Process+Practice
DANCE Series
etobicoke, ontario
AUGUST - November 2025
Presented by City of Toronto in partnership with TOES FOR DANCE, with support from ĀNANDAṀ and Lakeshore Arts
Welcome to the Process+Practice Dance Series at Assembly Hall, offering exciting and thought-provoking dance experiences in the Lakeshore-Etobicoke area!
Featuring talented local dance artists and choreographers from across Toronto who are part of the Process+Practice Dance Residency, the Series includes Community Workshops for all levels of movement experience, Open Rehearsals showcasing works-in-process, insightful Artist Talks/Q&As, and awe-inspiring Double Bill Performances.
All events are free or pay-what-you-can with $0 ticket options.
NEXT UP:
Our Double Bill featuring works by Boys’ Club and Kiera Breaugh hits the stage at Assembly Hall on November 7-8!
OPEN CALL: RESIDENCY OPPORTUNITY
TOES FOR DANCE and the City of Toronto are seeking dance artists/projects for Cohort #4 (26/27) and Cohort #5 (27/28) of the Process+Practice Dance Residency!
The deadline to apply is Monday, October 20, 2025 at 11:59 p.m. EDT!
VENUE PARTNER
Process+Practice Dance Series events take place at Assembly Hall, located at 1 Colonel Samuel Smith Park Dr, Etobicoke, ON M8V 4B6. Click here for a Google Map.
-
Assembly Hall has been an important part of the Etobicoke Lakeshore community for over a century. It was built in 1898 as part of the Mimico Lunatic Asylum, designed to serve as a place of recreation and worship for the patients and hospital staff. Patient labour was used to construct Assembly Hall and various other hospital buildings. The hospital’s first superintendent, Dr. Nelson Henry Beemer, was a strong believer in meaningful work as a form of rehabilitative therapy.
The original purpose for Assembly Hall was to meet the social and spiritual needs of the hospital. However, because there was no comparable facility in the area, Assembly Hall soon became the principal gathering place for a multitude of community events, dances and concerts. The Asylum changed names repeatedly over the years, becoming the Mimico Hospital for the Insane in 1911, the Ontario Hospital, New Toronto in 1919 and finally renamed as the Lakeshore Psychiatric Hospital, but Assembly Hall maintained its name and central role throughout the entire history of the hospital.
After the closure of the Lakeshore Psychiatric Hospital in 1979, Assembly Hall fell into disuse for two decades. The combined efforts of local activists and politicians helped to support the City of Toronto’s restoration of this facility, which reopened on in June 2001. The renovated Assembly Hall has been designed to meet a variety of cultural and community needs. The beautiful 250+ seat Performance Hall is a venue for music, theatre, dance, receptions and special events. The community rooms are used for art classes, meetings, workshops and rehearsals. Gallery spaces for visual arts are located throughout the building. Assembly Hall is a rental facility for both public and private use.
Assembly Hall is fully accessible. An elevator is onsite for access to the second floor Performance Hall, and accessible parking is available both at the front of Assembly Hall and in the Green P Parking lot (located on the south side of Assembly Hall). An accessible washroom is also available.
Learn more at: assemblyhall.ca
About the Artists AND Projects
cohort #2 (2024-25)
Boys’ Club Tap Dance Collective
-
Boys' Club Tap Dance Collective is a dynamic trio of women tap dancers comprising Veronica Simpson (NYC), Laura Donaldson (Calgary), and Elise McGrenera (Toronto). Co-founded in May 2022 during a residency at tanzhaus nrw (Düsseldorf), the collective quickly gained recognition. In 2023, Boys’ Club returned to Europe to present a full-length work at The Claquettes Club (Belgium) and at Golem’s Theatre (Barcelona). In May 2024, Boys’ Club was featured again at The Claquettes Club and in tanzhaus nrw’s Tap Ahead Festival. Most recently, Boys’ Club performed an excerpt of their work in New York City at Dormeshia’s Ladies in the Shoe Conference. Currently, Boys’ Club is developing ‘Ostinati’ to premiere in Toronto in November 2025 through the TOES FOR DANCE Process+Practice Residency program in partnership with Assembly Hall/the City of Toronto. Throughout their work, Boys' Club has been welcomed as a company-in-residence at renowned spaces including tanzhaus nrw, Leña Artist Residency, Decidedly Jazz Danceworks, and The Claquettes Club.
Photos by Sam Gaetz, Amy Gardener and Melissa Bahrami .
-
Ostinati by Boys’ Club Tap Dance Collective is a lively and thought-provoking piece that explores the cycles we live through; personal, emotional, societal, and existential. From the passing of time to recurring doubts, this work - rooted in tap dance and jazz music - investigates how patterns shape our identity, challenge our growth, and influence how we move through the world. The dancers, Veronica Simpson, Laura Donaldson, and Elise McGrenera, each offer a personal vignette that reflects a cycle that they feel trapped within. The piece includes live original music by Alexa Belgrave (piano) and Ale Nuñez (voice). Ostinati is a celebration of community and solidarity among female-identifying artists.
-
Kiera Breaugh is a dancer/choreographer whose style lives at the intersection of contemporary and hip hop. Kiera has a BA in Dance from LMU in Los Angeles. While in LA, she was a member of LA dance companies: the Young Lions, Immabeast, Immabreathe and MashUp Contemporary Dance Company. Kiera has performed in Dance Matters, A Woman's Work, the Toronto Fringe Festival, the Orlando Fringe Festival, the Vancouver Fringe Festival and Dusk Dances, Hamilton. She has choreographed for PRESENCE, a site specific series commissioned by Peggy Baker Dance Productions, ProArteDanza in their Choreolab, and an original piece during the half-time of a Raptors Game. Kiera has completed the Hicks Choreography Fellows Program through Jacob’s Pillow and is a Process+Practice residency artist at Assembly Hall through TOES FOR DANCE and the City of Toronto. Kiera has worked with and danced for artists including Ian Eastwood, Brian Friedman, Janelle Ginestra, Kylie Thompson, Mary Ann Chavez and Monika Felice Smith. Her work often explores themes such as racial identity, female upward mobility, and other ideas that aim to empower the unheard.
Photo by Alkan Emin Photography.
-
Veiled Venom by Kiera Breaugh is a raw and poetic exploration of female rage; expressing its volatility and its misunderstood power through spoken word and contemporary movement with Hip Hop influences. Drawing from personal experience and the collective memory of Kiera and collaborator/performers Kiah Francis and Claire Whitaker, Veiled Venom embodies anger not as something to be suppressed or pathologized, but as a force of clarity, resistance, and survival. Based on themes of death and rebirth of the female spirit, Veiled Venom exposes the ways women’s anger is often policed, minimized, or feared, and reclaims it as both an intimate truth and a radical act.
KIERA BREAUGH
Cohort 3 (2025-26)
KINAJ
-
KINAJ is a cross-genre dance company founded in 2020 by Kin Nguien and AJ Velasco. Known for blending the raw energy of street styles like hip-hop, popping, and house with the elements of contemporary dance, KINAJ incorporates improvisation, freestyle, and partnering techniques to craft dynamic and innovative works. At its core, KINAJ thrives on collaboration, drawing inspiration from diverse art forms such as film, poetry, and visual arts. Their storytelling-based choreography explores pressing social issues, including mental health, inequality, and climate change, inspiring audiences to reflect and act. KINAJ’s work has been featured internationally, with highlights including their critically acclaimed ALIENS, commissioned by Toronto Dance Theatre, which captivated sold-out audiences with its sci-fi aesthetic and cross-genre brilliance. Currently, the company is preparing for the year full of productions and community engagement initiatives.
Photo by Curtis Alvaro.
-
“Our project, GAZE, is an investigation into visibility, vulnerability, and power, specifically for immigrant and newcomer artists who navigate a complex relationship with belonging in Canada. The experience of being seen—both as a celebration of identity and as a site of potential scrutiny—resonates deeply within communities whose presence is often marked by both hypervisibility and erasure. This work interrogates the ways in which gaze operates as a force of power, control, and agency, particularly in relation to the settler gaze, the white gaze, and privileged gaze in performance and everyday life. Rooted in the intersection of street dance and contemporary movement, GAZE will be developed through the Process+Practice residency, culminating in public presentations that engage diverse audiences in critical discourse around representation, agency, and identity in performance.”
-
Mid-career dance artist, educator and choreographer, Atri Nundy completed her arangetram (graduation) in 2005 after years of continuing her passion for dance molded through learning Bharatanatyam at Sampradaya Dance Academy under the tutelage of Lata Pada CM (Order of Canada). An advocate for sharing knowledge, Atri continues to work as a teacher at Sampradaya Dance Academy. She has toured extensively in India, Indonesia, UK and USA and has performed in various prestigious venues across Canada. She continues to hone her craft through professional development in various forms, workshops etc. with acclaimed artists Harikrishna Kalyanasundaram, Priyadarshini Govind, Leela Samson, Mavin Khoo among others. In November 2023, Atri took part in Seeta Patel’s rehearsal process of her work Rite of Spring in London, UK with the Seeta Patel Dance Company. Technically diverse in her training, Atri professional practice includes work in a variety of contemporary practices. She has performed with many companies in Toronto including KasheDance and Ronald Taylor Dance. Commissioned by Anandam, she created her first ensemble work, Mindful Chatter, for Contemporaneity 4.0. Her work helix was commissioned by Toronto Dance Theatre in 2023 for Convergent Divergency.
Photo by Michael Mortley.
-
Unrequited, is inspired by The Palace of Illusions by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni. The novel explores the forbidden love between Draupadi and Karna, characters from the Mahabharata who are often depicted as adversaries. Atri is crafting a piece that delves into Draupadi’s internal conflict between her love for Karna and her duties as a queen and wife to his rivals; excavating elements of a story that are often overlooked. Atri will develop this narrative through the full spectrum of Bharatanatyam, diving deeper into abhinaya (expressional technique) while also utilizing the form’s rich technical elements to bring the story to life in a nuanced and compelling way.
Atri Nundy
Our 24-25 and 25-26 Artists were selected through a competitive Open Call process.
Click here to learn about our 2025 Open Call for Process+Practice!
Community consultation
In 2024, we launched a community consultation program aimed at shaping the future of Dance at Assembly Hall. Our inaugural Community Consultation Cohort included twelve community members who have a connection to the Etobicoke Lakeshore area.
Led by Keira Marie Forde, TFD's Outreach and Volunteer Coordinator, the Community Consultation Cohort will contribute to an ongoing dialogue around topics such as barriers, types of programming, scheduling of programming, ways to align programming with community interests, ideas for resourcing the sustainability of the programming and more. Each member of the community cohort will receive an honorarium for their involvement.
If you're interested in participating in this year’s Community Consultation Cohort, please email us.
This community consultation is funded by the Canada Council for the Arts.
CREATIVE COWORKING
Based on feedback from our ongoing community consultation process, we're piloting Creative CoWorking this summer! Through this initiative, artists can access the Performance Hall at Assembly Hall for non-profit creative purposes at no-cost.
Need rehearsal space for an upcoming gig? Working on a choreographic project? Tired of preparing to teach dance classes in your kitchen? Want space to practice, just for the sake of practicing your art? We got you covered! Come practice, create, work and/or rehearse!
-
The space is provided to artists at no-cost during the designated dates and times.
Non-profit activities only. For instance, the space cannot be used to teach a class with paid participants, or film a commercial for a big corporation.
A maximum of three artists/groups can use each timeslot, with no more than 10 people in the space at any time.
Timeslots are offered on a first-come-first-serve basis.
Each artist/group can sign up for a maximum of three timeslots.
TFD’s Community Arts Coordinator, Keira Marie Forde will be present in the space to provide logistical and artistic support during each timeslot.
All participants will need to sign our Participant Agreement when they arrive.
Artists working solo are encouraged to use any music on headphones.
Activities that require sound (i.e. using instruments, recorded music for groups, or spoken word) will need to be arranged with the other participants who are sharing the space, depending on everyone's needs.
Activities must abide by the rules for use of the facility: not permitted – smoking and the consumption of alcoholic beverages, illegal drugs, loud noise or disturbances, alterations or repairs to the space, use of unauthorized materials, substances or equipment, including glitter, sparkles, confetti, open flame/candles, weaponry and/or pyrotechnics.
-
Monday, August 11
1:00-3:00
3:00-5:00
Thursday, August 14
1:00-3:00
3:00-5:00
Friday, August 15
3:00-5:00
5:00-7:00
Monday, August 18
1:00-3:00
3:00-5:00
Wednesday, August 20
2:00-5:00
Note: A maximum of three artists/groups can use each timeslot, with no more than 10 people in the space at any time.
-
Assembly Hall, 1 Colonel Samuel Smith Park Dr, Etobicoke. Learn more here!
Space is offered on a first-come-first serve basis! Please read the conditions/rules above and then use this Google Sheet to sign up! If you have any questions, please email us.
