{Urban winter festival} Montréal en Lumière and plenty of free activities and entertainment throughout the Quartier des Spectacles downtown, including a ferris wheel, ice slide, games and food. Argentina and tango takes the spotlight at this year’s festival with La Pista Tango cabaret this weekend at Metropolis and the jazz-tango music of Daniel Piazzolla and sextet  Escalandrum in a tribute to Astor Piazzolla. And Saturday night is the busy, fun-filled night everyone is waiting for: Nuit Blanche is a night of free activities throughout downtown, the plateau neighbourhood and at the Olympic Stadium grounds: entertainment venues, malls, galleries and  museums are open until the wee hours, featuring live bands, art, workshops and more for all ages. Add more comfort – and savings up to 50% off – to the night by staying in on the fest’s swanky partner hotels.

{Family break} Spring break is upon us this week (and next week too for out-of-province visitors) and thankfully there’s plenty to keep kids busy and having fun in the city. Outdoors, along with Montréal en Lumière activities, check out sledding, snowshoeing and cross-country skiing and skating on the Mountain, ice fishing at the Old Port and more. Indoors, Montreal’s museums and educational centres – including the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, the Science Centre, Pointe-à-Callière and Montreal’s Space for Life, home to the Botanical Gardens, Biodome and Insectarium – all offer free activities during March break. And for pure entertainment, catch amazing circus shows Festival Mondial du Cirque de Demain until March 3 and Mi Otro Yo March 5-10, or watch Mickey, Minnie, princesses and sidekicks play that rock n’ roll music and skate around the whole time in Disney on Ice’s Rockin’ Ever After at the Bell Centre, March 6-10.

{Symphonic happenings} Hear a symphony like no other at Pointe-à-Callière’s Port Symphonies, a free outdoor listening experience that challenges a composer to use a variety of ship horns, train whistles and percussion found in the harbour of the Old Port – March 3 and March 10 at 1:30 p.m.  More traditionally, the Orchestre Métropolitain helps us start waving goodbye to winter with a performance of Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons and more, conducted by Mathieu Lussier, on March 3 at 3 p.m. at the Maison symphonique de Montréal. And the Montreal Symphony Orchestra takes a narrative and visual approach to Dvorák’s Symphony No. 9 (From the New World), showing its connections to history and folklore before playing the work, on March 6.

{Stage & screen} Dynamic contemporary dance comes to town from Norway as Danse Danse presents Corps de Walk by choreographers Gai Behar and Sharon Eyal and 12 dancers of The Norwegian National Company of Contemporary Dance, March 1-2 at Place des Arts, as well as theatrical Netherlands dance troupe T.r.a.s.h. at Cinquième Salle, March 5-9. Smalltown meets the Sunset Strip in Broadway musical Rock of Ages, a theatrical coming-of-age tale set to 28 now-classic rock songs, from Bon Jovi to Journey, on March 1-3 at Theatre Ste-Denis. And recent Quebec-made feature films, shorts, documentaries and even some experimental cinema are all ready to view at the Rendez-vous cinema Quebecois film festival, to March 3 – while many of the films are in French, some have English subtitles and a handful are in English.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eG7tdSB0JVU {Live music} Much-loved Canadian indie-rock ban The Arkells start the weekend off on Friday night at the Corona Theatre while local art-rock Yamantaka//Sonic Titan play the Musee d’art contemporain’s music series Nocturnes and Mouse on Mars returns with new electronic-rock sounds at Il at Il Motore (179 Jean Talon W.). Saturday night is filled with FREE Nuit Blanche festivities, including a full night of dance music at Metropolis, with Avec pas d’casque, Canailles, SoCalled, Koriass, Plaster, Organ Mood in the main room and more music in the Savoy space, and full-on bass fun at Club Soda for Karnival 2013, with DJs Poirier, The Salivation Army and Riddim Wise. Follow that up on March 3 with alt-metal band Deftones at Metropolis. On March 6, London, England exports Citizens! play for our indie-pop! listening pleasure at Sala Rossa (4848 St-Laurent). And Thursday, March 7 brings Canadian singer-songwriter Serena Ryder to the Corona Theatre, while Knoxville, Tennessee metal band Whitechapel annihilate Club Soda, Ra Ra Riot knocks the socks off Il Motore (179 Jean Talon W.), and the local folk-rock scene is in the spotlight at Festival Under the Snow, starting March 7 with Echoes from Jupiter and Dam Ships at Casa del Popolo and The Loodies, Fire/Works and Elliot Maginot at Sala Rossa.

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