MISSION. VISION. VALUES. BIOGRAPHY. EDI.
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‘Wedding Brigade’ - Choreography by Karen Kaeja, Photo by SV Photography
A group of young children run down an alleyway towards a group of female-presenting people wearing wedding dresses. They
are outdoors in an urban area.
Karen and Allen Kaeja in lifeDUETS 25 to 1 by Tedd Robinson, Photo by Zhenya Cerneacov
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Allen Kaeja, a white presenting balding male of Middle Eastern and Eastern European Jewish descent, and Karen Kaeja, an Ashkenazi white woman with long dark hair, dance inside an open pop-up tent. Allen has his arms around Karen and Karen leans back into Allen with one arm over his shoulders and the other arm extended up and back.
Mission
Kaeja d’Dance is committed to innovation in the performing arts through the expression of dance and movement. We foster creation, providing local and international platforms for original Canadian professional dance works. Kaeja d’Dance brings together collaborators and communities who are diverse, intergenerational, and multi-genre. We explore identity, ancestral ties, and personal stories, including Holocaust and trauma-informed themes. By integrating live performance, dance film, education, outreach, and community engagement, Kaeja d’Dance celebrates the joys and complexities of human experiences, inspiring connections between professional artists and the broader community - bringing the love of dance to all.
Vision
Kaeja d’Dance: Creation, Innovation, Momentum
Our Core Values
Artistic Excellence
We value artistic excellence in professional dance and public engagement. We strive to create and foster exceptional work with sensitivity, physical rigour, theatrical imagery, athletic intensity and dynamic power, and have a passion for both process and outcome.
Creative Development
We value exploration, research, collaboration, and innovation and work to reveal lives lived through intimate and emotionally resonant content, connecting the audience to the risks we take as human beings. We engage in story-telling by celebrating the universal qualities of everyday life with an appreciation for the richness of the human experience by creating work that is personal, socially relevant, relational, physical, imagistic, quirky, and sensual.
We believe and actively engage in, mentoring the next generation of creative artists.
Community and Collaboration
We collaborate with the professional dance, music, and arts community, forging relationships with our colleagues in the art form and with the broader community. We actively support the dance and broader communities through curating work, providing performance platforms, touring, and disseminating dance film throughout the world, building partnerships nationally and internationally.
Equity
We assert our commitment to equity in all programming, recruitment, hiring, policies, and practices.
We strive to be more fully inclusive and to engage with professional artists and individuals in the community, in meaningful creative partnerships, integrating diverse dance practices as well as learning to be welcoming of participants and artists with mixed abilities, working in equal partnership of all genders.
Kaeja d’Dance is an equal opportunity organization, without regard to race, ancestry, place of origin, colour, ethnic origin, language, citizenship, creed, religion, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status, physical and/or mental challenges, or financial ability.
Healthy Working Environment
We adhere to high ethical standards and value a safe and welcoming working environment. We commit to treating each other positively, equitably, fairly, and without any bias as per the Kaeja d’Dance equity statement.
We provide stable administration and financial management, and maintain a strong and responsible Board of Directors.
Equity Programming Advisory Committee (EPAC)
We are excited to announce that Kaeja has established an Equity Programming Advisory Committee (EPAC). The EPAC is composed of nine individuals - some who have worked with Kaeja directly and others who have experienced our activities from a distance. Together we will engage in meaningful discussions and the EPAC will help to guide Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion in all aspects of our organization.
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Michael Caldwell (he/him) is a choreographer, performer, curator, artistic director, producer, and arts advocate, based in Tkaronto, Canada.
Garnering critical acclaim, his choreography has been commissioned/presented throughout Canada at major festivals, in traditional venues and in site-responsive and community-engaged contexts. Michael’s most recent choreographic work responds to the 'site' in as many ways as can be conceived, and subverts traditional modes of viewing. He recently premiered ‘Two x 30’ - a large-scale performance/sound work as part of ArtworxTO: Toronto's Year of Public Art, and is currently working on two collaborative multidisciplinary performance projects. Caldwell is a two-time K.M. Hunter Charitable Foundation Artist Award finalist.
Michael has performed/collaborated with over 50 of Canada's esteemed performance creators/companies, working internationally and performing across North America, Europe, Asia, and Australia. His performances have earned him two (2) Dora Mavor Moore Awards for outstanding performance in dance.
Currently, Michael serves as Artistic Director at SummerWorks Performance Festival in Tkaronto, and as Programming Advisor for Festival of Dance Annapolis Royal, in Nova Scotia. Most recently, as Creative Director: Programming at Generator, he led the reimagination of the overall governance structure of the organization, moving towards a co-leadership framework. Previously, Michael played a pivotal role in the growth and development of Fall for Dance North, serving as Executive Producer for nine years. He has also previously guided projects with CanAsian Dance, Dusk Dances, Older & Reckless, and Kaeja d’Dance’s ‘Porch View Dances’. In addition, he acts as a consultant with various arts organizations and as a mentor to many emerging artists/curators in the Tkaronto arts community.
With a bachelor’s degree in film/art history from Syracuse University in upstate New York, and professional dance training at The School of Toronto Dance Theatre, Michael now serves as President of the Board of Directors at The CanDance Network.
Image Description: Michael Caldwell, a Southeast Asian / mixed race man, with short dark brown hair and dark brown eyes. He is sitting on a metal staircase, wearing a black shirt, blue jeans, and a long grey cardigan with black, white, brown, and tan stripes.
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Aria Evans is an award-winning, queer, Toronto-based interdisciplinary artist working in dance, theatre and film. Aria is a certified Intimacy Coordinator and draws on their experiences of being multiracial to capture meaningful social and cultural themes through their interactive art. With a large-scale vision, collaboration is the departure point to their work created under their company POLITICAL MOVEMENT. As an active speaker, facilitator and curator, Aria advocates for inclusion and the representation of diversity, and uses their artistic practice to question the ways we can coexist together. www.politicalmovement.ca.
Image Description: Aria Evans, an early 30's mixed race and gender non-conforming person with light brown skin, is standing in front of a white background wearing a peach coloured long sleeved dress shirt. . They have long dark wavy hair and brown eyes. Photo by Bliss Thompson.
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Aria Evans is an award-winning, queer, Toronto-based interdisciplinary artist working in dance, theatre and film. Aria is a certified Intimacy Coordinator and draws on their experiences of being multiracial to capture meaningful social and cultural themes through their interactive art. With a large-scale vision, collaboration is the departure point to their work created under their company POLITICAL MOVEMENT. As an active speaker, facilitator and curator, Aria advocates for inclusion and the representation of diversity, and uses their artistic practice to question the ways we can coexist together. www.politicalmovement.ca.
Image Description: Aria Evans, an early 30's mixed race and gender non-conforming person with light brown skin, is standing in front of a white background wearing a peach coloured long sleeved dress shirt. . They have long dark wavy hair and brown eyes. Photo by Bliss Thompson.
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Nickeshia Garrick is a settler on the stolen land of Tkaronto and has performed on this land for over 25 years. They are unapologetically a Black, Queer Artist, who believes in the healing power of breath through raw emotion and movement and teaches this breathwork at the Toronto Film School. Along with teaching at TFS, Nickeshia is a Certified Personal Trainer and Pilates Instructor and often offers free and discounted sessions to the IBPOC LGBTQ2S+ community in Toronto. Nickeshia holds their BFA in Dance from Simon Fraser University (Vancouver) and is a Dora Mavor Moore, winning and multi-nominated artist.
Image Description: Nickeshia Garrick, an Afro-Caribbean, Canadian with short kinky brown hair stares intensely away from the camera with wide dark chocolate eyes, holding a pose with their right hand, fingers spread, over their head and the left hand, fingers spread over their chest. They are wearing a black romper with thin straps that is not visible due to the background being dim and dark, which highlights their chocolate brown skin tone.
Photo. by Kevin Jones
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Fanny Ghorayeb, B.F.A, B.Ed, O.C.T. Fanny Ghorayeb began her professional dance career as a performer, dance teacher, choreographer and founder of a Modern Dance company. She then became a Dance educator at Cawthra Park Secondary School in the Peel District School Board where, over the next 27years, she developed an outstanding high school program for young dance artists. As the Artistic Director of the Regional Arts program at Cawthra, she was responsible for the administration of all four Arts areas,Dance, Drama, Music and Visual Arts, while also creating works annually for the Dance program, writing the Dance curriculum, choreographing and/or directing the annual musical, producing several performances a year, sitting on several committee for arts advocacy and engaging professional guest artists to teach and mentor students.
While teaching full-time, Fanny Ghorayeb maintained her involvement in the professional dance community. She has served on the Boards of directors for Dancemakers and the School of Toronto Dance Theatre, was a Dora juror in the Dance division, a choreographer and teacher in several theatres and post secondary institutions and has launched the career of several young artists who have achieved remarkable success in their chosen art field. She’s presently serving on the board of the Dancer’s transition resource centre (DTRC).
Since leaving Cawthra Park in June 2017, Fanny has been involved in a number of independent projects. These include: On Display Global ( Dec 2017 ) with New York based choreographer Heidi Latsky, Le Grand Continental for Luminato ( June 2018 ) working along side Montreal choreographer Sylvain Emard, conducting workshops and Master Classes at several performing arts high schools and professional schools. Fanny currently serves on faculty at Ryerson University’s School of Performance teaching Dance for Musical Theatre for fourth year Dance and Acting students. Presently, Fanny’s advocacy interests include working with Artists and Performing Arts Organizations to ensure fair, safe, respectful and equitable creative practices including in the audition process, in casting deliberations and during the rehearsal process.
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Roshanak is an Iranian-born Canadian artist, producer, director, and a Dora nominated choreographer and performer with a career that spans over 20 years. She is also the founding artistic director of Jaberi Dance Theatre, based in Toronto. Described as a “force to reckon with,” she has created and co-created over 30 works in dance, visual arts, film and music, has performed in numerous dance works, and has presented her work in Canada and internationally. Roshanak is the recipient of the ISPA-International Society of Performing Arts Global Fellowship (2020, 2021) and the Chalmers Arts Fellowship (2019), and holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts with Honours from York University. She has been a guest speaker and lecturer in various forums, and her work has been referenced in adult education courses and in critical pedagogy at the University of Toronto.
Image Description: Roshanak Jaberi is a woman with medium skin tone, with long curly brown hair and brown eyes. She is wearing a black blouse against a charcoal background and is looking at the camera with a soft smile.
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Kalaisan Kalaichelvan is a composer, dancer and choreographer based in Toronto, Canada. His compositional practice spans multiple disciplines, drawing from film, dance, theatre, installation and deals with themes of translation and transference.
Named by Ludwig Van as one of “six emerging Canadian composers to keep an eye on”, his music has been performed and premiered by renowned ensembles such as Pro Coro Canada, the Dior Quartet and Duo Concertante. Kalaisan is a 2021 Fellow of the Sundance Composers lab and is one of the awarded grantees of the Sundance Institute’s Art of Practice Fellowship. He has held residency at the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity and was an alumna of the Canadian Film Centre as as one of the 2021 Slaight Music residents. He is also currently the composer-in-residence with the Creativity Everything program under Toronto Metropolitan University. In 2022, Kalaisan has scored feature films that have premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival (“This Place”), Santa Barbara International Film Festival (“Junglefowl”) and the Fantasia Film Festival (“The Protector”).
As a dancer, Kalaisan has been presented at festivals across India, the USA, the UK and Canada. He has created and performed work for institutions like the National Ballet of Canada, the Madras Music Academy and Citadel + Compagnie. He has had the honour of working with many of the industry's celebrated dancers and choreographers such as Akram Khan, Hari Krishnan, Janak Khendry, the Kaejas, Lata Pada, Mavin Khoo and Menaka Thakkar.
Image Description: Kalaisan Kalaichelvan, a tall brown man with dark brown hair and is standing in the middle of a green field looking ahead at the Pacific Ocean against a twilight sky. He is wearing a yellow toque and wearing a blue coat with a black tee underneath.
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Mayumi Lashbrook (she/her) is a Japanese Canadian settler in Tkaronto who seeks to expose, challenge, and rectify systems of oppression by creating innovative, introspective and inclusive dance theatre. She sees embodiment as at the crux of world making, providing alternatives to unconscious thought, consumerism and oppression. She strives to increase connection, visibility and diversity in the Canadian arts landscape through on and off stage initiatives. Her primary practices span performance, choreography, education, creative production and Artistic Direction. Mayumi is the Co-Artistic Director of Hamilton based Aeris Körper, mentee of Denise Fujiwara of Fujiwara Dance Inventions, and practitioner of Dreamwalker Dance’s Conscious Bodies methodology. Mayumi contributes as a creative voice through both choreography and production of healthy ecologies for dance to be made in. Her different roles are all-encompassing and overlapping. This enables her to approach projects and communities with knowledge, openness, and curiosity.
Image Description: Mayumi Lashbrook is a mixed race Japanese Canadian woman in her 30s with dark chin length hair with bangs. She sits on a chair leaning against her one raised leg with a soft smile. Photo by Lula Belle
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Keira is an award-winning artist who has been working for over 25 years as an actor, director, playwright, dramaturg and producer. She is grateful to be an Associate Artist for Atlantic Ballet Atlantique Canada in New Brunswick, bringing her back into the world of dance. Keira is currently an Associate Professor for the Department of Theatre and Performance at York University. From 2012-2018 she was the inaugural Associate Producer for the Forum and the Laboratory at the Stratford Festival where she spearheaded organizational change to support new work, diversity, and inclusion. This year Keira is writing and directing her first documentary film examining the roots of anti-Chinese racism in Canada and the continuum of women who continue to fight against it. Keira has a 3rd degree black belt in Aikido and ran a dojo in Stratford where she lives with her husband and two children.
Image Description: Keira, a Chinese Canadian woman in her 40's, with shoulder-length black wavy hair, looks at the camera curiously. Wanna work together? Wanna play?
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Irma Villafuerte is a Central American dance artist and educator based in Tkaronto. She is a first-generation daughter of refugees from Nahuat-Pipil Territory Kuskatan (Place of Jeweled necklaces), post-colonial El Salvador. She is a graduate of George Brown Dance;. Her experience and training extend to Latin American and Caribbean dances, and Cuban Contemporary technique. She is a 2021 Toronto Arts Foundation Emerging Artist Finalist. Since 2017, she has embarked in a choreographic development through residencies with TDT Emerging Voices, Aluna Theatre, Dance Makers Peer Learning Network and George Brown Dance. Her artistic mission is embodying cultural, social-political and migrant narratives of marginalized and racialized communities. As a daughter of refugee parents, her passion for social justice, human rights, and political art making, is the driving force for creation in Irma’s choreographic and performance work, leading her to incubate her solo on her historic memory “nudoDESnudo”. She recently on the faculty at Casa Maiz’ Semillas Latinas summer camp for Latin American children since 2013 as a dance instructor and choreographer; as of late, she is also a new member of the faculty of the Theatre Department at Randolph College for the Performing Arts as a Voice, Text and Movement educator. She’s had the honor to perform, train and create in various arts festivals and workshops across the Americas and overseas, such as Night Shift 2020 Presented by the Citadel & Compaigne, Fall for Dance North’s Open Studio, The Rhubarb Festival, DanceWeekend Ontario, Aluna Theatre’s Panamerican Routes Festival, RUTAS and Caminos Festival, Panamania 2015, La 12 Bienal de la Habana 2015 for (IN)DISCIPLINAS, Vanguardia Dance Projects Festival, Danza Corpus Annual Open Space Temporada in Matanzas, Cuba, International Dance Meeting by Danza Libre in Guantanamo, CounterPulse Performing Diaspora in San Francisco. She has been part of choreographic works by Santee Smith (Kahawi Dance Theatre), Alejandro Ronceria, Roshanak Jaberi (Jaberi Dance Theatre), Victoria Mata, Kaeja D’dance, Aria Evans (Political Movement), Ryan Lee, Derek Sangster, Tina Fushell, Arsenio Andrade, Sharon B. Moore, Jose Angel Carret (Danza Corpus), Esteban Aguilar (Danza Fragmentada, Cuba).
Image Description: Irma Villafuerte, a brown, Central American, woman with black hair, sits with her arms around her knees looking directly at the camera with an intense gaze. She is outdoors and there are plants in the background.
Equity + Diversity + Inclusion Consultants
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Jim Adams is a multi-racial artist with maternal bloodline in the Swampy Cree, and Innu communities, and paternal bloodline in the Welsh and English communities. Jim grew up listening to stories of the land shared by his relatives, and it is these stories that shape Jim’s work as a multi-disciplinary artist.
Photo Credit: Brennan Roy, 2021. Hair credit: Alex Grey
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Brennan Roy (Disability Consultant) is a multiply disabled, queer and trans wheelchair dancer, multidisciplinary artist, and community worker. They work in the overlaps of dance, circus, disability consulting, and mobility technology. They are particularly interested in the ways folks use technology to build bodies and minds that work for them and the lives they want to live, what influences those bodies and minds within the pressures of an ableist society (and how to resist), and who has access to the ability to build and/or resist, given the constraints of capitalism, white supremacy, and other oppressive structures. They have been doing research more recently in the right to repair movement, and how it expands the movement of disabled dancers across the Turtle Island, and internationally.
Image Description: Brennan, smiling casually while running one hand through their hair. They are a white multigender human with a short brown mullet, purple metallic glasses, and mismatched jewellery. Light illuminates them from above against a plain white wall. /End ID
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Kaeja d'Dance was also a member of CPAMO-POC Cohort 3 with consultants Kevin Ormsby and Charles Smith.
Cultural Pluralism in the Arts Movement Ontario (CPAMO) is a movement of Indigenous and racialized artists engaged in empowering the arts communities of Ontario. CPAMO seeks to open opportunities for Indigenous and racialized professionals and organizations to build capacity through access and working relationships with cultural institutions across Ontario that will result in constructive relationships with Indigenous and racialized professionals and organizations.
Image Description: A purple and blue circle made up of thin lines. A green and blue line made up of thinner liners intertwines around the circle. Next to this shape, text reads “Cultural Pluralism in the Arts Movement Ontario (CPAMO)“
Celebrate Heritage Months
EQUITY UPDATES
Kaeja’s Ongoing Commitment to Equity
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Having completed the CPAMO POC program as a member of cohort 3, Kaeja continues to maintain relationships with CPAMO and with advisors Fiona Suliman and Brennan Roy, both of whom have provided invaluable support in our continued EDI work.
We are excited to announce that Kaeja has established an Equity Programming Advisory Committee (EPAC). The EPAC is composed of nine individuals - some who have worked with Kaeja directly and others who have experienced our activities from a distance. Together we will engage in meaningful discussions and the EPAC will help to guide Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion in all aspects of our organization. Read more about the EPAC members above.
We remain committed to exploring shared leadership models by welcoming a multiplicity of artistic voices helping to drive our projects. Sustainability for artists of racialized identities remains a priority through our Kaeja Artist in Residence (KAIR) program and the RBC Emerging Artists Program.
Kaeja continues to listen and learn from collaborative contracting and safe-space conversations. Our staff and board continue to re-craft our company policies and we are always working to make our communications and programming more accessible to those who may face barriers. We will continue to listen to the needs of our artists and our community as we learn how to become a better ally in all aspects of our operations.
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Kaeja continues to expand our knowledge as a member of the CPAMO POC 3 cohort. We have gained so much insight from our peers, CPAMO and other leaders in EDI work. We have created a specific EDI Action Plan for the Company that outlines our goals, how and when we plan to achieve them, and outcomes by which we can measure our success. As we investigate our developing goals and humbly deconstruct our systemic barriers and habits, we are looking at strategies that align with our founder-driven organization.
Kaeja is exploring a shared leadership model in an effort to dismantle our hierarchical leadership structure. We are welcoming more artistic voices into our projects and our decision making processes. Featured artists are taking on roles that highlight their curiosities, thinking and creative practices as curators, directors, artistic producers and self-directed creators.
Prioritizing sustainability, we are actively supporting artists of racialized identities that are underrepresented in the dance community through KAIR – the new Kaeja Artist in Residence program. The annual resident artists have been working on a project-to-project basis with Kaeja for many years and are now through this program, receiving financial, artistic and nurturing support to explore their passions and continue to develop their own artistic practices. Open dialogue is also at the forefront.
Kaeja is working regularly with Equity, Diversity, Inclusion, & Anti-Racism Consultant Fiona Suliman and Disability Consultant Jen Roy, as we strive to ensure that our thinking, planning, programming, projects and fees, are created with differing community and access needs in mind.
Kaeja d’Dance has and continues to prioritize representation in all of our work. We continue our long-standing commitment to hiring at least 60% of our artists from communities that are underrepresented in the dance community. We recognize that we are an organization with a primarily white presenting staff and Board and are prioritizing auditing our recruitment practices to address systemic barriers that we were previously unaware of to create greater equity for those seeking jobs in Toronto’s Dance Community. We are thankful for the excellence that everyone brings to Kaeja, and we continue to work towards diversity in background, artistic practice, ethnicity, age, gender, sexual orientation, and ability at every level of our organization.
Our staff and Board are currently working to establish updated policies and processes that reflect the needs of the communities and artists we collaborate with. These include an approach for reporting grievances, policies related to anti-harassment, anti-racism, privacy, and finances, updates to our Board Manual and bylaws, and exploring what it means to create safe spaces to rehearse and perform in. We are committed to equity as we actively listen, taking every individual’s situation and needs into account and striving for action within our capacity as an organization.
We are also developing our programming and procedures based on feedback from many artists, community participants, and experts in our field. Kaeja is currently gathering demographic information from our audiences and participants so that we can better understand the reach of our current programming and work towards diversifying it.
Living in a changing world and society, we recognize that in the past we may not have understood the full extent of the needs of the artists and communities we work with. We continue to listen, reflect and learn, in order to take meaningful action in our EDI journey. Growth as an organization is a priority. We will continue to provide updates as we move forward with upcoming plans.
We understand that Equity, Diversity and Inclusion is a lifelong learning and we are committed to strengthening our understanding through difficult conversations and working to make change in our organization in order to better ourselves and the sector. We regularly check in with our artists and provide collaborative agreements to make sure we are hearing their needs and integrating changes that are forward-moving and that are right for everyone.
We are honoured to be on this journey with you; our community.
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Kaeja has embarked on Cultural Pluralism in the Arts Movement Ontario (CPAMO)'s 2 year organization development program CPAMO-POC Cohort 3. We join many dance and arts service organizations in this process of learning to deconstruct barriers and embed pluralism in our organization. We are excited to work with CPAMO's team to develop our own action plan.
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Kaeja's staff, Artistic Directors and Board are currently working with Equity, Diversity and Inclusivity (EDI) advisor Kevin A. Ormsby among others, to review the work we have done, assessing also where we currently are in our ongoing mandates and goals to continually be as inclusive an organization as possible. Through this process it is envisioned that we will strategize, create and implement actionable steps towards further equity, diversity and inclusivity in the dance community.
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Kaeja d’Dance is taking time to check in and check ourselves. We are actively engaging with our team, dance artists, collaborators, board, colleagues and family members to have hard conversations, examining our Company practices and privileges, in order to understand how we can do better. We recognize that there has long been an inequity in the arts, and as a Company we are committed to being better allies, and the voices of independent and IBPOC dance artists, creatives and colleagues.
We fully stand with Indigenous, Black, and People of Colour. We support the global Black Lives Matter movement and we are listening, learning, and standing up against racial discrimination. We are educating ourselves on how systematic oppression impacts IBPOC communities, knowing that we have the privilege to take the time to learn about it, instead of being forced to learn through experience. We will put in the work to rebuild our society so that equality, sensitivity, compassion and fighting for each other’s rights are a part of our essence, and not just something people can choose to opt into when the world demands it. We want our collective action to be as regular as our breath.
We are committed to correcting our course when we are found to be lacking. We are open to your suggestions. We thank all the organizations and community members who lead the way to open our eyes. Let’s create a better world. Black lives matter.
Our next steps include : anti-oppression training for our organization, prioritizing the hiring of IBPOC for administrative positions, continuing to contract more IBPOC artists, evaluating where and how to properly reach out to IBPOC applicants, forming partnerships with organizations serving IBPOC communities and continuing our community work.
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View our harassment policy here.