Join us at The Citadel: Ross Centre for Dance, for an immersive experience like no other. Enjoy nine unique performances from artists: Aisha Nicholson, Arma Dharma, Ben King, Derek Souvannavong, Kass Prus, Ranganathan Rajan, Rhythm & Sound, Stuti Mukherjee and Vishakha Ghosh, and Yui Ugai.
Programmed by curator Natasha Powell, this highly anticipated late-night dance series returns to The Citadel: Ross Centre for Dance October 16, 17, 18, 2025.
All performances begin at 10PM EDT.
THURSDAY, OCTOBER 16
Arma Dharma | Kass Prus | Stuti Mukherjee and Vishakha Ghosh
Join us for the opening of our late-night dance series! Featuring a wide range of dance styles, come explore the unique voice of each artist through the lenses of classical Indian, Ukrainian, Indonesian and contemporary dance. Tonight’s cross-cultural performances offer something for everyone!
Featuring...
About the Artist
Arma Dharma is a 34-year-old Indonesian multidisciplinary artist from Toronto. With a background in performance, singing, choreography (specializing in Indonesian traditional and contemporary dance), music composition, violin, makeup artistry, and hairstyling, Arma brings a rich cultural voice to every creative process. A graduate of the Indonesian Institute of the Arts Yogyakarta (B.A., 2018), Arma currently works as a freelance content creator for NaiNai Indonesian Food in Toronto.
About the Work
Urip is a solo dance piece meaning “live” in Javanese. It reflects the emotional journey of life, fear, doubt, sadness, and hope. Through hesitant steps and silent struggles, it speaks of resilience. Urip reminds us: wherever we are, however life feels, we always strive to keep on living.
About the Artist
Kass Prus (Кассандра Прус) was born into a home immersed in ancestral Ukrainian traditions, music, art, and resistance to imperialism. Since learning to live more openly as a queer, non-binary, autistic, and physically disabled creator, Кассандра uses contemporary performance to queer & crip Slavic folk art practices as a way of reclaiming their heritage on their own terms.
About the Work
Who gets to be honest?
(сховане життя)
(hidden life)
Where, when is it safe?
(де піти)
(where to go)
Access without urgency
(чому ти боїшся)
(why are you scared)
These bones connect me to ghosts…
(yпала, упали)
(she fell, they fell)
About the Artist
Vishakha and Stuti are both artists who specialize in traditional Indian dance. Vishakha is a Mississauga-based Odissi dancer who began her training at the age of three in India under the guidance of Guru Sharmila Biswas, completing 15 years of intensive study. After moving to Canada, she continued under Guru Enakshi Sinha at Mrudanga Academy. Stuti is an Ottawa-based dancer trained in Bharatanatyam and Kuchipudi. A diploma graduate from Kalamandalam, Kolkata, she pursued advanced Bharatanatyam training under the guidance of gurus at the Kalakshetra Foundation and currently learns Kuchipudi from Shri Kasi Aysola.
About the Work
Shrishti is a duet Odissi-Kuchipudi piece exploring gender fluidity through the union of divine masculine and feminine energies. With contrasting yet harmonious movements, it celebrates balance and the inseparable coexistence of opposites, reflecting how masculinity and femininity, like yin and yang, exist together within one unified creation.
FRIDAY, OCTOBER 17
Aisha Nicholson | Ben King | Derek Souvannavong
Night two features three unique works by Toronto-based artists and movement makers. Explore choreography that challenges the norms and pushes boundaries, in an evening not to be missed!
Featuring...
About the Artist
Aisha Nicholson is an Artist, Emerging Choreographer, Teacher and Reiki Practitioner that hails from Toronto; creator of the Movement CheckIn a program that brings artists together on Instagram live. Aisha is currently an independent artist and has worked with the Lua Shayenne Dance Company, Ronald Taylor Dance, Arsenio Andrade, COBA (Collective of Black Artists), KasheDance, Mafa Dance Village and Ballet Creole to name a few.
About the Work
Abandonment is an exploratory solo work that explores the multiple ways we as humans abandon ourselves. This work showcases the journey that one takes of self-discovery, memory and boundary setting through movement.
About the Artist
Ben is a dance artist based in Tkaronto/Toronto who has had the privilege to collaborate with established artists and presenters such as Alyssa Martin, Riley Sims, B. Solomon, Michael Caldwell, Heidi Strauss, and Toronto Dance Theatre. They are interested in the navigation of contemporary life and exploration of the human psyche, refracted through impulsive, hedonistic movement that pokes fun at classical modern dance and embraces uncanny theatricality.
About the Work
Two charming ghouls cross paths in the void between the 2nd and 3rd circles of Hell to confess unto each other their sins. Drawing equal inspiration from horror films and rom-coms, Violent delight requiem is a brief odyssey that revels in sharing sorrow, finding comfort in debauchery, and the importance of having a friend to help us through the worst of times (until the end of time).
About the Artist
Derek Souvannavong is a dance artist based in Tkaronto (Toronto). Souvannavong is a graduate of the BFA Hons. Dance Program at York University, receiving several awards for choreography and performance. He has premiered solo work this identity: woven co-created in collaboration with Peggy Baker. Souvannavong has performed in various works by Danny Grossman, Frog in Hand, Tracey Norman, and other Toronto based companies/artists.
About the Work
Woven Presence traces a journey of memory and home through the living language of Lao textiles. Threads become movement, patterns echo identity, and weaving transforms into dance—binding generations, spirit, and place in a tactile solo of remembrance, resilience, and return. In the cloth’s cradle, the body rediscovers belonging across distance, history, and generations.
SATURDAY, OCTOBER 18
Ranganathan Rajan | Rhythm & Sound | Yui Ugai
Close out our series with exciting works from a mix of inspiring choreographers. Revel in the power of heritage, persistence and rhythm – tonight’s performances are sure to get you dancing in your seats!
Featuring...
About the Artist
Ranganathan Rajan (He/Him) is originally from India and is currently based in Tkaronto. He is a performer and choreographer in contemporary dance, working innately with ideas of stress, resilience, and strength in the body through object work, movement, and mixed media. Ranganathan graduated from the Professional Training Program at Dance Arts Institute Canada (2025) and has completed a Diploma in Movement Art and Mixed Media from Attakkalari Center of Movement Arts in Bangalore, India (2021).
About the Work
Working with squats, lunges, and leans, the performer creates impact in space through a working resistance within the body and the ground, like between a master and his tool. The labour to sustain the integrity of the body in slow violent conditions of the world. Resilience, strength, degradation, and latency are expressed through alignment, posture, principle of moving in the body.
About the Artists
Rhythm & Sound is a Tkaronto (Toronto) based tap dance company founded in 2015 by Toronto-based tap dancer, Cori Giannotta, and Indigenous artist and Dora Award Nominee, Johnathan Morin. The company aims to honour and represent the traditional heritage and roots of tap dance while expanding and exploring the parameters of what tap dance can offer to modern music today.
About the Work
Sâkihitowin/Amore is a new piece of work which explores what it means to “love;” how the interconnectedness between two people can have its highs and lows but still be maintained through the depths of love. Drawing inspiration from our own personal relationship of 12 years, we will be sharing some of our story through tap dance and narrative choreography.
About the Artist
Yui Ugai is a dance artist from Hiroshima, Japan, now based in Toronto. She has collaborated with over 15 professional dance companies, touring nationally and internationally. Her talent and dedication have earned her several awards, including the Laurence Heisey Award in Fine Arts, the Ontario Graduate Scholarship, and a Dora Mavor Moore Award nomination.
About the Work
Silent Roots, Loud Dreams explores hidden heritage and unspoken stories through the interplay of light and shadow, embodying what is unseen yet deeply felt. This solo work weaves themes of memory, fragility, and transformation into a poetic journey of expression and ancestral resonance.
There’s no question that dance in Toronto is experiencing a shift. With the loss of physical spaces, and the precarity of the city’s presentation culture, it has left many dance artists questioning their creative futures, myself included.
However, it has been an honour to work with Citadel + Compagnie and Fall for Dance North to curate this year’s Night Shift program - both organizations doing important work in offering structures for dance artists to create their work, and for audiences to meet those artists where they are. We received and reviewed over 80 applications, and despite the ongoing challenges, it is clear that there continues to be an energized community of dance makers, all of whom I am extremely excited to continue following. An intimate offering of Indonesian, western contemporary, classical Indian, afro-contemporary, tapdance, and more, will grace The Citadel stage. I hope you will join us in witnessing the creativity of these artists at Night Shift 2025.
- Natasha Powell, Curator of Night Shift 2025 and FFDN Artist-in-Residence 2021-2022
