In a first group exhibition for contemporary art gallery TIAN Contemporain, Sensing the Unspoken explores themes of memory and connection as points of departure to study the interrelationship of humans and their environment. The exhibition brings together paintings, sculptures and drawings that explore the central theme in abstract and conceptual ways, featuring works by artists from Ecuador, the United States, Germany, Taiwan and Canada. Sensing the Unspoken continues at TIAN Contemporain (819 Atwater) through April 20

Message in a Bottle and IMA

Montreal dance promoters Danse Danse are bringing two international works to Place des Arts stages this month. Message in a Bottle by renowned U.K. choreographer Kate Prince tells the story of migration through the experience of one family — accompanied by Sting’s greatest hits. Down the halls of PdA, Italian dancer and choreographer Sofia Nappi’s IMA will feature a quintet blending dance and theatre, meditating on the importance of living the present moment. Message in a Bottle is at Salle Wilfrid-Pelletier and IMA is at Cinquième Salle (175 Ste-Catherine W.) through March 16

GUILT (a love story) 

The Centaur presents the Tarragon Theatre production of GUILT (a love story), a one-woman show performed by playwright Diane Flacks exploring this uncomfortable emotion and how it has appeared in her life as a mother and “instigator of family dissolution.” Promising humour, wit and a cutting meditation of the human experience, GUILT (a love story) is Flacks’ fifth solo show in a career marked by many accolades. GUILT (a love story) continues at Centaur Theatre (453 St-Francois-Xavier) through March 30

The Chemical Valley Project

In 2021, the Aamjiwnaang First Nation in Ontario was finally granted access to data proving what members had long suspected: the dozens of petrochemical facilities surrounding their territory were polluting the air, land and waters with high levels of carcinogens. Teesri Dunya Theatre presents The Chemical Valley Project, a work of documentary theatre that looks back on the fight for information and action on “Chemical Valley” and prompts conversations on Indigenous land and treaty rights and ongoing colonization in Canada. The Chemical Valley Project is at Cité-des-Hospitalières (251 des Pins W.) from March 14–24

Montreal arts calendar 2024

Hybrid Condition

Artist Tam Khoa Vu takes us to an imagined space between his Vietnamese origins and his home in Canada in this exhibition at the MAI: the space of the diaspora. Vu explores this Hybrid Condition through video and audio installations using a mix of personal and archival footage, all showing the artist’s signature playfulness. Hybrid Condition continues at MAI (3680 Jeanne-Mance, #103), through March 30

The Horizon of Khufu

In conjunction with “immersive expedition” specialists Excurio, PHI presents the North American premiere of a 45-minute journey into ancient Egypt and inside the Great Pyramid of Giza — one of the Seven Wonders of the World. The Horizon of Khufu, a VR experience that’s as fun as it is educational, is the result of three years of research by Emissive and Harvard Egyptology Professor Peter Der Manuelian. It’s located in the same space in the Montreal Science Centre-adjacent building where PHI previously hosted their hit VR experience The Infinite. The Horizon of Khufu continues at 2 de la Commune W., through May 31

The Heart and Soul of Saint-Henri

Montrealers today know Saint-Henri as one of the trendiest neighbourhoods outside the city centre. Still, its history as a working-class community rooted in the business of tanning animal hides is often forgotten. Pointe-à-Callière, Montreal’s museum of archaeology, is shining a spotlight on this district that encompasses 350 years of history, from its humble beginnings to what it has become today. With artifacts found in archaeological digs that trace its evolution, the exhibition tells its story through the eyes of its inhabitants, their struggles, and their mark on modern Quebec. The Heart and Soul of Saint-Henri continues at Pointe-à-Callière (350 Place Royale) through May 11

Montreal arts calendar 2024

Georgia O’Keeffe and Henry Moore

Giants of modern art Georgia O’Keeffe and Henry Moore are featured at the Museum of Fine Arts, offering an up-close view of the work of two artists, firmly rooted in the natural world. The exhibition also includes reconstructions of their personal workshop spaces, allowing for a glimpse into how O’Keeffe and Moore worked on the pieces that would garner them international recognition in the surrealist and modern art movements. The exhibit was organized by the San Diego Museum of Art. Georgia O’Keeffe and Henry Moore: Giants of Modern Art continues at the Museum of Fine Arts (1380 Sherbrooke W.) through June 2

Fifteen Dogs 

The Giller Prize-winning novel Fifteen Dogs is coming to the stage at the Segal Centre, bringing a tale of reckoning with morality, mortality and the complicated nature of being human. The story is set in motion when the gods Hermes and Apollo grant 15 dogs the gift of human consciousness, with hilarious and disastrous results. Fifteen Dogs is at the Segal Centre (5170 Côte-Ste-Catherine) from March 31–April 21

Every Day She Rose

Black Theatre Workshop will present the Montreal premiere of Every Day She Rose, a piece inspired by the 2016 Toronto Pride Parade and the Black Lives Matter protest that drew the pride festivities to a halt to call out the presence of police at the event. Playwrights Andrea Scott and Nick Green tell the story of two roommates, a straight Black woman and a Queer white man, who experience the protest differently and are left to reconcile their perspectives. What follows is a tale examining privilege, friendship and allyship, bringing together communities on a divisive issue. Every Day She Rose is at Théâtre Espace Libre (1945 Fullum), April 4–13

Montreal arts calendar 2024

For more Montreal art events, please visit our daily To-Do List and Event listings.

This article was originally published in the March 2024 issue of Cult MTL.

For our latest in arts and life, please visit the Arts & Life section.

Posted in Dance, Theatre, Visual Arts

by Savannah Stewart

Contributing editor for Arts
Savannah Stewart is a writer, translator and copy editor currently reporting with The Eastern Door. She is happiest writing about art, language and culture in Montreal and Kahnawake.