Derek Souvannavong. Design by Driftnote.
Accessibility Info: Unfortunately the Winchester Street Theatre is not currently wheelchair accessible. Full accessibility details: https://tdt.org/your-visit/accessibility/
TDT is happy to continue the partnership with CanAsian Dance for the 2025/26 season. EntryWaves is a residency program at the Winchester Street Theatre open to any artist who identifies as being from the Asian Diaspora and who could benefit from free rehearsal space and time to work on their project or develop their practice.
We encourage artists, from emerging to established, who practice traditional forms and lineages, contemporary and experimental approaches, street dance forms and everything in between to apply!
For this year’s EntryWaves, we will be creating a micro-environment throughout the building as a place for creative and supportive exchange between resident artists during the week of December 15th. Up to 6 artists will be offered week-long, half-day residencies in the studio. We will have a central meeting space for gathering and sharing. We encourage participants to meet one another in the central space, rest and reset with one another. There will be a mid-week snack and chat, connecting, conversing and sharing of practice and what you are working on. Artistic offerings and open studio sharings will be possible but not obligatory, with facilitation from ADs, Angie Cheng and Andrew Tay.
CanAsian and TDT are dedicated to bringing together Dance and community through creative and easy to participate programs that hold value in supporting critical artistic conversations and exploratory stages of new works. This is the first of many other partnerships to come as we build our relationship and strengthen solidarity to be able to offer more creative exchanges, knowledge-sharing representation and connection for the Asian Diaspora dance community and the greater dance community at large.
CanAsian centers the Asian Diaspora dance community. Asian Diaspora includes and encompasses the whole continent of Asia such as South, East, South East, West, Central Asian Countries as well as the surrounding Pacific Islands.
Applications will be evaluated by a selection committee including CanAsian’s Artistic Lead Angie Cheng and TDT’s Artistic Director Andrew Tay, based on the artistic interests of the project and the desire to include a range of perspectives and aesthetics in the overall programming, as well as the potential impact on the artist’s work, and feasibility of their artistic goals.
Selected artists will receive a $1367 honorarium for their participation.
Please be advised that the Winchester Street Theatre is unfortunately not barrier-free. You can visit TDT’s accessibility webpage for further details.
Inquiries about Eyes on Beginnings or the application process? Please contact katrina@tdt.org.
CanAsian Dance’s core values center around inclusivity, diversity, and community empowerment. Its mission is to foster a vibrant and inclusive dance community that celebrates Asian Diaspora community while supporting BIPOC, LGBTQ2S+, and mixed-ability artists. The vision is to be a leading platform for innovative dance creation and collaboration that promotes understanding and appreciation of diverse aesthetics and communities.
What sets CanAsian Dance apart from other organizations is its commitment to intersectionality and grassroots engagement. By prioritizing underrepresented voices and fostering dialogue among diverse art practices, CanAsian creates a space where artists of all backgrounds can thrive and collaborate. This emphasis on inclusivity and community-driven initiatives distinguishes CanAsian as a progressive and forward-thinking dance organization.
Photo by Curtis Alvaro
Chadley Tan is a Filipino-Chinese software developer, community organizer, performer, educator, DJ, and artist specializing in House Dance and Filipino Folk Dance. His professional journey began in 2018 under the mentorship of Matthieu “Knoxander” Walker and Raoul Wilke. Since then, he has performed, taught, and competed across Canada and internationally, including in the U.S., Netherlands, Philippines, and Portugal. Chadley is a member of House of Sole, a Toronto-based collective dedicated to house dance culture, and dances with Folkloric Filipino Canada. Through his artistry, he explores his Filipino heritage and identity by bridging folk traditions with the spirit and community of house dance culture.
Warren Kang is a Toronto-based multidisciplinary artist. Graduating from McMaster University with a degree in Theatre & Film Studies and Economics, his practice encompasses the fields of acting, movement/performance art, photography, and video. His work is inspired by experimental art as well as Asian and queer identities. Having worked with multiple theatre companies across the city, he was a finalist for Nightswimming Theatre’s “5X25” commission project. His short film, “Michael”, has also screened in the Toronto Reel Asian International Film Festival under their Unsung Voices workshop program. He has also developed “waves (in process)”, a dance film through his residency with Capsul Studio. Throughout his work, he is keen in highlighting and collaborating with marginalized voices to further diversify representation in the arts industry.
Photo by Danielle Lastres
SIXTH SENSE COLLECTIVE is an inter-arts group made up of Charlotte Carbone (they/she) and Cassandra Myers (they/she/he). Charlotte Carbone is a low-vision, queer, Asian adoptee who transitioned from classical ballet to street dance after a childhood injury. Street dance has allowed Charlotte to experience art and community alongside their low-vision and chronic pain such as the QTBIPOC communities of Toronto Waacking and the Toronto Kiki Ballroom Alliance. Cassandra Myers is a South-Asian-Italian, queer, trans, low-vision, crippled, mad, neurodivergent person whose adult dance training came to a halt due to chronic pain and diverted their practice towards spoken word. Their practice now embraces hybrid disabled dance, integrating somatic techniques learned under modern dance pioneer Yuji Oka to create poetry-dance projects alongside previous training with waacking legend Diana Reyes, the Footnotes Dance Crew, and the BGirl Movement.
Photo by TIFFANY MANANKIL
Aryana Malekzadeh is an Iranian Canadian performing dance artist, choreographer, and dance educator based in Toronto. She is a graduate of Dance Arts Institute and holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts with Honours from York University where she was awarded merit scholarships. Throughout her professional career Aryana has worked for renowned choreographers such as Hanna Kiel, Roshanak Jaberi and Syreeta Hector amongst others and has performed as a company member with Little Pear Garden Dance Company. Most recently, Malekzadeh toured across Canada with Shannon Litzenberger Contemporary Dance. Alongside performing, Aryana is a contract faculty member at York University, where she pursues her passion of teaching movement.
In her own practice, Aryana’s work explores themes of identity and cultural inheritance. As an artist of the Iranian diaspora, she is interested in investigating the layered experiences of migration and dual identity, and what it means to exist between cultures.
Photo by Aidan Tooth Photography
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). Ranganathan believes in socially engaged acts involving people as the medium and focuses on participation and collaboration.
Photo by Yianni Tong
Neena Jayarajan is an independent dance theatre artist whose work bridges tradition and contemporary exploration. Trained extensively in Bharatanatyam and Odissi under Dr. Menaka Thakkar and Sujatha Mohapatra, she brings over two decades of performance, teaching, and choreographic experience.
She served as Assistant Artistic Director of the Menaka Thakkar Dance Company for seven years and taught at Nrtyakala for over twenty. Since 2012, she has been an Associate Artist with Nova Dance, contributing to various company initiatives. She has originated roles in productions including Broken Lines, Jatiswaram Remix, and Svāhā! She completed her MA in Dance at York University and made her theatrical debut in Theatre Smith-Gilmour’s Metamorphosis.
Neena serves on the boards of CADA West and The Dance Current magazine. Her current choreographic practice explores intersections of classical South Asian dance vocabularies with contemporary sensibilities.
Megh Chatterjee (She/They) is an independent multidisciplinary creator and researcher with over 10+ years of artistic practice. She trained from the age of 3 formally with Bharatanatyam, an Indian classical dance form originated from Tamil Nadu. From her teen years, she found deep expression in the artforms stemming from Hip Hop or Afro-Indo diasporic culture primarily in Breaking, DJing and Dancehall. She started teaching and performing from the age of 14 to fuel her love for dance training. After her Bachelor’s of Engineering, she led a dual life as a technical professional and faculty at The Wooden Stage, Mumbai where she was a full time Aerial and Dance instructor, coach and performer. Her credits include live performances, television and theatre. She has shared the stage with artists like HardKaur, Ash Roy, Salman Khan, Shraddha Kapoor, Sunny Leone and Aparshakti Khurana in India. In Toronto, Megha has completed an internship with The Dance Current Magazine and published a BTS article for Cirque Du Soleil’s production “Volta”.
Photo by Alvin Collantes Photography
Jose Miguel ‘Miggy’ Esteban is a dance/movement artist and educator based in Tkaronto/Toronto. Miggy’s artistic work develops improvisational practices of navigating mad and queer routes to embody Filipinx remembering and belonging through gestures of (un)rest. Currently a PhD candidate at the Department of Social Justice Education, OISE/University of Toronto, Miggy’s research and teaching is oriented through disability studies, black studies, and dance/performance studies. Influenced by disability arts and culture, black radical traditions, indigenous storytelling, and queer performance, Miggy’s dissertation project engages embodied practices of improvisation to interpret curriculum as a choreographic site for reencountering the narratives that structure the teaching and learning of/through dance. Miggy’s work has been published in Canadian Theatre Review, Choreographic Practices, Disability Studies Quarterly, Feral Feminisms, Journal for Literary and Cultural Disability Studies, Liminalities: A Journal of Performance Studies, Theatre Journal, TOPIA: Canadian Journal of Cultural Studies, and in various edited volumes.
Image Description: A side profile of Miggy, who crouches amidst bushes and white flowers that recede blurrily into the background. Miggy’s fingers gently crawl up from a long-sleeved maroon shirt, over chin and lips, and toward a small ocean of black, wavy hair. The brown skin of Miggy’s cheek is caressed by the palm of a hand, supporting closed eyes that look down in contemplation.
Film still by Henry Mak
Photo by Drew Barry
Rumi Jeraj is an Ismailli muslim hailing from Sherwood Park Alberta (the world’s largest hamlet). A Graduate of Toronto Metropolitan University Rumi has worked for dance artists including Hanna Kiel, Daryl Tracy, Maxine Hepner, Heidi Strauss, and Eilish Shin-Culhane. Outside of contemporary dance, Rumi has a practice as a Tap Dancer often collaborating with local Jazz musicians. He aspires to create and be a part of work which mixes forms in order to better tell stories. He believes there is a perfect balance between words, music, and movement which can communicate intellectually, emotionally and viscerally all at once. He aspires to find this state on stage.
Photo by Kendra Epik
Devanshi Mishra (she/her) is a multifaceted artist, educator, and arts administrator dedicated to promoting collaboration and diversity in the arts. Trained in Indian classical Kathak and Contemporary dance, she founded Oorja Danceworks, a dance school and company in Chandigarh, India in 2016. Devanshi holds a Post-Graduate Diploma in Business Administration from York University, a BA in Dance from the University of Iowa, USA and a Certificate in Entrepreneurship for Performing Arts.
Her accolades include a National Scholarship for Dance from the Government of India, the Governor’s Award for Outstanding Contribution in Dance (India), and an Arts Residency from the City of Kingston, Ontario. Devanshi also served on the Arts Advisory Committee for the City of Kingston, contributing her expertise to local arts policy. An entrepreneur at heart, Devanshi teaches Kathak and Bollywood dance in the Greater Toronto Area, choreographs commercial projects and performs nationally and internationally.
Photo by Kylie Thompson
Dora award-nominated artist, Derek Souvannavong is a dance artist based in Tkaronto (Toronto). Souvannavong is a graduate of the Bachelor of Fine Arts Honours Dance Program at York University, where his achievements in choreography and performance were recognized with the Spedding Memorial Scholarship and the Menaka Thakkar Award in World Dance. He has recently premiered solo work “this identity: woven” at Dance:Made in Canada/Fait au Canada, co-created in collaboration with Peggy Baker. Souvannavong has performed in various works by Ballet Creole, Frog in Hand, Rumi Jeraj as well as worked with artists Danny Grossman, Eddie Kastrau, Laurence Lemieux, Tracey Norman, Emily Cheung, Yui Ugai and Newton Moraes. Of Lao heritage, Souvannavong is intrigued by traditional Lao dance forms and wishes to continue exploring relations between Lao dance forms and the western diaspora of contemporary dance, weaving together his Lao heritage into his work.