Archive
We at Dancemakers are continually adding and widening the information in our archive to help share its five decades of history.
We are slowly updating more events from the company’s 50 year archive. If you would like to contribute information about past events, please get in touch!
MAYDAY : double bill
Co-Presentation with DanceWorks and danceImmersion
Meridian Arts Centre 
              Oct 24, 2025 – Oct 25, 2025
            
Shoe Dreams : Nuit Blanche
Curated by Rumi Jeraj at the Aga Khan Museum for Nuit Blanche 2025 and supported by Dancemakers’ Curators in Community Fund
Aga Khan Museum 
              Oct 4, 2025 – Oct 5, 2025
            
Cripping the Past
Curated by Pushmakers in 2025 and supported by Dancemakers’ Curators in Community Fund
Village at Black Creek Wedding Pavillion 
              Sep 27, 2025 – Sep 27, 2025
            
feed-back: a streetdance show
Dancemakers Guest Curator Abel Hagos selects Toronto’s finest musicians, pairing them established Canadian dancers to explore the themes of play that thread through both improvisational music and dance.
The Bentway 
              Sep 11, 2025 – Sep 11, 2025
            
Bringing Us Together
A training workshop, presentation and series of whisper guided dance shows for Blind & low vision audience members.
Theatre Passe Muraille 
              Aug 15, 2025 – Aug 15, 2025
            
Cypher Playground
Street dance festival in Toronto 2025 supported by Dancemakers’ Curators in Community Fund
The Theatre Centre 
              Jul 30, 2025 – Aug 2, 2025
            
Palestine All The Time
A 24-hour program at Gallery TPW that brings together Palestinian artists, writers, filmmakers, scholars, and activists.
Gallery TPW 
              Jul 18, 2025 – Jul 19, 2025
            
What Can Dance Curation Do?
Our inaugural symposium about Dance Curation.
Critical Disance Centre for Curation & ONLINE 
              Jul 17, 2025 – Jul 18, 2025
            
Call for dance Curators 2025
Applications are open for our Call for Dance Curators (due Aug 15 2025)
Online 
              Jul 15, 2025 – Aug 15, 2025
            
Self Checkout
self checkout intensive is for queer performing artists between 14-20 years old interested in committing to a series of creative workshops.
George Chuvalo Neighbourhood Centre 
              Jul 5, 2025 – Jul 6, 2025
            
Dance& Solidarity
An intro lesson in Dabke: a levantine folk dance practiced by communities in Palestine, Lebanon, Jordan & Syria.
Society Clubhouse 
              Jun 28, 2025 – Jun 28, 2025
            
Shoe Dreams Performance Lecture
Step into the world of tap dance with Rumi Jeraj and Travis Knights as they take you on an engaging journey through the history, artistry, and innovation of tap shoes.
Bata Shoe Museum 
              Jun 25, 2025 – Jun 25, 2025
            
Shoe Dreams Exhibition
The creation of tap shoes of the future and the artists who have dreamed them up.
Gallery 1065 
              Jun 22, 2025 – Jun 29, 2025
            
Dance& Abolition
What does a world without prisons, police, or carceral punishment look like—and how do we build it?
Society Clubhouse 
              Jun 21, 2025 – Jun 21, 2025
            
Dura : Co-Presentation
This performance will mark the closing of this year-long public installation at Garrison Common, Fort York.
Garrison Common at Fort York 
              May 28, 2025 – May 28, 2025
            
Embodiments: Exploring Tagore’s Poetic Compositions
An exploration of famed South Asian poet Tagore’s works through dance, sound and poetry.
Meridian Arts Centre 
              Apr 11, 2025 – Apr 12, 2025
            
PIÑA : Co-Presentation
PIÑA is an interdisciplinary dance work that explores constructions of diasporic identity and how the body carries history and ancestry in a globalizing world.
Toronto Dance Theatre 
              Mar 22, 2025 – Mar 22, 2025
            
Self Checkout (Vancouver)
A space for queer youth to explore performance in a collaborative space.
What Lab Studio 
              Mar 22, 2025 – Mar 22, 2025
            
Future Dances
This is a speculative choreography project in which 9 artists have been tasked with creating a dance for 50 years into the future.
FADO Performance Art Centre (401 Richmond St W Toronto) 
              Mar 12, 2025 – Mar 15, 2025
            
Looking Back, Dancing Forward
The culminating event for the 50th Anniversary Archival Project.
Urban Space Gallery 
              Nov 14, 2024 – Nov 14, 2024
            
Virtual Costume Quilt
A virtual quilt created to give undocumented costumes in the Dancemakers’ archive a permanent home.
Online 
              Nov 14, 2024 – Nov 14, 2024
            
Dance Curation Working Group 2024
Throughout the year, emerging Curators will work with invited guests to discuss various emergent practices found within dance curation.
Critical Distance Centre for Curators 
              Sep 1, 2024 – Jul 31, 2025
            
Wheezy Breezy
Wheezy Breezy is an interdisciplinary durational performance that sits in the complexities of navigating our dance practices as disabled artists breathing through the ongoing pandemic.
Regent Park 
              Aug 2, 2024 – Aug 4, 2024
            
Dancing in Dufferin Grove
Join Sanjukta to discuss Tagore’s Poetry in Dufferin Grove Park.
Dufferin Grove Park 
              Jul 13, 2024 – Jul 13, 2024
            
Why Curate Dance?
A panel about dance curation in Canada with practising independent dance Curators.
Online 
              Jun 21, 2024 – Jun 21, 2024
            
Pushmakers Town Hall
A town hall about manual wheelchair dance in Canada
Online 
              May 31, 2024 – May 31, 2024
            
Reimagining Madness through Reenactment
A 4-day choreographic intensive part of Workman Arts’ 2024 Winter Course Catalogue.
Workman Arts 
              Jan 9, 2024 – Jan 12, 2023
            
Bridging Dimensions of Dance
An open conversation and demonstration about the development of Upstairs, In Our Bedroom.
Workman Arts 
              Oct 28, 2023 – Oct 28, 2023
            
Upstairs, in our Bedroom
This interdisciplinary performance places Same As Sister’s experiences as female identical twins of color next to the real-life story of outsider authors June & Jennifer Gibbons (a.k.a. The Silent Twins).
Dance Arts Institute 
              Oct 1, 2023 – Oct 31, 2023
            
Sensing, Being, Holding Choice
A workshop focused on resourcing our ability to cultivate one’s inner sense of consent and attend to conflict as a generative force in our everyday lives.
The Citadel 
              Jul 12, 2023 – Jul 14, 2023
            
Re-imagining An Institution: Cinq A Sept
Join us for mock-tails and real talk.
The Citadel  
              Jul 7, 2023 – Jul 7, 2023
            
Abolition in Dance
The Black Widow, offers methods drawn from her burlesque and artist-activist practices to root and give life to the abolitionist in you.
The Citadel  
              Jul 5, 2023 – Jul 5, 2023
            
Working Agreements
What is a working agreement? Why and when are they useful?
Online 
              Jul 4, 2023 – Jul 4, 2023
            
Accessibility in Dance
This session offers a deep dive into creating accessible-affirming experiences within movement-based practices.
The Citadel  
              Jul 3, 2023 – Jul 3, 2023
            
Engaging in Repertoire
Engaging in Repertoire explores and devises new ways of bridging different dancers who are working outside, and inside of Eurocentric dance forms.
Collective Space  
              Jun 24, 2023 – Jun 24, 2023
            
Showtime @ Shops
A multi-generational pop-up street dance performances at an outdoor shopping mall
Shops at Don Mills 
              May 26, 2023 – May 27, 2023
            
Cycles
Ange Loft leads a cyclical research process through natural time, annual rhythms and Kanien’kehá:ka cycle of ceremonies.
The Railpath Arts Centre 
              Apr 12, 2023 – Apr 13, 2023
            
20 Grains of Rice
This work explores Kate Kamo McHugh’s family lineage related to the Japanese interment camps.
Toronto Metropolitian University’s Dance Deptartment 
              Apr 11, 2023 – Apr 22, 2023
            
Working Class Lab
A 6 month talk about money, class and the “isms” that work for and against us.
Online 
              Feb 13, 2023 – Jul 13, 2023
            
Goodie Bag!
GOODIE BAG! was a week-long installation and event that offered free wellness services and goodies for trans* dancers and performers.
Buddies in Bad Times Theatre 
              Jan 16, 2023 – Jan 20, 2023
            
Describing Dance Panel
A conversation on dance access, in particular for the blind / low vision community.
Online 
              Dec 10, 2022 – Dec 10, 2022
            
This Body of Work
this body of work explores critical feminist performance(s) of motherhood and maternal agency through lived bodily/cellular experiences.
The Bank Art House 
              Dec 1, 2022 – Dec 1, 2022
            
Diana Ross Dream
DIANA ROSS DREAM: A tribute to Black belonging.
Soulpepper Theatre 
              Jun 4, 2022 – Jun 4, 2022
            
Sola
SOLA is a contemporary and flamenco dance film created by Inamorata Dance Collective.
Dancemakers Centre for Creation 
              May 28, 2021 – May 28, 2021
            
Them Voices
This solo performance explores the inter-relationality between land, the artist’s body and her memory and future memory.
Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal 
              May 27, 2021 – May 29, 2021
            
The Territory Between Us
In 2018, I approached Bracken Hanuse Corlett (Wuikinuxv/Klahoose) to ask if he would carve me a mask.
 
              Feb 1, 2021 – Feb 28, 2021
            
The Aisha Of Is
A revised version of her first full-length solo performance “the aisha of is”
Dancemakers Centre for Creation 
              Mar 26, 2020 – Mar 28, 2020
            
Eating bones and Licking Bread
Eating bones and Licking bread works with the body, texture and sound.
Dancemakers Centre for Creation 
              Jan 30, 2020 – Feb 1, 2020
            
Flow Charts – 2019
Flowchart is a series of multidisciplinary performance presenting short works.
Dancemakers Centre for Creation 
              May 9, 2019 – May 9, 2019
            
The Things I Carry
Story-telling, song, movement and our electronic devices in part ceremony, part conference, part confessional.
Scadding Court Community Centre 
              Apr 27, 2019 – Apr 28, 2019
            
The Right Eye of Clint
This solo tracks the perception of pressure.
Dancemakers Centre for Creation 
              Apr 11, 2019 – Apr 13, 2019
            
Miijin Ki
made in collaboration with Aria Evans, Ana Groppler, Patti Shaughnessy + Brian Solomon
Dancemakers Centre for Creation 
              Jan 23, 2019 – Jan 24, 2019
            
Dance Machine
a kinetic sculpture that is transformable into multiple configurations.
Dancemakers Centre for Creation 
              Jun 19, 2018 – Jun 23, 2018
            
Silver Venus
SILVER VENUS is an ensemble reconstruction of the feminine persona VENUS.
Dancemakers Centre for Creation 
              Apr 26, 2018 – Apr 28, 2018
            
Multiform(s)
A vibrant, moving tableau inspired by the vivid pigments of Mark Rothko’s paintings.
The Music Gallery 
              Mar 9, 2018 – Mar 10, 2018
            
Natural Orders
The work attempts to expose the duality of the ‘natural’ and the ‘artificial’ as a fiction.
Dancemakers Centre for Creation 
              Jun 22, 2017 – Jun 24, 2017
            
Flow Charts – 2017
Flowchart is a series of multidisciplinary performance presenting short works.
Dancemakers Centre for Creation 
              Apr 6, 2017 – Apr 6, 2017
            
This Desiring Pony
This Desiring Pony is performed by the alter ego SCHPANDO.
Dancemakers Centre for Creation 
              Dec 15, 2016 – Dec 16, 2016
            
Flow Charts – 2016
Flowchart is a series of multidisciplinary performance presenting short works.
Dancemakers Centre for Creation 
              Sep 29, 2016 – Sep 29, 2016
            
Leisure Palace
A site responsive, immersive installation that floats between pulsing party and minimalist dreamscape.
Ontario Place – West Island 
              Sep 15, 2016 – Sep 25, 2016
            
The Talking, Thinking, Dancing Body
A facilitated conversation about aesthetics, context and artistic process.
Dancemakers Centre for Creation  
              Sep 10, 2016 – Sep 17, 2016
            
Secret Garden
A work for one performer and one audience visitor & using an architectural structure.
Dancemakers Centre for Creation 
              Jun 1, 2016 – Jun 1, 2016
            
Ogres Of Life
Lucy Rupert revisits one of Dancemakers’ most well-documented works: Serge Bennathan’s “Chronicles of a Simple Life” as part of our 50th Anniversary.
 
              Nov 5, 1993 – Nov 5, 1993
            
Serge Bennathan’s Legacy
Raymundo Moreno writes a profile about the legacy of Serge Bennathan who was Artistic Director of Dancemakers from 1990-2006.
 
              Nov 14, 1990 – Nov 14, 2006
            
Freedom of Movement
Freedom of Movement revisits Dancemakers’ 1976 tour of prisons across Southwestern Ontario.
 
              Nov 14, 1976 – Nov 14, 1984
            
Metabolizing Memory
Katie Adams Gossage reflects on her own experiences while reading the ‘Yearbook Survey of Dance’ filled out by Dancemakers in 1976.
 
              Nov 14, 1976 – Nov 14, 1976
            
10 Interviews
Mairéad Filgate interviewed 10 dancers from the early years of Dancemakers.
 
              Nov 14, 1974 – Nov 14, 1974
            
Behind The Scenes with Mark Hammond
An interview with Mark Hammond, the Dancemakers’ administrator during the early collective.
 
              Nov 14, 1974 – Nov 14, 1977
            
The First 16 Years
A description of the first 16 years of Dancemakers for the 50th Anniversary Archive Project.
 
              Jul 17, 1974 – Jul 17, 1990