Night Magic at Montreal’s Nuit Blanche

Everyone turns into a night owl on March 1 in Montreal as the entire city centre gets in on the Nuit Blanche celebrations, with over 200 free indoor and outdoor activities and entertainment for all ages all night long…

The 11th edition of Nuit Blanche boosts the already abundant activity at Montreal en Lumière: the winter festival’s outdoor site – with free entry at all times – in the Quartier des Spectacles outside Place des Arts will stay open until 3 a.m. and features a ferris wheel, ice slide, games, food and drink, an interactive video projection and laser-lit dance floor, as well as music performances by They Call Me Rico, Poirier, Face-T, Boogat, Madhi, Pierre Kwenders, Fwonte and more. Indoors, Art Souterrain turns several kilometres of downtown’s underground passageways between malls and office towers into one big, fabulous art exhibition, featuring multimedia art, live performances, an interactive musical igloo at Place des Arts, and more – and if you can’t complete the circuit during the night Art Souterrain continues until March 16.

Travel outside the downtown core by metro and shuttle bus – they’ll be running all night long – to see the sights in Old Montreal, the Plateau-Mont-Royal and Mile-End, Olympic Park and the newest site, La Ligne Bleue, in the neighbourhood around the Jean-Talon Market – watch for flash mobs in choreographed dance numbers. Discover the history of Old Montreal and Griffintown at museums, galleries and pop-up sites featuring everything from live music to glassblowing throughout the area, and get to know real Montrealers in the eclectic residential neighbourhoods of the Plateau and Mile End, where music, dancing and art (including live ice sculpting by metro Mont-Royal) rule the night. Meanwhile, the Olympic Park hosts a gathering of some of the city’s best food trucks from 5 p.m. to 2 am, along with free ice skating, rides on a San Francisco cable car, star gazing at the Planetarium, penguins and birds of prey outside the Biodome, and more family fun.

Along with hundred artists taking part in Art Souterrain, see muralists paint live at the MMFA, visit the MACM to see Christian Marclay’s The Clock, appropriately screening for 24 hours, handmade film at Concordia’s Fine Arts Pavilion, recent paintings by René Derouin at the Galerie Lounge TD on Sainte-Catherine, and even more art at the Belgo building, where art galleries and dance studios open their doors for the night, with Studio 303 presenting short films and a photo booth complete with costumes. A little further east, on the UQAM campus, take part in a cultural carnival of architectural projections, interactive installations, theatre, art, food and drink, plus a free screening of Quebec cult classic the Elvis Gratton Picture Show.

Dance the night away at UQAM’s Coeur des sciences, as electronic music festival MUTEK celebrates its 15th edition with 15 hours of DJs, live music and visuals. The SAT sticks with the electronic-music theme in audio-visual show Mémorsion, while The Segal Centre goes old-school with an evening of live-piano karaoke to Broadway musical hits. Métropolis grooves all night with music from Boogat, Tire le coyote, Alex Nevsky, Karim Diouf and Chantal Archambault, while dubstep goes down at the Phi Centre. And the Goethe-Institut harnesses the spirit of Oktoberfest in interactive theatrical performance Folie Deutschland, featuring Bavarian folk dance, a live rock band, a Neo-Baroque ball, sausages, sauerkraut and beer. When it comes to night-time entertainment in the city among crowds of very happy Montrealers, Nuit Blanche delivers.