Featuring Justin Peck, Carmen Romero and Robert Binet & Devon Healey
October 22 at 7:30PM October 23 at 7:30PM October 24 at 2:00PM
Bluma Appel Theatre
*Please note that on October 23 there will be a pre-show artist talk in the lobby of the theatre.
Running Time: 90 minutes
Co-presented with
Justin Peck
Partita
Canadian Premiere
Performed by a group of Toronto’s most exciting emerging artists: recent graduates of Toronto Metropolitan University’s dance program and dancers from Canada’s National Ballet School.
A sneaker ballet from Broadway and New York City Ballet choreographer Justin Peck, Partita is a folk dance for our times. Celebrating moments of intersection despite life’s angularities, the eight dancers oscillate between solo and unison movements, embodying the a cappella voices of Caroline Shaw’s Pulitzer Prize-winning composition.
-
Credits:
Choreographed by: Justin Peck Originally commissioned by the New York City Ballet Staged by: Charlie Hodges Music: Partita for 8 Voices by Caroline Shaw Rehearsal Direction: Keith Morino, Rebekah Rimsay and Tanya Evidente Original Costumes design by: Reid Bartelme and Harriet Jung Original Lighting design by: Brandon Stirling Baker World Premiere: January 27, 2022, New York City Ballet, David H. Koch Theater Performed by amixed cast of dancers from Canada’s National Ballet School and recent graduates from the Dance Program at the Creative School, Toronto Metropolitan University. Presented by Fall for Dance North in partnership with Canada’s National Ballet School and the Creative School, Toronto Metropolitan University.
Dancers: Aerin Cho, Liyah Simbulan, Alexis Goossens, Bennett Richardson, Richmond Lee, LJ Gildon, Ocean Smid, Oswin Jun Hang Tan
Justin Peck is a three-time Tony Award winning director, choreographer, filmmaker, and dancer based in New York City. He is the Resident Choreographer of the New York City Ballet, and only the second person in the institution’s 75-year history to hold this title. He has developed and created over 50 stage and theater works that have been presented on stages around the world, including Lincoln Center, the Palais Garnier, Sydney Opera House, Brooklyn Academy of Music, and Broadway: (with Buena Vista Social Club, Illinoise, and Carousel). He choreographed the 2021 film West Side Story in collaboration with director Steven Spielberg.
His creations for the dance world have been performed by companies all over the world, including the Paris Opera Ballet, Australian Ballet, Dresden Semperoper Ballet, Hong Kong Ballet, Boston Ballet, Juilliard, The National Ballet of Canada, Miami City Ballet, Pacific Northwest Ballet, LA Dance Project, Dutch National Ballet, the School of American Ballet, Joffrey Ballet, and Houston Ballet among many others.
Carmen Romero
Divine Retribution
From Judgment to Liberation in Bach’s Cathedral of Fire
In Divine Retribution, Carmen Romero enters Johann Sebastian Bach’s monumental Toccata and Fugue in D minor as though crossing the threshold of a vast cathedral of sound—a world where destiny, judgment, and spiritual reckoning collide.
Through the visceral language of flamenco—castanets, rhythmic footwork, breath, stillness, and defiant gesture—Romero navigates the tension between submission and resistance, tradition and transformation. Her castanets become a second voice, engaging Bach’s intricate counterpoint in a dialogue that is at once fierce, intimate, and relentless.
Accompanied live on piano by Frederick Huang of Toronto’s Royal Conservatory of Music, Romero confronts the imposing architecture of Bach’s composition, allowing the flamenco body to challenge, inhabit, and ultimately transcend its boundaries.
What begins as a confrontation with darkness evolves into a journey of awakening. Judgment gives way to self-discovery; resistance becomes liberation.
A work of duende, discipline, and spiritual rebellion, Divine Retribution brings together the emotional intensity of flamenco and the grandeur of Bach, transforming the cathedral of sound into a place of profound personal revelation.
-
Credits:
Concept & Choreography: Carmen Romero Piano: Frederick Huang, The Royal Conservatory of Music, Toronto Artistic Outside Eye & Dramaturgical Support: Sonia Rodriguez, Former Principal Dancer, The National Ballet of Canada Costume Design & Construction: Rita Benz Lighting Design: Simon Rossiter Music: Johann Sebastian Bach,Toccata and Fugue in D minor, BWV 565
Dancer: Carmen Romero
For much of my life, I have existed between cultures, languages, and identities.
Born in Germany to a German mother and a Spanish father, and raised in Canada, I have spent my life navigating the space between these seemingly different worlds. Each has shaped me, yet none has ever entirely defined me.
Canada, a country that celebrates cultural diversity, has offered me the freedom to explore these identities and discover that belonging is not necessarily rooted in a single nationality, language, or place.
With Divine Retribution, I find myself confronting this dual heritage through my artistic practice in a way I have never done before. Bach represents a connection to my German roots, while flamenco carries the emotional and cultural inheritance of my Spanish ancestry. Their meeting is not simply a musical or choreographic dialogue; it is a deeply personal reckoning.
Within the tension between Bach’s formal architecture and flamenco’s visceral expression, I recognize something of my own journey—a lifetime of negotiating identity, seeking freedom, and embracing the contradictions that make us who we are.
Perhaps liberation comes not from choosing between the worlds we inherit, but from discovering how they can coexist within us.
Ultimately, this work is about finding home—not only in the land where we live, but within ourselves, within the soul.
— Carmen Romero
Carmen Romero is one of Canada’s most distinctive flamenco artists—an award-winning choreographer, performer, curator, educator, and cultural innovator whose work expands flamenco far beyond convention. Based in Toronto, she has spent more than three decades building a powerful artistic voice rooted in Spanish tradition while pushing the form into contemporary performance, theatrical staging, live music collaboration, and cross-cultural dialogue.
Through Compañía Carmen Romero, she creates work that few artists in Canada are attempting: flamenco as a living, evolving theatrical force where percussive footwork, castanets, song, rhythm, gesture, and dramatic imagery become a complete world on stage. Nominated for a Dora Mavor Moore Award for Outstanding Choreography and recipient of the Muriel Sherrin Award for International Achievement in Dance, Romero has coached and choreographed for an extraordinary range of artists, including Shakira, The National Ballet of Canada, actors, competitive dancers, and vocal artists seeking the power, precision, and presence of flamenco.
Robert Binet and Devon Healey
Newborn Giants
North American Premiere
Newborn Giants casts the dancers as superheroes of sensitivity. There is a tension between what is seen and what is heard that invites your imagination to colour outside the lines.This ballet is developed by choreographer Robert Binet in collaboration with blind theatre artist and disability scholar Dr. Devon Healey, FFDN Scholar-in-Residence 2025-2027.
Healey believes that blindness and dance uniquely connect us to the body, a compelling encouragement to move beyond visual assumptions and experience the world more deeply through feeling and awareness. In Newborn Giants, her philosophy, articulated as Immersive Descriptive Audio (IDA), is woven through the Max Richter score in Healey’s own voice. IDA poetically blends the physical experience of the dancers, the choreographic intent of the work, and the lived experience of blindness, It creates a parallel sensory pathway that deepens, rather than explains, the performance.
Newborn Giants was originally commissioned by the Queensland Ballet. Nine Queensland Ballet dancers who originated their roles are travelling to Toronto to perform with dancers from the Royal Winnipeg Ballet, recently retired First Soloist with the National Ballet of Canada, Jenna Savella, and Lead Principal Dancer at English National Ballet in the UK, Emma Hawes.
-
Credits:
Choreography: Robert Binet Immersive Descriptive Audio: Devon Healey Music: Chorale, Hypocognition and Little Requiems by Max Richter By arrangement with B&H Music Publishing Inc., o/b/o Decca Publishing, publisher and copyright owner. Courtesy of Decca (UMO) under license from Universal Music Canada Inc. Sound Design: Wil Hughes Lighting Design: Ben Hughes Costume Design: Robert Binet in collaboration with Queensland Ballet's wardrobe department
Dancers: Luca Armstrong, Vito Bernasconi, Shaun Curtis, Ruby Day, Joseph Dufty, Emma Hawes, Libby-Rose Niederer, Joshua Ostermann, Jenna Savella, Georgia Swan, Rian Thompson, Taisi Tollasepp & Neneka Yoshida
*Dancers from Queensland Ballet appear with permission from Queensland Ballet. Thank you to Queensland Ballet, Royal Winnipeg Ballet, English National Ballet, Canada's National Ballet School and James Barton.
Robert Binet is Artistic Director & Co-CEO of Fall for Dance North, as well as a choreographer who has created works for The National Ballet of Canada, The Royal Ballet, The New York City Ballet and more. Binet trained at Canada’s National Ballet School and spent 11 years with The National Ballet of Canada, beginning as Choreographic Associate and later appointed Director of Artist Development Programmes. He established the NBoC Creative Action program which offers choreographic development opportunities to Canadian choreographers and shares resources with the local dance community. In 2023, Binet was the Choreographic Mentor at the Venice Biennale College Danza and guest curator for the Dance: Made in Canada festival. In the same year, Binet received the Sandra Faire Next Generation Award from Dance Collection Danse, awarded to an individual under 40 who is making a significant impact on dance in Canada.
Dr. Devon Healey is an Assistant Professor of Disability Studies at OISE, University of Toronto. All of her work is grounded in her experience as a blind woman guided by a desire to show how blindness, specifically, and disability more broadly, can be understood as offering an alternate form of perception and is thus, a valuable and creative way of experiencing and knowing the world. She is the author of Dramatizing Blindness: Disability Studies as Critical Creative Narrative (Palgrave Macmillan). Devon is an award-winning actor and the co-founder of Peripheral Theatre. Her first play, Rainbow on Mars (Outside the March/The National Ballet of Canada/Peripheral Theatre) premiered August 2025 in Toronto. Her work exploring blind perception has been featured by The Royal Ballet (UK), the Queensland Ballet (Australia), Vienna State Opera (Austria), and The National Ballet of Canada.
Fall for Dance North Festival Production Credits
Director of Design: Simon Rossiter Director of Production: Barney Bayliss Production Manager: Kathy Le Stage Manager: Janelle Rainville Assistant Stage Manager: Lani Martel Assistant Lighting Designers: Sruthi Suresan, Mathilda Kane
Bluma Appel Theatre: Senior Producer: Ariana Shaw Production Manager: Armand Baksh-Zarate Head Electrician: Giulia D’Amanzo Head Carpenter: Jay Blencowe Head of Audio: Calum Ankelsaria Head of Props: Roxann Pinnock Head of Wardrobe: Susan Batchelor
Berczy Park Crew: Elijah MacLeod Garrett Ratcliff
Special thanks to our partners at TO Live: Clyde Wagner, President & CEO Ariana Shaw, Senior Programming Manager & Producer Jeff Rohrer, Vice President of Marketing & Communications Tom Kerr, Director of Ticketing Services Kristopher Dell, Vice President of Operations and the entire TO Live Staff and Board
Fall for Dance North Team
Year-round Team
Lily Sutherland - Festival Director & Co-CEO
Robert Binet - Artistic Director & Co-CEO
Aviva Fleising General Manager
Melissa Forstner - Director of Advancement and Communications
Felicia Myronyk Manager of Advancement
Melina Osorio - Finance and Administrative Officer
Simon Rossiter - Director of Design
Barney Bayliss - Director of Production
Markéta Tokova - Senior Producer
Jon Reid - Marketing Coordinator
Charlotte Cain - Content Creator
Seasonal Team
Maria Al Sa'di - IPP Producer
Julia Mak - Festival & Administrative
Liz Bragg - Box Office Manager
Zita Nyarady - Company Manager
Angela Xu - Company Manager
Lucy Rupert - Education & Engagement Coordinator
Jeff Clement - Advancement Coordinator
Kylor Ma - Volunteer Coordinator
Year-Round Collaborators
Creative Branding - One23West Marketing
Consultation - Sarah Robertson
Financial Services - Robert Gore and Associates
Communications and Media Relations - Red Eye Media
Advertising - Twenty6Two
Accessibility Coordination - The Disability Collective
Graphic Design - Designs Of Collor
To read more about our team and their bios, please visit the Our Team page on the FFDN website.
Fall for Dance North Board of Directors
Chair Karen Sparks
Treasurer Jim Hwang
Aleksandar Antonijevic
Peggy Baker, C.M., O.Ont, L.L.D, D.Litt
Marah Braye
Julia Dmitrijeva
Erin Eizenman
Christopher Gillis
Gerry Hannochko
Tanya Howard
Amanda Song
Noreen Taylor
Zdenko Teply
Chair Emeritus Joan Lozinski, O.C.
Chair Emeritus Valerie Wilder
Fall For Dance North's Mission
Fall for Dance North Festival moves more people to see more dance more often.
Fall for Dance North Festival brings major companies and dancers from around the world and spotlights Toronto artists on the global stage. None of this would be possible without the support of our donors. If you are as excited as we are to invest in Toronto’s potential as the next great dance city, please consider making a donation to the festival today.
