Process+Practice
DANCE Series
etobicoke, ontario
AUGUST 2026 - January 2027
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.
OPEN CALL 2025: NOW CLOSED
TOES FOR DANCE and the City of Toronto release an Open Call seeking dance artists to participate in the Process+Practice Dance Residency every two years.
The 2025 call is now closed. The next call will likely take place in 2027. Stay tuned!
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 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 25-26 Artists were selected through a competitive Open Call process.
Click here to learn about our 2025 Open Call for Process+Practice!
Learnings + Community consultation
After three years of exploring the development of dance programming at Assembly Hall (such as the Process+Practice Dance Residency and Series), we’re excited to share some of our learnings! Thank you to the Canada Council for the Arts for funding our project/partnership development project and Community Consultation initiative with a Seed Grant.
-
In 2022, TOES FOR DANCE Co-Director David Norsworthy-Shibatani participated in the City of Toronto's Community Cultural Development Review, a consultation to better understand how local artists and community organizations are impacted by municipal arts and culture initiatives and to identify gaps in City policies and programming. David articulated several sector issues that echoed sentiments expressed by other artists:
the precarious reality of living as a dance artist in Toronto
the disappearance of suitable dance venues since the onset of COVID-19
the cost barriers (including insurance) that limit most dancers’ access to municipally-owned/operated arts and culture spaces.
City of Toronto staff, including Vanessa Higgs and Suzy Broderick, followed up on David’s participation in the consultation, and through a series of conversations we arrived at the potential to work together on programming at Assembly Hall, a City-owned and operated venue in Etobicoke-Lakeshore. To initiate our partnership, we decided to pilot a residency program that we titled Process+Practice in the summer 2023; a significant and unprecedented accomplishment, being the City of Toronto’s first-ever dance residency program. The inaugural residency artists were Rakeem Hardy (Western Contemporary) and Tanveer Alam (Kathak).
The success of our pilot project led to further conversations about the development of additional dance programming at Assembly Hall as a collaboration between TOES FOR DANCE and the City of Toronto. In 2024, we received a Seed Grant from the Canada Council for the Arts to explore activating Assembly Hall as a "dance hub" for practice, rehearsal, and public engagement activities; with funds going towards partnership development, community engagement/consultation, and the evaluation of new initiatives.
Between mid-2024 and late-2025, we continued to develop the Process+Practice Dance Residency with artists selected through two Open Calls. These artists included Boys’ Club Tap Dance Collective (Tap), Kiera Breaugh (Hip Hop, Spoken Word, Western Contemporary), Atri Nundy (Bharatanatyam) and KINAJ (Hip-Hop, Popping, House). Additionally, we began to test public engagement programming such as beginner-level dance classes, works-in-process showings, artist talks, and double bill performance programs. These events became known as the Process+Practice Dance Series and have been supported by Lakeshore Arts, ANANDAM Dance Theatre, Department of Canadian Heritage, and Toronto Arts Council. Simultaneously, we launched a Community Consultation and Working Group initiative led by TFD team member Keira Marie Forde. Our goal was to deepen community relationships and gather feedback about local needs/realities to better inform the development of our programming. This consultation resulted in a greater focus on accessibility, new partnerships with organizations and businesses, different approaches to marketing/outreach, and our Creative CoWorking program.
This report outlines some of our key learnings from these activities.
TOES FOR DANCE and the Assembly Hall team extends our sincere appreciation to the following organizations, funders, and individuals who have contributed to the development and experimentation of dance programming at Assembly Hall:
Partners: Lakeshore Arts, and ĀNANDAṀ
Funders: Lindy Green & Sam Chaiton, Government of Canada, Canada Council for the Arts, Toronto Arts Council
Artist Consultants: Rakeem Hardy, Tanveer Alam, Boys’ Club Tap Dance Collective, Kiera Breaugh, Atri Nundy, KINAJ, Harikishan S. Nair, Brandy Leary, Clarke Blair, Miquelon Rodriguez, Nathan Sartore, Kate Nankervis
Community Consultants: Nadia Monroe, Kwameah Anoush Bennett, Haley Peterson, Priscila Paes, Collette Murray, Mary Grace Franchino, Bri Ford, Adriana Berrio, Kate Nankervis, Jenny Cork, Brittany Camilleri, Kerry Gage, Lisa Karen Cox, Stephon Smith, Aziza Mohammed
Partners/Supporters: Birds & Beans Café, Amber Morley’s Fall Fest, Lakeshore Village BIA, Mimico by the Lake BIA, Queens Pasta, Pivot Dancer Physiotherapy, Mimico Home Hardware, Hypitch Media, National Ballet of Canada
