Showtimes & Tickets
Oct 15 at 7:30PM | Oct 16 at 7:30PM* | Oct 17 at 7:30PM | Oct 18 at 2:00PM
Single Tickets: $25 (including tax, plus applicable fees)
Ticket Package: $65 (including tax, plus applicable fees)
Package includes all three Signature Programmes at the Bluma Appel Theatre. Limited packages available - buy now!
Running Time 90 minutes, including one 15 minute intermission
(* Oct 16 Showtime includes pre-show Artist Talk from 6:30-7PM)
Program
Curated by our 2025 Artist-in-Residence Esie Mensah and Fall for Dance North, AFROFUSION: Signature Programme 1 opens the 2025 festival! It features the world premiere of Esie Mensah’s new large scale commission, ESHI, alongside two works by extraordinary international artists who inspire her, Dickson Mbi (Cameroon/UK) and Sekou McMiller (USA).
A personal portrait of a man, a transformational journey through grief, and a rousing coming together of Latin cultures, AFROFUSION will leave you energized by what emerges when ancestral and contemporary dance forms are in motion with one another.
Duende by Dickson Mbi
Canadian Debut
“We are all visitors in the object world, stepping in and out of the light of reality. All of us are too often prey to the habit of concealing our souls and their living history.” - Dickson Mbi
This solo work is an invitation to connect with another human being - to see the live spirit of the artist as he steps into a zone of self-disclosure. The ritual of dance becomes the emotive fairytale journey of one man through his time in the light.
Dickson Mbi is the 2023 Olivier Award winner for Outstanding Achievement in Dance and is known as one of the top street dancers in the UK. Born in Cameroon and brought up in East London, Dickson’s hybrid cultural experience infuses his unique style, one rooted in the street dance form of popping and complemented by his organic and formal study of contemporary dance. He trained at Lewisham College and London Contemporary Dance School where he received an MA in choreography. Dickson embraces the cultures of others to reflect the uniqueness of each human experience.
ESHI by Esie Mensah Creations
World Premiere
Presented by Fall for Dance North in association with Canada’s National Ballet School
Performed by the dancers of Esie Mensah Creations and the Company Life Program students at Canada’s National Ballet School, ESHI (from the Ewe language, meaning “water”) is a new dance work that navigates the quiet violence and unexpected grace of grief.
Developed through Esie Mensah’s signature Afrofusion movement language, the piece flows like water between rupture and release, tension and surrender. Grief is portrayed as a force that arrives in waves—sometimes small and navigable, other times overwhelming—stealing breath and destabilizing ground.
At its core, ESHI is a meditation on surrender and resilience. It asks what it means to be guided by something beyond our control, and how healing can emerge even when we are unsure of the path. The body becomes a vessel, water becomes a guide, and grief becomes a choreography of survival, memory, and release.
Esie Mensah is FFDN Artist-in-Residence 2025. An award-winning choreographer, director, dancer, movement director, educator, and TEDx speaker, she is a powerful voice that is shaping the future of performance across dance, theatre, opera, and film/TV. A Dora-nominated artist, Esie has worked with global superstars like Rihanna, Nelly Furtado, Kenny Ortega, Canada’s Got Talent, AGO, and the Toronto Raptors. Her work has toured internationally to the U.S., U.K., Ghana, Nigeria, France, and more. She has created works for Soulpepper, Obsidian Theatre, and Shaw Festival, in addition to directing Serving Elizabeth at the Theatre Aquarius. This season, she makes her Stratford Festival debut with Ransacking Troy directed by Jackie Maxwell in August 2025 and is the choreographer for the Scott Joplin opera, Treemonisha: A Musical Reimagining, which premiered at the Harris Theatre in Chicago in May 2025. Esie is the Afrodiasporic Movement Program Lead & Afrofusion teacher with NBS.
Afro Latin Soul by Sekou McMiller and Friends
Canadian Debut
Afro Latin Soul is a cultural reunion of once interconnected communities. From Cuba to New York, it celebrates the past, present and future intersections of communities that share a very rich ancestry from the African continent, with artists who radiate creativity, virtuosity, and love.
Inspired by the golden age of mambo at the Palladium nightclub in New York City during the 1940s, ‘50s and ’60s, Afro Latin Soul is a vibrant fusion of Caribbean dance and music culture. It puts the Jazz and African roots of Salsa dance and music on display and explores the connection between the black and brown communities through ritual, sound and movement.
Sekou McMiller is a world renowned choreographer and director at the forefront of a new movement in the Afro-Latin dance and music world. His explosive energy has earned Sekou broad recognition world-wide, such as in the Warner Bros theatrical feature "In the Heights" (2021) and in the documentary, "Uprooted: the Journey of Jazz Dance.”
Sekou has performed and choreographed for top latin artists Gilberto Santa Rosa, Willie Colon, Cheo Feliciano, Johnny Pacheco, Tito Rojas, Tito Nieves, PitBull, and the pop icon Madonna. A recipient of fellowships with The Alvin Ailey Foundation’s New Directions Choreography Lab and Jacob’s Pillow Lab, Sekou’s choreographic works have been featured throughout North America and abroad in over 30 countries.
Currently, Sekou is a Professor of dance at NYU: Tisch School of the Arts, The Ailey School and Marymount Manhattan College.