March 28, 2025: 7:30 PM
Guelph Youth Dance Studios, 42 Quebec Street
Please join us for an evening of dance featuring KasheDance and CinnaMoon Collective at Guelph Youth Dance Studios.
Tickets: $10 or $20 (sliding scale, please choose the option that best suits your needs)
‘Retrospek’ (excerpt) by KasheDance
Re:membering: A journey of choreographies rich in rhythmic traditions, culture, social and human rights activism. Retrospek looks into the past, celebrates the present, and signals the creative ways we will work in the future. “Fifteen years of dance rooted in the culture, creativity and performance aesthetics of the Caribbean and African Diaspora”
Choreographer: Kevin A. Ormsby
Performers: TBA
‘Surrendered Spirits’ by CinnaMoon Collective
Surrendered Spirits is an inter-multidisciplinary duet that excavates our shared reflection on memories of childhood fractures and joys. The work is inspired by the impact of familial displacement and our upbringing as children of racialized, marginalized and immigrant families. It is fueled by our deep connection to one another and our journey seeking outlets to contextualize our lived experiences through the lens of QIBPOC bodies. Imagine a world where we heal inter-generational wounds through collective care and value ourselves and hold unconditional space for queer womxn of colour. A place where we can explore the truths behind the childhood stories that have influenced our perception of the world. Surrendered Spirits is this desired world brought to life through physical, emotional and spiritual virtuosity, all through soulful melodies and haunting rhythms.
Choreographers & Performers: Irma Villafuerte and Nickeshia Garrick
About the Artists
Founded in 2009, KasheDance is an Afro-Contemporary dance company with roots in Toronto and branches connecting it to the United States and the Caribbean. The company is unique in Canada in its use of the Critical Response Process to create, research and present dances that give voice to the realities of African Diasporic experiences.
Artistic Director of KasheDance, Kevin A. Ormsby is also Curator of Programming at Cultural Pluralism in the Arts
Movement Ontario (CPAMO). He has performed with companies in Canada, the United States, and the Caribbean. He has been featured in works by Marie-Josée Chartier, Allison Cummings, Patrick Parson, Ronald Taylor, Ron K. Brown, Menaka Thakkar, Garth Fagan, Liz Lerman, Bageshree Vaze, Lemi Ponifasio, Christopher Walker, Denise Fujiwara among others. Nominee for the Johanna Metcalf Performing Arts Prize 2023 and finalist for the Arts Prize 2021, he is a recipient of Canada Council for the Arts’ Victor Martyn Lynch – Staunton Award, an Ontario Arts Council Chalmers Fellowship, and Toronto Arts Council Cultural Leaders Fellow. Kevin is on the faculty of Centennial College’s Dance Performance Program and has been a Guest Artist in Residence at the Philip Sherlock Centre for the Creative Arts at the University of the West Indies (Mona), University of Wisconsin-Madison, Northwestern University and University of Texas -Austin. He is on the Boards of Dance Collection Danse, Toronto Alliance for the Performing Arts and has served on the Boards of Canadian Dance Assembly, Prologue to the Performing Arts and Nia Centre for the Arts where he was Chair of Canada’s first professional multi-disciplinary centre for African-Canadian art.
CinnaMoon Collective is founded by Irma Villafuerte and Nickeshia Garrick, a Central American and Afro-Caribbean contemporary dance duo that is dedicated to reclaiming and honouring ancestral stories from a decolonial perspective, with the mission to ignite collective healing and recontextualize identity through the lens of black, Indigenous and racialized femme presenting queer bodies. We are committed to forming part of the movement dedicated to magnifying the voices that have been silenced and erased. We aim to share works that reach our audiences and communities on a human level. Nickeshia and Irma have been collaborating as dance artists for over 7 years through companies such as Victoria Mata Productions, Jaberi Dance Theatre and Kaeja d’Dance, to name a few. Most recently in the play Pluto, written and directed by Shaunga Tagore. Irma and Nickeshia are mid-career dance artists and educators interested and passionate in reclaiming joys, cultural memory and reconnecting to homeland. As individual artists, they are nominated and award-winning performers with extensive training in dance, theatre, and voice work.
Irma Villafuerte is a Tkaronto based dance artist, educator, choreographer and first-generation daughter of refugees from Nahuat Territory Kuskatan, post-colonial El Salvador. Irma is the Program Director of Native Earth’s Animikiig Creators Lab and a Toronto Arts Foundation 2021 Emerging Artist Finalist. She is a co-founder of CinnaMoon Collective which premieres their first work Surrendered Spirits in 2024. She’s had the honor to be part of festivals 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, Panamania 2015, 12th Bienal de la Habana 2015, Vanguardia Dance Projects Festival, International Dance Meeting in Guantanamo, CounterPulse Performing Diaspora in San Francisco, etc. She’s been part of works by Kaha:wi Dance Theatre, Jaberi Dance Theatre, Kaeja d’Dance, Victoria Mata, Aria Evans, Alejandro Ronceria, Diana Lopez and Michael Caldwell. Since 2017, she has led a journey nurturing her choreographic development through residencies with Dance Makers, TDT’s Emerging Voices, Kaeja D’dance KAIR and Aluna Theatre; currently developing two important works Xilopango and Siwat Piedra. As a Latin American woman, her passion for social justice and human rights is the driving force for creation in Irma’s choreographic and performance work. She is a dance instructor at Casa Maiz’ Semillas Latinas program for Latin American children; in 2019, and an educator for the Toronto Film School.
Nickeshia Garrick is a settler on the stolen land of Tkarón:to (Toronto) 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. Nickeshia received her dance training at the NYIDE (New York Institution of Dance and Education), National Ballet School of Canada (Tkarón:to), Toronto Dance Theatre (Tkarón:to), and Simon Fraser University (Vancouver). Her classical vocal and theatre training was achieved at Eastwood Collegiate Institute (Kitchener). Nickeshia has had the honour of training with Sean McLeod (New York) to achieve her certification in Sean McLeod’s Reinforced Motor Function Technique®, RMF®. Her extensive dance training includes Bakari E. Lindsay, Arsenio Andrade, Rob Kitsos, Peter Bingham, and Christopher House. Nickeshia has received the privilege of performing in pieces by TDT, Tara Butler, Kaeja d’ Dance, Serge Bennathan, James Kudelka, Ballet Jorgen, the Newton Moraes Dance Theatre and Kaha:wiDance Theatre.
Nickeshia is a Dora Mavor Moore, winning and multi-nominated artist who holds a BFA in Dance from Simon Fraser University (Vancouver), and is a Co-Founder of CinnaMoon Collective who recently received two Dora nominations for their premiere work of Surrendered Spirits. Nickeshia Garrick is currently the inaugural Fellow at Dance Works, researching for their future piece, “the ties that Bind us, the ties that Bond us.”
Venue Information
Guelph Youth Dance Studios is located at:
42 Quebec Street
Guelph, Ontario
N1H 2T4
The performance will take place in Studio A on the third floor. The elevator entrance is located at the back of the building at 21 Chapel Lane. For use of the elevator, patrons are asked to notify Guelph Dance Staff – 519 780 2220. This is so we can greet you at the Chapel Lane entrance which is locked for security purposes. The main entrance (Quebec St) leads to one flight of stairs to the second floor – the studio can be accessed from the second floor by a second flight of stairs or the elevator.
This presentation is courtesy of From Words to Action: IBPOC Touring Network in Communities 2025, initiated by wind in the leaves collective.
