LEAD | Canada's National Ballet School

Sid Ryan Eilers (they/them) is a choreographer, performer, and Artistic Director of EILERS Dance Theatre, an interdisciplinary company creating contemporary dance, theatre, and performance works that centre queer and trans voices.  

Working across Canada, Europe, and New York for over 25 years, Eilers has created more than eighteen original works presented in theatres, festivals, and site-specific settings. Their practice integrates movement, text, voice, and somatic approaches to performance. 

Eilers has held residencies with the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity, FLIGHT (Côté Danse and Crow’s Theatre), and the National Ballet of Canada’s Open Space program, and participated in the COLOURS International Dance Festival in Stuttgart. Their work is informed by ongoing study with Dreamwalker Dance Company’s Conscious Bodies Practice and collaborations with artists including Andrea Nann and Peggy Baker. 

Current projects include Fancy Cat, premiering through the Toronto Public Library and Toronto Arts Council Artists in the Libraries program before touring to the Niagara Children’s Festival and OutFest Halifax in 2027; Boy Q, in residency at RedSapata in Linz, Austria; and Dangerous Vacancies, premiering at Oakville Centre for the Performing Arts and Citadel LIVE in 2027. 

Eilers is a member of the Artistic Faculty at Canada’s National Ballet School, where they teach contemporary dance and creative process through an embodied, process-oriented approach.

The Living Technique: Body, Voice, Land

The Living Technique is a contemporary training practice designed to prepare dancers for Sid Ryan Eilers’ choreographic work that engages the spiritual, emotional, physical, and intellectual bodies. It is grounded in the belief that technique is not separate from expression, and that the body holds both memory and imagination. 

 
The class begins with activations from the Conscious Bodies Practice (Dreamwalker Dance) inviting voice work and land-based acknowledgement, welcoming dancers into relationship with place, sound, and presence. Improvisation is introduced early, establishing a connection to individual impulse and awareness. A somatic and joint care warm-up follows, supporting longevity, alignment, and deep internal listening. 

 
Movement develops through sweeping weight shifts and a seated floor progression, awakening the spine as a primary source of articulation. This awareness is carried into pliés, floorwork, leg articulations, and across-the-floor sequences, building toward turns, jumps, and a final jumping phrase. 
 

Throughout, dancers are guided to strengthen the core, mobilize the spine, and refine coordination while remaining connected to their own movement language. The practice moves between clarity and subtlety, inviting attention to internal sensation and energetic detail. A recurring principle, referred to as glistening, focuses on the body as a responsive field, where even small shifts carry presence. 

 
The work welcomes queerness as both identity and perspective. It affirms difference, complexity, and the full range of human expression. The intention is to prepare dancers to enter creation with physical readiness, artistic clarity, and a grounded sense of self.

Petra Liyahn, a Bajan-Canadian Dancer, Actor, Singer and Burlesque performer. Her essence is the embodiment of artistic expression. Beyond her stage presence, she champions body empowerment as a movement instructor, offering healing through dance and inspiring individuals to embrace their authentic selves one strut at a time. She’s a member of Les Femmes Fatales, Canada’s premiere Burlesque Troupe for Women of Colour. Petra made her Burlesque Hall of Fame debut in 2026 and was awarded the “Bombshell” award at the inaugural Melbourne Festival of Tease.  

She’s untamed, unapologetic, unforgettable. Your Caribbean Queen.  

Tease The Beat - Where musicality meets instinct.  

 Strengthen your intuitive voice through movement by allowing your body be guided by the music. A mix of slow burn, bump & wine and musicality.

Miss Lu began dancing at the age of three and has been in love with it ever since. She is professionally trained in various genres including Ballet, Chinese Classical and Ethnic, Jazz, Modern Contemporary, Hip Hop and Latin Dance. She has performed and choreographed professionally for over 15 years, with repertoire work showcased in media, live stage productions, and theatrical performances. She currently is the Artistic Director of Norman Dance Company, sharing her passion for dance and her knowledge of Chinese Arts & Culture with students of all ages. As a former graduate from the Ryerson University’s Performance Production program, Tia also works independently in Production Stage Management and Costume Design to enhance her artistic career.

Classical Chinese Dance

Discover the beauty and elegance of Traditional Chinese Dance in this immersive workshop designed for all experience levels. Participants will explore graceful movements, expressive storytelling, and the cultural foundations behind this classical art form. Through guided instruction, the workshop will focus on posture, coordination, fluidity, and rhythm while introducing elements of Chinese history and tradition. Whether you are new to dance or looking to deepen your cultural and artistic practice, this workshop offers a welcoming space to move, learn, and connect.

Naomi is Mohawk from the Six Nations of the Grand River Territory in Southern Ontario. Dance and culture have always been an important part of her life. She is a Fancy Shawl dancer which is popular at First Nations powwows. She joined her first professional Native Dance Company in 1996 touring across Canada, USA, Germany, Italy, Norway, Austria,Korea and China. She won the World Smoke Dance Championship in 2006 and 2007 at the Schemitzun Festival of Green Corn in Connecticut. With her husband she opened Tribal Vision Dance in 2009 and have been touring ever since. She has taken on a new role of Indigenous dance instructor in the Commercial Dance program at Centennial College.

Fancy Shawl Dance

Participants will learn about the beauty, grace and power of the fancy shawl dance. The fancydance is arguably the most competitive style of dance on the powwow circuit. Dancers will learn basic technique as well as the history of this beautiful dance.

Esie Mensah is an award-winning choreographer, director, dancer, educator, and TEDx speaker, whose work spans dance, theatre, opera, and film/TV. She has worked with Rihanna, Drake, Nelly Furtado, Kenny Ortega, and clients like Canada’s Got Talent, Holt Renfrew, Deloitte, and the Toronto Raptors. Her work has toured nationally and internationally. Theatre credits include choreography for Soulpepper, Obsidian, Shaw Festival, Stratford Festival and directing Serving Elizabeth at Theatre Aquarius. She choreographed Scott Joplin’s opera Treemonisha: A Musical Reimagining and was Artist in Residence at Fall for Dance North in October 2025 and debuted her most ambitious production ZAYO which debuted in Toronto and in Milan, Italy. 

Photo credit: Kendra Epik

The Black Widow of Burlesque is an Afro-Indigenous, 2Spirit, Queer and Transcendent multidisciplinary art maker, curator and empowerment storyteller.  Her work is rooted in abolition and expressed through movement theater, political education, cultural research, DEI consultancy, and many forms of disability justice. She is a Canadian Best Selling Author (Until We Are Free),  received the Stratford Festival mid career artist award 2021,  named Top 25 Women of Influence in Canada recipient of 2021, and a Nobel Peace Prize nominee 2021 (with Black Lives Matter). Ravyn has lectured widely on topics such as abolition, art & activism, accessibility, LGBT inclusion, leadership, policy, and land-based informed policies at Deloitte Canada, University of Virginia Dept of Anthropology, UCLA School of Architecture and Urban design, McMaster University, University of Toronto School of Law Faculty, Faculty at the Toronto District School Board, Toronto Catholic School Board, and Canada’s National Ballet School. 

Lotus Root  

Experience Lotus Root Choreographic improvisation session with Ravyn Wngz. Inspired by our relationships to the Land, Nature and the elements.  The intention with this workshop is to explore different ways to access movement vocabulary in your own unique way.

Irma Villafuerte is a Tkaronto-based dance artist, choreographer, and educator, and the first-generation daughter of refugees from Nawat Territory, Kuskatan (El Salvador). A Dora-nominated artist, her work engages migration, historic memory, and Salvadorian identity, drawing from matrilineal histories and emotional geographies of displacement.

She was a finalist for the Toronto Arts Foundation Emerging Artist Award (2021). Villafuerte is the co-founder of the Dora-nominated CinnaMoon Collective and Program Director of Native Earth Performing Arts’ Animikiig Creators Unit, where she supports the development of emerging Indigenous artists. She has performed across the Americas, including at Fall for Dance North, Bienal de La Habana, and CounterPulse (San Francisco), and has collaborated with artists such as Kaha:wi Dance Theatre, Victoria Mata, Sharon B. Moore, Karen Kaeja, and Alejandro Ronceria.

Her choreographic voice has been developed through residencies with Dance Makers, Toronto Dance Theatre, and Aluna Theatre. Her recent works include Xilopango and the dance film Siwat Piedra, which trace emotional and ancestral landscapes shaped by displacement, resistance, and the persistence of memory.

Contemporary Ecuadorian

This contemporary dance class invites dancers into a physical exploration of elements, land, memory, and embodied imagery. Through guided improvisation, movement research, and choreographic phrases, participants will investigate how sensation, impulse, and personal narrative can shape movement. We will explore relationships to floorwork, space, rhythm, and dynamic shifts while moving across the floor through structured exercises and travelling sequences. Dancers will learn choreography that interweaves set material with instinct, desire, and individual interpretation, encouraging both technical rigor and creative agency within the practice.

Carolin Mateus is a Colombian-born dancer, choreographer, educator, and creative director based in Canada. With over 15 years of professional experience in the dance industry, she has built an international career recognized for artistic versatility, leadership, cultural knowledge, and community impact. 

Specializing in street and Afro-diasporic dance styles, Carolin has trained extensively in Hip-Hop, House, Dancehall, Waacking, Krump, Locking, Popping, Latin Dance, and urban movement foundations. Her work merges technical training, musicality, storytelling, and cultural education, allowing her to create impactful artistic experiences both on stage and in educational spaces. 

Carolin holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Artistic Education with a concentration in Dance and Literature from Universidad Distrital Francisco José de Caldas in Bogotá, Colombia. She also pursued graduate studies and obtained a Master’s Degree in Dance Therapy for children with special abilities, strengthening her multidisciplinary approach to movement, education, and human development. 

Throughout her career, Carolin has worked internationally as a dancer, choreographer, director, teacher, and adjudicator across Colombia and Canada. Her artistic and educational work has included collaborations with professional companies, festivals, government institutions, competitive dance programs, cultural organizations, and community initiatives. 

From 2015 to 2018, Carolin worked with IDARTES (Bogotá’s governmental arts organization), using dance as a tool for empowerment, emotional expression, and identity development for vulnerable youth and children affected by violence, displacement, abuse, racism, and social inequality. Her work focused on creating safe artistic spaces where movement became a voice for healing, reflection, and transformation. 

In 2016, she conducted academic and artistic research exploring Hip-Hop culture as a platform for identity formation, values, and personal development among marginalized communities. This research connected dance culture with social and philosophical studies inspired by Martin Luther King Jr.’s I Have a Dream speech and Hip-Hop principles. Carolin also contributed to the publication of the educational book Educational Tools for Dance through IDARTES in 2017, reinforcing her commitment to dance pedagogy and accessible arts education. 

As the Founder and Creative Director of Toronto Reggaeton, Carolin has developed one of Toronto’s growing Latin urban dance platforms, focused on authentic movement education, performance creation, and cultural representation through Reggaeton and street dance foundations. 

Her professional experience includes collaborations and performances with organizations and institutions such as Halifax Pride, House of Eights, Run The Flex, City Dance Corps, Dalhousie University, Halifax Dance Center, Thunderbirds Dance Team, Academy Soulbeat Danza Urbana, Teatro R101, IDARTES, and numerous dance studios and festivals across Canada and Colombia 

Reggaeton Workshop

More than just a dance style, Reggaeton is a cultural movement rooted in rhythm, resilience, identity, and self-expression. This workshop invites dancers of all backgrounds and experience levels to explore the foundations, energy, and evolution of Reggaeton through movement, musicality, and cultural connection.

Led by internationally trained choreographer and educator Carolin Mateus, participants will experience a high-energy class focused on groove, confidence, performance quality, body awareness, and musical interpretation while learning the foundations influenced by Afro-Caribbean, Dancehall, Hip-Hop, and Latin urban cultures that shaped Reggaeton worldwide.

Beyond choreography, this workshop creates a space for empowerment, freedom, and community. Through movement, dancers are encouraged to connect with their individuality, build confidence, and celebrate authenticity in a supportive and inclusive environment.

This class is designed for everyone — whether you are stepping into Reggaeton for the first time or looking to deepen your artistic and performance skills. Participants will leave not only with choreography and training tools, but also with a greater understanding of the cultural roots, history, and emotional power behind the movement.
Come ready to sweat, learn, connect, and experience the energy of Reggaeton beyond the steps.

A teacher in the Professional Ballet Academic Program at Canada’s National Ballet School (NBS). As Director of Teacher Training and Community Dance, Ashleigh works with partners across the education, community programming and sport sectors to bring the widespread benefits of dance to all Canadians. A graduate with distinction from NBS’ Teacher Training Program, she is a recipient of the Carole Chadwick and the Betty Oliphant Awards for teaching. In addition, Ashleigh has worked extensively as a theatre choreographer and holds an Honours Degree in History and Sociology from the University of Toronto.

Community Dance Coordinator of Indigenous Relations at Canada’s National Ballet School (NBS). She also teaches Ballet and Jazz in all areas at the school. A graduate of the Teacher Training Program at Canada’s National Ballet School, she was awarded her diploma with distinction along with the Sylvia McPhee Award. She has teaching associates from the RAD, Cecchetti Society of Canada and the International Society for the Teachers of Dancing. She holds an undergraduate degree in History from York University, a certificate in Dance Performance from George Brown College and is currently completing her MA part-time at Trent University on the effects of colonization on Indigenous dance. She has performed nationally and internationally as a dancer and aerial silks artist since 2010. She now shares her love of dance with dancers of all abilities and ages.