FADO E-BULLETIN
August 2026

1. PERFORMANCE SERIES POOLBODY
   DATE AUGUST 6–9, 2026
   LOCATION TORONTO & REXDALE, CANADA
   SOURCE SHALON T. WEBBER-HEFFERNAN

POOLBODY is a new multi-site performance series unfolding across Toronto from August 6–9, curated by Shalon T. Webber-Heffernan.

ARTISTS
Aisha Sasha John
Aysia Tse
(H)annah Kryworuchko
Hannah Palmer
Mikiki
Nyda Kwasowsky
Ranganathan Rajan
Tess Martens
Roxy Menzies
Richa Baghel

Pools are complex spaces—sites of leisure and competition, public gathering and private escape, play and surveillance, intimacy, memory, access, exclusion, and joy. POOLBODY brings together performances, conversations, workshops, and site-responsive projects that move through these tensions.

VENUES
FADO Performance Art Centre: The Commons, 401 Richmond St. W., Toronto
Flagstaff Park: 42 Mercury Rd., Rexdale
Hart House Pool: University of Toronto, 7 Hart House Circle, Toronto

This series is made possible with support from Toronto Arts Council | Toronto Arts Foundation – Arts in the Parks, FADO Performance Art Centre and Dancemakers Curators in Community Fund.

SCHEDULE, VENUES, INFORMATION

2. WORKSHOP TRANSFORMATION, MEMORY, AND IDENTITY
   DATE AUGUST 9, 2026
   LOCATION TORONTO, CANADA
   SOURCE TESS MARTENS

Transformation, Memory, and Identity
With Holly Timpener & Tess Martens

Date: August 9, 2026
Time: 11AM–7PM
Location: Toronto
Fee: $160

An inclusive and intensive performance art workshop exploring Transformation, Memory, and Identity in a gallery beside a park in Toronto, Ontario. The venue is physically accessible and has a quiet space for any participant needing time and space. Identity is shaped by memories. Transformation happens through experiences. Discover how these elements connect deeply in our lives and creative practices.

Who Is This For? This performance workshop is for EVERYONE.
We welcome all people completely regardless of your:
Artistic experience level
Cultural and ethnic backgrounds
Disabilities or accessibility needs
Mental health journeys
Gender and sexual identities
Employment background
Financial position

Accessibility options are provided to ensure every participant is safely and comfortably included. Rolling deadline until 30 participants have been accepted.

TO REGISTER

3. EVENT SUMMERWORKS
   DATE AUGUST 6–16, 2026
   LOCATION TORONTO, CANADA
   SOURCE SUMMERWORKS

Another incredible summer has arrived in Tkaronto, and so has the full Festival programming for the 36th SummerWorks Performance Festival! Take a deep breath, and dive into each production or workshop, or site-engaged or community-centred program, to reveal this stellar lineup of local, national, and international artists.

Our 2026 edition features 27 live performances, including three world premieres, six works-in-development, five site-engaged performances, along with seven workshops and panel discussions. This year marks a significant moment in SummerWorks’ history, as 1/3 of the overall curated programming features international artists and creative collaborators from ten (10) countries and regions (Australia, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Iran, Mexico, New Zealand, and Taiwan), making this one of our most internationally-diverse summer Festivals to date.

This year’s Festival theme, Fight | Flight brings forward urgent creative responses to this troubling moment in time. Across the 2026 Festival, artists root themselves in place, community, ancestry, and practice, while also shifting perspectives, rewriting histories, and creating new narratives through the body, exploring memory, consent, transformation, and identity, through resistance, humour, and intimacy.

Join us for 11 days of fiercely contemporary and strikingly intimate contemporary performance from August 6–16!

MORE INFORMATION

4. SCREENING 2 FILMS, 30 YEARS | LAURA TALER
   DATE AUGUST 10, 2026
   LOCATION TORONTO, CANADA
   SOURCE LAURA TALER

Laura Taler: 2 Films, 30 Years
the village trilogy & Matryoshka Crush

August 10, 2026
7:00PM
Revue Cinema, 400 Roncesvalles Ave., Toronto

A special screening celebrates 30 years of Laura Taler’s award-winning filmmaking through two acclaimed works. Blending choreography, cinema, song, and performance, Taler creates films haunted by place and shaped by an Eastern European past that is dusty, elusive, and tinged equally by absurd humour and longing. The program pairs the village trilogy, a poetic exploration of displacement and the search for home, with Matryoshka Crush, a darkly funny meditation on yearning, identity, and transformation. Together, these landmark films showcase a distinctive artistic voice that has resonated with audiences and critics for three decades.

MORE INFORMATION & TICKETS

5. MASTERCLASS TOOLS FOR COWARDS | LAURA TALER
   DATE AUGUST 12, 2026
   LOCATION TORONTO, CANADA
   SOURCE SUMMERWORKS

Tools for Cowards: MASTERCLASS with Laura Taler
Presented in the context of SummerWorks

August 12, 2026
2–5PM
Theatre Passe Muraille Backspace, 16 Ryerson Ave., Toronto

Join artist & filmmaker Laura Taler in a masterclass that traces the evolution of her practice. Bookended by her 1995 dancefilm classic the village trilogy and her genre-defying 2025 new work Matryoshka Crush, this 3-hour class will give participants a behind-the-scenes experience of experimental, movement-based filmmaking.

In the early 1990s, with no formal film training, Taler created the village trilogy. The film was shot and edited on 16mm film following a time-honored cinematic process with storyboards, shotlists, and an articulated scenario. For her latest film, Matryoshka Crush, Taler employed cinematic structures developed over years of filmmaking that allow for both precision and improvisation. By using case studies of her films and video installations, Taler will lead the class through in-depth discussions about the production process, while sharing practical tools and tactics that help to communicate ideas to the collaborative team. Spatial considerations in installation and screening contexts will also be discussed.

Masterclass participants will receive a special discount promo code to attend the August 10th screening of the two films (see post above for details). All artists are welcome. Performers, visual artists, dance artists, filmmakers, musicians, and anyone interested in movement, the camera, and installation.

MORE INFORMATION

6. EVENT DES MURS EN CARTON | MARIE-CLAUDE GENDRON
   DATE AUGUST 21–23, 2026
   LOCATION MONTRÉAL, CANADA
   SOURCE DARE-DARE

Performance Installation: Des murs en carton by Marie-Claude Gendron
August 21–23, 2026
L’espace loüable, 3550 Saint-Jacques Street, Montreal

Opening dates/hours:
August 21: 4–9PM (Vernissage, 5–7PM)
August 22: 2–7PM
August 23: 2–7PM

In collaboration with Folie/Culture, DARE-DARE is pleased to host Marie-Claude Gendron’s performance installation Des murs en carton as part of its Quebec tour. Blending raw textures with altered everyday sounds, Des murs en carton presents a living installation where sounds, materials, and gestures intertwine. For three consecutive days, artist Marie-Claude Gendron will inhabit a temporary cardboard apartment, where she will perform a live sound composition.

Drawing on her experience with hyperacusis, a condition of auditory hypersensitivity with which she lives, the project seeks to make perceptible what escapes the eye. The gaps in the set-up reveal to the audience different levels of sound perception within a space that is both intimate and constructed. The fragility of cardboard resonates with that of housing and bodies, like a poetic echo of precariousness and the difficulty of fully inhabiting an increasingly compartmentalized world. By transforming a vacant space into a sensitive refuge, Marie-Claude Gendron examines our walls—those that protect, isolate, or exclude—and the boundaries between the intimate, the private, and the collective. Combining art, care, and social reflection, Des murs en carton opens up a space for shared resonance. Here, the artist approaches vulnerability not as a flaw, but as a lucid, fragile, yet resilient presence in the world.

MORE INFORMATION

7. EXHIBITION & PROGRAMMING WHERE WALLS MEET SKY
   DATE AUGUST 22–SEPTEMBER 13, 2026
   LOCATION TORONTO, CANADA
   SOURCE RUI PIMENTA

An art exhibition in the ruins of St. Anne’s Anglican Church
Where Walls Meet Sky

August 22–September 13, 2026
St. Anne’s Anglican Church, 270 Gladstone Avenue
OPEN: Thursday–Sunday, from 12–8PM

PARTICIPATING ARTISTS
Sacha Bassil
Sandra Brewster
Julia Campisi
John Dickson
Sofia Escobar
David Jensenius
Gareth Lichty
Eunice Luk
Roda Medhat
Noel Middleton
Mary Catherine Newcomb
Max Streicher

Curated by Rui Pimenta

The first public exhibition inside the historic church since the devastating 2024 fire explores themes of renewal, rebirth, memory and fire as both a destructive and regenerating force. Rather than dwelling on loss, Where Walls Meet Sky explores what emerges after destruction. Though profoundly altered by fire, St. Anne’s remains a vital part of its neighbourhood, continuing to serve both its congregation and the wider community. The exhibition’s title reflects the building’s transformed condition. With its roof open to the sky, the boundary between inside and outside dissolves, making the visible sky a powerful metaphor for that which cannot be contained by a physical space.

SPECIAL PROGRAMS

Bricks to Bread
Saturdays & Sundays, 12–4PM
A sculptural oven constructed from bricks recovered from the church grounds following the fire. Visitors will be invited to share freshly baked flatbread made by Sacha Bassil, owner of Flour Power Saj, transforming remnants of destruction into a gesture of hospitality, nourishment, and collective renewal.

Vita Contemplativa
Saturday, August 22, 8PM
A program of experimental music curated by Fan Wu, that explores contemplation as both patient receptivity and disciplined attention, and considers the act of paying attention as an expression of the sacred. Performances from Sufferin Mall, Colby Richardson, Felicity Williams with Robin Dann, Dorothea Paas, and Patrick O’Reilly.

MORE INFORMATION

8. EVENT SILT: FRESHWATER
   DATE AUGUST 24 & 25, 2026
   LOCATION TORONTO, CANADA
   SOURCE CHRISTOPHER PETERSEN

SILT: FRESHWATER
August 24 & 25
7:30PM
1475 Gerrard Street East, Toronto

FEATURING:
Ragamalika Mohanraj
Johannes Zits
Abby Yates and Vincent Enorme
Abedar Kamgari
Clara Chemtov

SILT: FRESHWATER is an evening of performance. Through a public open call, artists are each provided with 15 minutes to present an action, event, performance. Silt was originally started for dance, movement, and performance artists; however, it is open to everyone regardless of artistic or personal identifications. The aim of SILT: FRESHWATER is to provide participants with an accessible low-stakes stage for experimentation and expression.

MORE INFORMATION

9. EVENT MIRACLE EXTENDED
   DATE AUGUST 28, 2026
   LOCATION UPPSALA, SWEDEN
   SOURCE SBCO

Miracle Extended
August 28, 2026
2PM–4PM

The Human Miracle Project wraps up through a Grande Finale with 13 artists, dancers and musicians. 30 Miracle performances have been presented since 2023. Miracle Extended will be number 31! All artist work in a process, all at the same time around the dynamic Gottsunda center in Uppsala, Sweden.

ARTISTS
Vielle å Viole
Anna Westberg
Cici Rettig
Amit Sen:
Hiroko Tsuchimoto
Mema Dans
Lise-Lotte Norelius
Watch me Bake:
Johannes Bergmark
Cecilia Germain:

Curator: SU-EN
Koordinator Gottsunda Kulturhus: Mattias Rosendahl
In collaboration with Gottsunda Kulturhus and Fastighets AB Hemmaplan.
Supported by Swedish Arts Council, City of Uppsala, Cultural Affairs Board

MORE INFORMATION

10. OPEN CALL AD HOC RE-PERFORMANCE BY ANNA BERNDTSON
    DEADLINE DATE AUGUST 31, 2026
    LOCATION BERLIN, GERMANY
    SOURCE ANNA BERNDTSON

Ad Hoc Re-Performance Berlin by Anna Berndtson
September 23, 2026

As part of the exhibition Archive des Ephemeren (Archives of the Ephemeral), Kunstverein Tiergarten invites Berlin-based performance artists to propose one of their own previously realized performances to be spontaneously re-performed by the performance artist Anna Berndtson. On 23 September for 8-hours, Berndtson will re-perform 8 of the submitted works. The selection will be made by the curators of the exhibition Julia Heunemann, Dan Thy Nguyen and Ulrike Riebel. Anna Berndtson will only learn which performances have been selected during the performance itself.

At the beginning of each hour, she will be read the concept or score of one of the 8 selected performances. She will then spontaneously re-perform it until the end of the
hour using the means made available to her. The re-performance explores the limits of processes of translation in performance, the body and movement as living archives, and repetition as a discursive and contemporary practice.

We look forward to receiving your submissions!
DEADLINE: August 31, 2026, 11:59 pm

MORE INFORMATION & SUBMISSION GUIDELINES

11. EVENT RENCONTRE INTERNATIONALE D’ART PERFORMANCE (RIAP)
    DATE SEPTEMBER 16–19, 2026
    LOCATION QUÉBEC CITY, CANADA
    SOURCE STVN GIRARD

Le Lieu, centre en art actuel presents
Rencontre internationale d’art performance (RiAP)

September 16–19, 2026
345 rue du Pont, Québec City

ARTISTS announced in September!

Performance art unfolds within a fragile space shaped by encounter, the body, and risk. This discipline engages conditions of presence in which gestures are inscribed within communal, historical, and affective dynamics. It is from this perspective that the Rencontre internationale d’art performance (RiAP) in Québec continues, in 2026, its work of attentiveness to practices that activate, shift, and reinvent the modalities of performance art. Since its origins, RiAP has been constituted as a nodal space where local, national, and international practices resonate with one another. This edition reaffirms this commitment by foregrounding approaches that interrogate the persistence of gestures, the transmission of ethos, and the ways the body is inscribed within the social sphere.

MORE INFORMATION

12. PERFORMANCE TO A FLAME | PRESENTED BY NIGHTWOOD
    DATE SEPTEMBER 22–OCTOBER 4, 2026
    LOCATION TORONTO, CANADA
    SOURCE NIGHTWOOD THEATRE

CLICK FOR ASL DESCRIPTION

To A Flame
September 22 – October 4, 2026
Nancy & Ed Jackman Performance Centre, Toronto

A 1s1 Theatre and Nightwood Theatre co-production
In association with Modern Times Stage Company and Why Not Theatre

Written by Erin Shields, To a Flame is an explosive theatrical feast of image and language that pulls us deep into a Victorian Gothic Horror. Three confined women await the conclusion of their stories in the ancestral home of the man they call Father. Secrets burn to be revealed, aches of the past refuse to be suppressed, and the very house itself vibrates with desire for revenge.

This groundbreaking work intertwines American Sign Language and English with vibrant movement and live music into a haunting, multi-sensory performance for Deaf and hearing audiences. Featuring celebrated Deaf performer and cultural leader Dawn Jani Birley, internationally-renowned director Josette Bushell-Mingo, and vivid text by Governor General Award-winning playwright Erin Shields, with the support of the company.

MORE INFORMATION