Love-In’s annual Summer Love-In Festival returns this year with two weeks of physical training, somatic sessions, and dance workshops July 28 to August 9, 2025.
Engage with established movement artists and attend our annual performance series PS: we are all here on August 9 at 7:00pm!
This year’s festival artists are…
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Johanna Bergfelt, a native of Sweden, graduated from The Royal Swedish Ballet School in 1989. She has an extensive performance background beginning with Östgötabaletten, where she worked for six years. Since coming to Canada in 2000, Johanna has worked with numerous choreographers, and she was a company dancer with Pro Arte Danza and the Toronto Dance Theatre. As a teacher, Johanna teaches regularly at The Citadel, In Studio, Dance Arts Institute, The Dance Institute, company classes at Toronto Dance Theatre, as well as her own online classes. Since 2022 she has worked as a dancer and rehearsal director for Citadel + Compagnie.
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Sammy Chien and Caroline MacCaull are the Co-Artistic Directors of Chimerik 似不像, a multi-award-winning interdisciplinary nonprofit arts organization consisting of artists from underrepresented groups. Chimerik 似不像 specializes in the audiovisual new media software Isadora and has collaborated on over 500 multi-disciplinary projects. Selected presentations include Art Night Venezia (Venice Biennale), Documenta 15, Digital Arts Festival of Taipei, ISEA (International Symposium of Electronic Arts), Tokyo Performing Arts Meeting (TPAM), PuSh International Performing Arts Festival and Vancouver Art Gallery. Chimerik 似不像 has worked with influential corporations such as NIKE, Microsoft, BenQ and Google in live visuals/projection design and interactive video installations, in addition to actively empowering underrepresented communities and engaging sectoral change projects such as Virtual Live Art Database & International Choreographic Interlink. Awards: Chrystal Dance Prize 2023; the Changemaker Award of BC Museums Association 2022; 3 Jessie Richardson Awards. Online: chimerik.com, Instagram: @chimerikco, TikTok: @chimerik, Facebook: facebook.com/chimerik
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Bobby, a street dancer originally from Newmarket Ontario, has been dancing professionally since 2017. For the past decade, Bobby has been studying and training in Hip Hop and Street Dance. Bobby is the Co-founder of “House of Hunniez” Dance Crew, an Elite member of Toronto’s “Footnotes” crew since 2014, and has made their Broadway debut as an original Broadway cast member in “&Juliet” in November of 2022. Bobby’s credits include Disney’s “Zombies”, Disney’s “Sneakerella”, FX’s “What We do in the Shadows”, Good Morning America, The 76th Annual Tony Awards, The Tonight show with Jimmy Fallon, The Drew Barrymore Show, among others. Bobby is also an actor, choreographer, singer, mentor and teacher to many. As a trans artist, Bobby is determined to continue challenging gender norms within the industry to create more space and opportunity for other Trans/Non-binary artists. Taking a step back from performing, Bobby is focusing in on building a new relationship with dance. Deepening their connection with themselves and healing through their movement.
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Born and raised in St. John's, NL, Christopher House is a choreographer, performer, director and educator whose works have been performed in nineteen countries worldwide. He was resident choreographer of Toronto Dance Theatre from 1980-2020, the last twenty-six years as Artistic Director, and has worked with Artistic Fraud of NL, Ballet BC, Ballet Gulbenkian, Cirque du Soleil, Kimsooja, the Hidden Cameras and the National Ballet of Canada among others. His career as a performer has included collaborations with Jordan Tannahill, Les Grands Ballets Canadiens and post-modern icon Deborah Hay. He was named by CBC Arts in 2019 as one of 69 Canadian artists "who have shaped our country's rich LGBTQ history". Current projects include the curation of Still with Us: Stories of HIV/AIDS and Dance in Canada for Dance Collection Danse and a new project in Berlin with artist Young-jun Tak. He is a Member of the Order of Canada.
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Juan Jaramillo is an award-nominated Deaf director, writer, and performer of Afro-Indigenous Colombian heritage based in Ontario. Founder of Dancing Hands Theatre, his work centers on ASL storytelling, Deaf performance, and community engagement. Juan has presented work across Canada and Colombia and is a 2025 recipient of the Christine Karcza Disability Leadership Award. His signature works include Fernando and His Llama Friend and But the Truth Is. He offers rich workshops that integrate movement, Deaf expression, and ASL-poetic rhythm. Juan champions access and mentorship in Deaf arts and is known for dynamic, inclusive creative spaces.
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Lara Kramer is a performer, choreographer, and multidisciplinary artist of mixed Oji-cree and settler heritage, raised in London, Ontario. She lives and works in Tiohtià:ke/Mooniyang/Montreal.
Her choreographic work, research and field work over the last fifteen years have been grounded in intergenerational relations, intergenerational knowledge, and the impacts of the Indian Residential Schools of Canada. She is the first generation in her family not to attend the Residential schools. Lara’s relationship to experiential practice of performance, sonic development and design is anchored in the embodiment of experiences such as dreams, memories, knowledge, and reclamation. She prioritizes deceleration as an essential mode of transportation for imagination, creation, and new possibilities. Her creations have been presented across Canada and Australia, New Zealand, Martinique, Norway, Vienna, Belgium, the US and the UK. She teaches workshops regularly in Montreal. Lara Kramer is a Center de Création O Vertigo – CCOV Associate Artist since 2021.
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Janice Jo Lee (she/they) is a queer, Korean multidisciplinary artist born and based in Tkaronto, Ontario. She is a folk singer, songwriter, composer, sound designer, spoken word poet, actor, clown, satirist, and educator. Janice is a hard femme, queer, radical, comedian, truth-teller and satirist. She is interested in using art to build flourishing communities based in justice and joy. Her work explores gender justice, antiracism, friendship, community, ancestry and the Earth. Janice has released three albums of music, two poetry chapbooks, and has composed music and sound for two musicals and five plays.
She has directed workshops and creation labs with her project Play Play Clown Theatre since fall of 2022 at Sweet Action Theatre. She has facilitated arts and anti-oppression programming professionally for 15 years. Janice studied theatre creation with: Musical Stage Company’s Noteworthy, MT Space, fu-GEN / Clown: Pig Iron Theatre School, Adam Paolozza, Deanna Fleysher / Bouffon: Nathaniel Justiniano, Adam Lazarus / Spoken Word: d’bi young anitafrika, Lillian Allen.
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Jasmine Liaw is an interdisciplinary artist, director, and designer in contemporary dance performance, new media art, and experimental film. Evidenced in collaboration and community, her work leans into transcultural narratives of porous identity and existence, intersecting her Hakka diaspora, and queer theories in temporality and ecology. Select presentations of her work include Museum of Contemporary Art Toronto, The Asian Arts & Culture Trust with Holt Renfrew, Northwest Film Forum, Gallery 44, Pleasure Dome, and Images Festival. This year, she published her first research paper in time displacement and dance-technology with Kronoscope: Journal for the Study of Time. Liaw is a recipient of the 2023 Emerging Digital Artists Award presented by EQ Bank and Trinity Square Video. Recently, she co-founded inter-grit studios, an experimental auto-ethnographic research collaboratory.
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Raoul Wilke
July 30 & 31 at 4:15-5:45pm
at IGAC
Raoul Wilke, a multifaceted 2x Dora Award winning artist, is the co-founder of the Moon Runners Dance Crew and dance faculty at Toronto Metropolitan University. As a Black emerging artist, his accolades extend within different communities, opening doors for new collaborations. As a leader of the street dance community within Canada, he has mentored various companies and dance schools over the years, on the importance of the historical context, within these vernacular street forms and the value of themselves. He has learned under the mentorship of Moncell Durden, Chester Whitmore, Travis Knight, Lisa Latouche, and many more inspiring artists, who define themselves as educators. As a student of dance, he continues to live by the quote, “see the music, hear the dance” by Balanchine. This year he can be seen, teaching both locally and internationally under the same people that had once mentored him. Bridging the generational gap and adding the nuance that a youthful approach brings to deeply rooted work.
registration
Details for each artist are listed below in “dates & times” & “about the sessions”. Click the button below each artist to open a link to their individual registration page. There you will find specific information around venue & session accessibility and what to expect/who it is for. Venue addresses are located on each registration page.
If you would like to register for the full festival please write us at info@tolovein.com.
Janice Jo Lee
Où est le jeu? Clown for Movers
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July 28 at 10:00am-12:00pm ET
July 29 at 10:00am-12:00pm ET
August 5 at 4:15-5:45pm ET
at 180 Shaw St, Unit 103 -
Ou est le jeu? This is a movement-comedy-improvisation workshop that unleashes your true nature. Clown is a style of theatrical comedy where the performer is fully embodied, follows their joy, is vulnerable, fully commits to the bit, is not afraid to flop, raises the stakes, and believes wholeheartedly that they are brilliant. Everything is for the audience - you do not exist without them. To find your clown is to connect with the pure joy of your inner child, and express your wonder and enthusiasm for the world without needing to wear emotional armour. Make eye contact, don’t think, don’t judge, just go for it. Embrace awkwardness, create tension, build an elastic with your scene partners and audience. Radiate joy and the audience will love you.
Lara Kramer
Transporting in Soft Gorgeous Tongue
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July 28 - 31 at 1:00-4:00pm ET
at 180 Shaw St, Unit 103 -
This workshop invites you to uncover modes of expression explored in Lara Kramer’s recent creation, Gorgeous Tongue. We'll begin by anchoring in the interior techno-knowledge of our guts, connecting to our instinctual engagement with the environment and imagination. This inward turn will open different portals, exploring temporal gestures as we oscillate between meditative moments and elevated friction. We will foster multi-faceted dialogues and explore unconventional realities.
We'll navigate the interplay of deceleration and resistance-induced movements as pathways for creating a blueprint for your work, transforming and reinventing towards a futural path.
Together, we will attune to sonic landscapes generated through the engagement with materials and objects. We will employ principles of relationality, reciprocity, and respect for both animate and inanimate elements and the practice of a generous presence.
Juan Jaramillo
Hands in Motion
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July 28 & 29 at 4:15-5:45pm ET
at 180 Shaw St, Unit 103 -
Hands in Motion invites Deaf and hearing participants into a shared space of creative expression through dance, gesture, and sign language. We’ll explore poetry-based storytelling and physical theatre using ASL. This 1.5-hour workshop offers short duets, partner exercises, and poetic storytelling sequences. Participants will gain experience in body movement, sign expression, and visual storytelling. The workshop celebrates access, collaboration, and creative flow—no experience necessary.
Chimerik 似不像
Immanent Invocation
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July 30, 31 & August 1 at 10:00am-12:00pm ET
at 180 Shaw St, Unit 103 -
Join internationally recognized artists Sammy Chien and Caroline MacCaull for a 3-day progressive movement exploration that weaves together somatics, Qi Gong, spiritualism, ritual practices, embodied meditation and years of interdisciplinary experimental research. Each session builds upon the last, offering an experimental and alternative entrance into choreographic tools and authentic movement expression. Through state-based practices, participants will navigate shifting internal landscapes, energetic resonance, and embodied memory. This work centers the body as a complex, intuitive, and intelligent conduit, moving beyond conventional notions of “dance” into a deeper somatic listening. We will attune to the subtle, the unseen, and the in-between, following energetic pathways already alive in the spaces or within us. Whether attending one session or the full series, participants will engage in an expansive practice of presence, perception, and deep connection.
Raoul Wilke
Drop-in sessions
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July 30 & 31 at 4:15-5:45pm ET
at 180 Shaw St, Unit 103 -
Coming soon…
Johanna Bergfelt
Pilates & Contemporary/Modern
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August 5-7 at 9:30am-10:15am ET & 10:30am-12:00pm ET
August 8, 2025 10:00am-11:30am ET
at Pia Bouman’s 225 Sterling Unit 103 -
Modern class with roots in Ballet. It will start with a centre warm up followed by travelling material and end with jumps. It is for anyone that loves to move and dance. The level will be geared towards advanced dancers.
Participants could bring something to lie on for Pilates, yoga mat or similar.
Christopher House
Curious Praxis
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August 5-8 at 1:00-4:00pm ET
at 180 Shaw St, Unit 103 -
Curious Praxis: Tools and Tactics for Making Dances examines choreography as a rich continuum of actions, tactics and hunches informed by our attention to time, space, and emerging imagery. We will compose and perform in each class, working quickly and intuitively, and following our interest as we create studies to stimulate dialogue and discovery within the group.
We'll choose from such options as editing and distillation, adaptation and remix, working with found materials, making scores, composing with objects, shaping improvisation, inventing modes of counterpoint, collaborating and directing, playing with anticipation, and mapping the shape of a work in progress. Compositional processes derived from cinema, music, architecture, visual art, physics, biology, sport, cooking and other fields audition to be part of our evolving toolbox. Warmups are designed to stimulate our curiosity, subvert self-sabotage, and encourage a playful, collaborative atmosphere. In the words of Deborah Hay, "we are practicing the deep ethics of optimism."
Bobby Pocket Horner
Ease Back into Dance & Moving Emotions
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August 6-8 at 4:15-5:45pm ET
at 180 Shaw St, Unit 103 -
Ease back into Dance with Bobby as they guide you through class with a gentle & intentional warm up slowly introducing movements they have been studying and practicing for over a decade. With street dance as a core foundation for Bobby’s movement, this class will be deeply influenced by popping and hip hop foundations. Bobby will be using these movements to access and move through emotions we often feel in the body to help us feel more grounded and regulated. Bobby then will be finishing each class with a choreographed piece highlighting different emotions and techniques in hopes that you will revisit and practice when needed. Please bring a journal if you like!
Jasmine Liaw
drawing as retracing: redefining performance
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August 9 at 10:00am-12:00pm ET
on zoom -
In this online digital space, we map and un-map. We move slow, blurred, and micro-paced. This somatic drawing lab invites participants to reimagine the body, performance, and movement through gentle processes of receptiveness and reflection. To-gather, we offer questions. We retrace within the digital as a method to visualize what feels/exists as complex and plural. For those who process visually, we will use drawing as pictorial trails of thought, attunement, and communication. This meeting place is an invitation to pause, soften, and respond through mark-making and colour.
Join us for an evening of live dance at Pia Bouman’s Theatre for PS: we are all here!
August 9, 2025 at 7:00pm
225 Sterling Rd Unit 103, Toronto
ASL interpretation & PWYC tickets
This performance series came through a desire to provide a unique presentation opportunity for local artists and the community. The series continues to have a major impact on artists in the dance sector by platforming works in progress and supporting experimental performance in a lofi, welcoming environment. At PS artists don’t hold back, bringing their most raw, playful, poignant work into being.
This year’s artists are:
Arin Aronyk
ᑮᓯᑯᕽ ᑳᐯᑖᑯᓯᐟ / Johnny Morin
Kéïta Fournier-Pelletier
& Barbara Simms
Marcus Merasty
Samantha Sutherland
accessibility
Please contact the Love-In team at info@tolovein.com for any access needs. Write us prior to July 14 to book ASL interpretation for these sessions. If a request is made after that date, we will do our best to accommodate.
studio accessibility
Intergalactic Arts Collective (IGAC)
180 Shaw St, Unit 103, Toronto, ON M6J 2W5
The building is fully accessible by Ontario standards, with a wheelchair ramp at the 180 Shaw Street doors, an elevator servicing every floor and a fully accessible washroom on every level. The nearby 63 Ossington bus on the TTC is wheelchair accessible and stops at Ossington & Argyle, three blocks west of Youngplace.
Pia Bouman School for Ballet and Creative Movement (Pia’s)
225 Sterling Rd Unit 103, Toronto, ON M6R 2B2
The main entrance has two steps to enter the lobby, and two steps from the lobby down into the studio area. There is a back entrance through a loading bay, with a 4 inch high loading dock bumper at the base of the garage door. Please contact info@tolovein.com to arrange entering through the loading bay or get more information. Lansdowne station, located three blocks east, is the closest TTC stop to the studio.
Live transcription will be available for Jasmine’s digital session on zoom.
pricing
We strive to provide PWYC access, varied accessibility measures, and a welcoming environment. Love-In offers a pwyc sliding scale by using the discount codes. You can find details below to help you decide how much to pay.
discount codes & donation options
ABUNDANT — add donation, no discount code used at check out
SUPPORTER — add donation, no discount code used check out
REDUCED — 25% off
SOLIDARITY — 50% off
ACCESS — 100% off (contact info@tolovein.com for barrier free registration)
about our pricing model
We offer a pwyc sliding scale by using the discount codes listed below at checkout. We ask that community members with a consistent income or salary pay at the regular price so that we can support community members with less access to income, wealth, or assets to attend barrier free. Thank you for locating yourself where best represents your economic situation and paying accordingly. This supports making our programs available to more folks for years to come!
abundant
This rate reflects a medium increase on the rate for the session. If you have access to a salary, savings, investments, assets, or generational wealth, paying this rate will subsidize the attendance of someone for whom cost is a barrier to attending. If you are moved to donate $10 or more, there is an option to do so.
supporter
This rate reflects a moderately increased rate for the session and will allow us to partially subsidize the attendance of folks for whom cost is a barrier. Please add a donation of $5 if you have access to a salary, savings, investments or assets.
regular
This rate reflects the regular cost for the session. Please select this rate if you have access to a regular income and are able to meet your basic needs around food, housing and transportation.
reduced
This rate reflects the reduced cost for the session. Please select this rate if you are able to meet your basic needs around food, housing and transportation, but have gaps in your income and no access to savings or familial financial support.
solidarity
This rate reflects the solidarity cost for the session. Please select this rate if you are able to meet your basic needs around food, housing and transportation, but don't have access to regular income.
access
The option to access this session at no cost ensures that members of our community for whom price is a barrier to participation are able to join us. Please email us at info@tolovein.com to receive this option.