SHiFT Frédérique Perron, from Abitibi-Ouest QC, is a second year student at The School of Toronto Dance Theatre. She first studied dance at Collège Montmorency (Laval, QC) where she graduated from the combined Dance and Natural Sciences program in 2018. She appreciates various forms of dance, but especially enjoys Contemporary dance, House and Improvisation. She also experimented being a dancer in Hairspray the Musical which helped her develop her performance skills. While immersing herself in the art of movement, Perron has been fascinated and driven to explore her intuitions as a dancer, performer and choreographer. In addition to her studies at Collège Montmorency, Perron was a dancer in the Tanz Danse group directed by Massimo Agostinelli and Claude Bellemarre. She also took complementary classes to further her dance training. Over the past few years, she has been taught by Claude Bellemare and Charles-Alexis Desgagnés and more recently she attended the classes of Kei Nakagawa and Elanne Boake. She adores learning and being influenced by other artists. Frédérique is particularly interested in discovering full body awareness, understanding her own way of moving and conveying emotions through her movements.

Julianna Heft from Edmonton, Alberta is currently a second year student at The School of Toronto Dance Theatre. Before arriving to the School, she trained as a competitive dancer at Shelley’s Dance Company where she studied jazz, tap, ballet, contemporary and musical theatre. At her high school Victoria School of the Arts she discovered her love for choreography and contemporary performance. She has performed in works by Joshua Beamish, Hanna Kiel, Sharon B. Moore, NIUBOI, David Norsworthy, Julia Sasso, Katherine Semchuck and Darryl Tracy. Outside of dance, she has trained in acrobatics, yoga, choral, acting and voice. She has also received multiple scholarships and awards including the Lois Hole Scholarship and is a recipient of the 2020-2021 Lindy Green and Sam Chaiton Tuition Bursary.Julianna plans to continue embracing curiosity in her movement in order to discover a deeper level of connection between herself as an interpreter and the audience.

Ben Cox is a dancer, actor, and choreographer based in Toronto, hailing from Fall River, Nova Scotia. Throughout his high school career he honed his theatre skills through many practices such as Improvisational Theatre, Compositional Theatre, and stage work. His interest in contemporary dance and physical theatre led him to Toronto, and to eventually become a dance artist training at The School of Toronto Dance Theatre. It is here that Ben discovered his interest in seeing what It means to truly be human in the various worlds he creates. Ben is especially excited to see what sort of interesting new worlds he can explore through his dance and film work.

Yael Zifroni is a Toronto based dance artist from Shoham, Israel. She started her training as a Flamenco dancer and furthered her practice through ballet, contemporary, Graham, hip hop, and Israeli folklore at the DulyArt Dance School. She has been at The School of Toronto Dance Theatre since 2018 and has worked with choreographers such as Kate Alton, Michael Caldwell and Pulga Muchochoma. Yael also worked with choreographers such as Yoni Soutchy, and Ido Tadmor, and performed in folklore festivals around the world. Zifroni has participated in workshops with companies and schools such as the Avshalom Pollak Dance Theatre, Batsheva Dance Company, and the Martha Graham School of Contemporary Dance. Yael is currently interested in exploring relationships between moving bodies in space while pushing physical boundaries.

Adèle Ross started her training in Montreal where she explored contemporary dance, hip hop, and jazz. Through hip hop, Ross developed a hunger for the art which she could not ignore. She then furthered her training at Ballet Divertimento before attending The School of Toronto Dance Theatre in 2018.

As a performer, she has participated in many showcases, festivals and videos in Montreal and Toronto such as Articien, the Défi Pierre-Lavoie, Pride parade and SummerWorks. To continue developing herself and her craft, Adèle took part in different intensives with the Conexión Festival, Domaine Forget directed by Anne Plamondon, Gaga People and RUBBERBAND Dance Group.

She is currently interested in the idea of developing authentic movement with a strong sense of physicality. Through her work she aims to test her limits both mentally and physically to see how we can reveal our inside world using our body.

Originally from Ottawa, Ontario, Charlotte Cain began her dance journey taking ballet classes when she was six years old with National Capital Dance Educators (Dance Educators). She discovered modern and contemporary dance while attending the dance program at her arts high school École Secondaire Publique De La Salle. Soon after, she also started taking Jazz classes with Dance Educators. Passionate to share knowledge, Cain started as an assistant teacher for ballet classes at Dance Educators in 2015 and musical theatre with Stagecraft Children’s Theatre School in 2016. In 2017 she danced in a TedX youtube video called “Novel ways to talk science : Dancing relativity”. She received the Nesta Toumine award for excellence and dedication from Dance Educators in 2016 and 2017. In her last year of high school, Cain was choreographer mentor and rehearsal director for her school’s urban dance troupe that won first place in the Momentum Dance Competition. Cain won the Prix d’excellence artistique provincial du Fond Artes 2018 for her artistic excellence throughout the province of Ontario. Cain has been a demonstrator at the annual seminar for The Society of Russian Ballet since 2017. Recently, she co-produced Imprints, the third year choreographic workshop at The School of Toronto Dance Theatre.

Nidhi Baadkar is a second-year student at The School of Toronto Dance Theatre. Born in India and raised in the Kingdom of Bahrain, Nidhi Baadkar started her training as a dancer in the Indian Classical dance form of Bharatanatyam and continues her training under Harikishan S Nair. She recognises herself as an aspiring movement artist who wishes to bring the essence of various movement practices in which she has been training over time, to develop a vocabulary of her own which is deeply rooted in her Indian aesthetics.

Ellen Moore is a second year student at The School of Toronto Dance Theatre and has been dancing since she was two years old. At age 15, she left her hometown in rural Nova Scotia to train at the Quinte Ballet School of Canada’s Professional Training Program, where she practiced ballet, Bournonville technique, contemporary/modern, flamenco, hip hop, jazz, pointe, and repertory. Ellen is interested in improvisation and blending various dance forms, particularly contemporary, modern, and hip hop. In the future, she hopes to acquire more martial arts training to combine the techniques with her current dance style.

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Christina Litt Belch began dancing and playing piano at a young age. She is from Waterdown, Ontario, and trained in ballet and modern throughout high school in Canada and the United States. Christina furthered her training at the Alberta Ballet School in the Professional Graduate program. She is now in her final year at The School of Toronto Dance Theatre and studies online at the University of Waterloo completing her Undergraduate degree in English Literature and Writing. Most recently, she composed the music for a piece choreographed by Michael Caldwell. In September 2020, Christina worked as a composer and performer as part of Expect Theatre’s Beats + Intensions. In 2019, she danced in the SummerWorks Performance Festival in choreography by the School of TDT graduate, Kari Labrentz. Christina has participated in workshops with Kelly Shaw and Kylie Thompson Dance. She has attended summer programs with English National Ballet, Joffrey Ballet School, Martha Graham School, Peggy Baker Dance Projects and Quinte Ballet School. Christina is intrigued by the connectivity of music, movement, and language and the impact they have on one another.

Dance artist Katie Adams-Gossage draws from her life experiences in Montreal and Toronto to produce experimental work in improvisation and choreography. Before studying at The School of Toronto Dance Theatre, she trained in contemporary, hip hop, popping and tutting. This wide-ranging background shapes her current focus on modern and classical forms of movement. As she simultaneously works towards a B.A. in Philosophy at Ryerson University, Adams-Gossage is interested in the unique intersection between ideas and movement. Her new project, zone rouge (2), showcases her innovative embrace of mixed-media including dance, painting, music, and video editing.

Kurumi Yoshimoto is a Toronto based dancer originally from Osaka, Japan who started studying ballet at the age of three. She trained at private dance studios such as The Studio Ballet International until she earned her B.A. in Psychology in 2015 from Kwansei Gakuin University.Yoshimoto came to Canada in 2017 to study modern dance and spent one year with the Chimera Project Company B. Currently, she is enrolled in her third and final year at The School of Toronto Dance Theatre.In the summer of 2019, Yoshimoto trained at the Ailey School in New York, with world renowned dancers and choreographers such as Tracy Inman and Judith Jamison. She also participated in the Summer Intensive Program with ProArteDanza which earned her an invitation to be an apprentice with the company for their 2019 fall season.