TO Live would like to acknowledge Tkaronto (TKahr-on-dOnH), which is a Mohawk word meaning “the place in the water where the trees are standing.”
We live and work on the traditional territory of Haudenosaunee (HODE-en-ohshow-nee)-speaking nations, including the Wendat, Seneca, and Mohawk. Haudenosaunee-speaking nations have been here since time immemorial, and were more recently joined by the Mississaugas of the Credit.
This place has many Indigenous ports, including where the Humber and Rouge rivers meet other waterways such as Lake Ontario. Ancient longhouses, typical Haudenosaunee housing structures, have been found along both rivers and in the north of Toronto as well (near modern-day York University). This territory is covered by the Dish with One Spoon Wampum Belt Covenant, an agreement between the Haudenosaunee (Six Nations) Confederacy and the Anishinaabe (Ojibwe) and allied nations to peaceably share and care for the lands and the relationships around the Great Lakes.
What this means is that by living and working here, we all have a responsibility to the environment and to each other, to treat each other and the environment with peace and respect. This means we have responsibilities to honour, renew, and consistently uphold the values and relationships outlined in the ancient agreements.
Today, Toronto is home to Indigenous peoples and settlers from around the world. Let us all come together in an atmosphere of respect and peace to do Good Work together with Good Minds. Let’s start building stronger and healthier relationships with each other, and the spaces which we inhabit in Tkaronto, Ontari:io (on-dahr-EE-yo), Kanata (Gan-AH-dah).
Born from a little room as a short duet created and performed by Ephrat Asherie and Michelle Dorrance in December 2022, The Center Will Not Hold is now an expanded and reimagined work that includes a collective of singular performers deeply rooted in one or many of the following street, club, and vernacular dances: house, breaking, hip hop, tap dance, Chicago footwork, Detroit Jit, litefeet, Memphis jookin, and body percussion. The work features original music composed by Donovan Dorrance with live percussion by world-class drummer/percussionist, John Angeles.
Jimbo, Richie Maguire, Michael Manson Jr., Ron Myles, Charles “Lil Buck” Riley, Matthew “Megawatt” West, with solo improvisation by the dancers
Artistic advisors Brenda Bufalino, Buddha Stretch
Original music by Donovan Dorrance
Live percussion by John Angeles
Lighting design by Kathy Kaufmann
Sound design by Christopher Marc
Costumes facilitated by Amy Page
Performed by John Angeles, Ephrat “Bounce” Asherie, Manon Bal, Tomoe “Beasty” Carr, Michelle Dorrance, Virgil “Lil O” Gadson, Fritzlyn Hector, Donnetta “Lil Bit” Jackson, Eriko
Jimbo, Michael Manson Jr., Matthew “Megawatt” West
Dance captain Manon Bal
Swings Zakhele “Bboy Swazi” Grabowski, Eriko Jimbo
Funding credits
Lead commissioning support for The Center Will Not Hold is provided by the Jay and Susie Gogue Performing Arts Center at Auburn University.
Co-commissioning support for The Center Will Not Hold is provided by Sadler’s Wells, London; The Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center at the University of Maryland; McCarter Theater Center; The Princeton Museum of Art; and Jacob’s Pillow.
Additional project support is provided by New Music USA’s Organization Fund in 2024-25, the O’Donnell Green Music and Dance Foundation, and One World Fund. The Center Will Not Hold was developed in part through residencies at the Jay and Susie Gogue Performing Arts Center at Auburn University; Jacob’s Pillow; and MASS MoCA, North Adams, MA.
Excerpts of The Center Will Not Hold first premiered in 2023 as a commission by New York City Center for the Fall for Dance Festival. Support for the commission was provided by Stuart H. Coleman and Meryl Rosofsky and support for the composition was provided by The Charles and Joan Gross Family Foundation.
The Center Will Not Hold is a Dorrance Dance production. The creation and development of new work is funded, in part, through the Laslo-Srere Fund for New Work; founding supporters: Hilary Srere and Michael Lemle.
About Dorrance Dance Productions
Dorrance Dance Productions (producer) was founded in 2011 as a tap dance company, passionately committed to sharing the complex history, powerful legacy, and infinite possibilities of tap dance on a musical, conceptual, and emotional level. After 15 years of being the world’s most lauded tap dance company, Dorrance Dance’s mission has expanded.
As a producing entity, the organization seeks after work that continues to contextualize tap dance’s history and its diaspora in a culturally significant way. The company aspires to support the development and touring of new works that continue to deepen the relationship between tap dance and the forms that have a direct relationship to its lineage. www.dorrancedance.com
Megan Callaghan, Sofia Del Valle & Carrie O’Dell, Donorly
Development consultants
Kathy Kaufmann
Lighting designer
Amy Page
Wardrobe supervisor
Andrea Nellis & Kelly Hartnett, Arts FMS
Financial administrator
Barbara Frum, outer/most
Booking representative
Dorrance Dance Board of directors
Henri Benaim Chair
Marc Steglitz
Treasurer
Deb Klowden Mann
Secretary
Courtney Blackwell Burton
M’Liss Dorrance
Michelle Dorrance
Michael Feller
Joseph Gallo
Hilary Srere
As seen in tonight’s performance, Dorrance Dance Productions is deeply committed to creating and producing new works and employment opportunities for artists that intersect, innovate, and honour the cultural legacy of tap dance. Please join our mailing list for updates and consider donating to support the art and artists!
Biographies
Ephrat Asherie Co-director/performer
Ephrat Asherie is a NYC-based director, choreographer, performer, and b-girl, and a 2016 Bessie Award winner for innovative achievement in dance. Asherie has received many awards to support her work including Dance Magazine ’s inaugural Harkness Promise Award and two National Dance Project Awards. As artistic director of Ephrat Asherie Dance (EAD), Asherie’s work has been presented on stages nationally and internationally with commissions from companies including Malpaso, Philadanco!, and Parsons Contemporary Dance.
Michelle Dorrance Co-director/performer
Michelle Dorrance is a New York City-based artist. Career highlights include STOMP, Derick Grant’s Imagine Tap!, Jason Samuels Smith’s Charlie’s Angels/Chasing the Bird, Ayodele Casel’s Diary of a Tap Dancer, Mable Lee’s Dancing Ladies, and playing the bass for Darwin Deez. Company work includes Savion Glover’s Ti Dii, Manhattan Tap, Barbara Duffy and Co., JazzTap Ensemble, and Rumba Tap. Solo work ranges from The Late Show with Stephen Colbert to commissions for the Martha Graham Dance Company, Vail Dance Festival, American Ballet Theatre, and New York City Center.
John Angeles Performer
Manon Bal Dance captain/ performer
John Angeles is from Fort Worth, Texas. John obtained a music degree from TCU, where he focused on drumset, marimba, and marching percussion. From 2007 to 2017, John performed with the New York and touring productions of STOMP. After STOMP, John moved back to Texas and now focuses on being a father to his son and identical twin girls.
Manon Bal is a versatile professional dancer from Marseille, France. She has trained at the IFPRO Rick Odums in Paris and at the prestigious Ailey School in New York City. She has been a member of Ephrat Asherie Dance since 2016.
Matthew “Megawatt” West started dancing at the age of 16 in Queens, New York. Although the majority of Mega Watts’ training is in b-boying, he is also an avid listener of house music and a dedicated student of the dance style itself. Mega Watts is an active part of NYC’s house dance community and teaches youth classes throughout the five boroughs.
Matthew “Megawatt” West
Performer
Zakhele “Bboy Swazi” Grabowski
Zakhele “Bboy Swazi” Grabowski is a performing and competitive tap dancer and breaker. He was the 2023 National Champion of USA Breaking, and a member of Teen Team USA Breaking For Gold. Additionally, he was one of the cohort for the tap ensemble at Jacob’s Pillow that year. He is a member of Dynamic Rockers (NYC), Boxcrew (Paris), and Funky Rockerz (worldwide).
Eriko Jimbo
Eriko Jimbo is a Tokyo-born, NYC-based performing artist, educator, creative, and collaborator. Her skills range from contemporary, hip hop, partnering, house, martial arts, aerial arts, and sway pole, to acting, physical theatre, and taiko. Her credits include performing for Life & Trust, Pilobolus Dance Theater, the Met Gala, Sidi Larbi Cherkoui, Michael Arden, Ephrat Asherie, MAWU, Fuerza Bruta (NYC and global).
Donovan Dorrance Composer
Kathy Kaufmann
Lighting designer
Donovan Dorrance hails from Chapel Hill, North Carolina, where he trained as a multi-instrumentalist. After earning a bachelor’s degree at UNC, he moved to Brooklyn to work with Dorrance Dance, his sister’s dance company, later becoming music director and composing original music for the company. Outside of dance, Dorrance scores films, teaches music technology, and produces and mixes music for other artists.
Kathy Kaufmann is a New York City native and two-time Bessie recipient. She is resident designer at Danspace Project at St. Marks Church, has taught at Sarah Lawrence and NYU, and has toured extensively throughout the world. She designs regularly for Dorrance Dance, Joanna Kotze, The Bang Group, Mariana Valencia, Ephrat Asherie Dance, Vicky Shick, and Music From The Sole.
Swing
Swing
Christopher Marc Sound designer
Devin Koenig
Lighting supervisor
Christopher Marc is a NYC-based sound designer and production manager from Minneapolis, Minnesota. He has designed and engineered sound for Michelle Dorrance, Music From the Sole, Variety Life Productions, Lincoln Center Restart Stages, Luke Hickey, and Michael Jellick.
Devin Koenig is a lighting supervisor, production manager, and programmer based in Astoria, New York. Currently she is the lighting supervisor for Dorrance Dance, and has previously worked with Music from the Sole, Paul Taylor Dance Company, Joyce Theater Productions, and the Radio City Rockettes.
Backstage with...Bryce Taylor
Bryce Taylor is a Tkaronto-based breaker who began their dance journey at 13 in Colebrook, Ontario, later joining Canada’s Royal Winnipeg Ballet and Ballet Edmonton.
Taylor is a TO Live explorations artist, and was awarded $7,000 through the initiative to research something new. Alongside their crew TUFF, Taylor has been researching what is possible at the intersection of breaking and partnered dance. Taylor is also part of TO Live’s Making Space program, which provides subsidized access to spaces for artists. We chatted with them during a recent rehearsal at Meridian Hall to learn more about breaking and their work.
What do you love about dancing?
I’ve always been the kind of person who gets very intense about things very quickly. So if you talk to my mom, she’ll tell you about all the phases I went through; it was acting, then it was sports, then card magic.
But dance was the first thing that really stuck. It’s the only thing that I’ve stuck to for over a decade. And I think it’s because no matter how much you learn about it, you only learn there’s so much more to get into. It’s like as you dig your hole or you go on your journey, all you discover is that there’s more to be discovered. And that cyclical nature just keeps pulling me back in.
What motivated you to focus on breaking?
With breaking, I think it’s the fun, the style itself, the community and the culture, which is about liberation in many ways.
A lot of the styles that I practiced in other phases of my career are about getting it right. So I appreciate the freedom and individuality in breaking, and the assumption that everyone will have their own unique style, whereas in other genres that only happens if you start choreographing.
To get a little technical, breaking is made up of four main groups: uprock, downrock, freezes, and power moves. Each one is almost a dance style unto itself, so it’s almost like four different dance styles in a trench coat pretending to be one. What’s so engaging is that no matter where you want to go, you can class into one of these styles. And all that freedom is very alluring.
What are you working on these days?
Because I was privileged enough to see institutional dance, I thought I might be able to help push the envelope forward in breaking and in street dance. So that’s where most of my energy goes now.
I represent a group called The Unknown Floor Force, or TUFF. We’re working to become Toronto’s first breaking crew that is also a dance company. Lots of work that needs to be done still because we started in 2023, but we’ve got the ball rolling in some fairly interesting ways.
How important is it for artists to have access to subsidized rehearsal space?
I think it’s extremely precious that TO Live is able to give artists space, and to give it for longer periods where we don’t need to come in all rushed. I think it’s important to understand that breakers generally don’t practice in studios. We never have access to a studio space. They ’re too expensive.
Some of the cheapest studio spaces in Toronto are $75 an hour. So we practice in public buildings. We bring a little boombox, it sounds very beat street with the cardboard and the boombox, but that’s what we do. We go to a public space that has a nice buffed concrete floor where we can spin on it and we get down, and we practice for four hours a night just throwing our bodies onto a concrete floor. So to be able to come into a space that is heated, clean, has a sprung floor, all of these things that help prevent injury, help take care of your body…it’s extremely precious and very appreciated.
What does it mean to you to have your worked supported through TO Live’s explorationsand MakingSpaceprograms?
It’s really incredible. And I don’t mean that just for myself as an artist; for our group it’s a huge deal. TUFF is trying to format itself as a crew, but also as a professional entity. And in Toronto, there’s not a lot of things we can point to in order to be legitimized. And these opportunities lets us know that this work is important and that there is a space for groups like us in this arts ecosystem.
TO Live’s explorations initiative is made possible by supporters of the TO Live Foundation. explorations is generously supported by Power Corporation of Canada.
TO Live supporters
We offer our sincere thanks to all our donors and supporters. Your gift to TO Live and the TO Live Foundation, no matter the size, makes a difference.
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Isabel Vicente Menanno
Director of the Office of the CEO & Board Relations
