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Show Dates: February 19, 20, 21, 2026 @ 8PM and February 22, 2026 matinee
Co-production with Suzanne Liska and Citadel + Compagnie LIVE 2025/2026 Location: The Citadel: Ross Centre for Dance 304 Parliament Street, Toronto |
Tea with Mara is inspired by my Japanese Canadian family’s history of survival through the forced relocation from British Columbia to Alberta in the 1940s- that continues to shape me. The title means “to invite your demons for tea". The work is framed by the Edo-period ghost-storytelling tradition, yakumonogatari kaidankai, that summons ancestral spirits and teaches people to face fear. For me it’s a way of stepping into a spirited space where joy, suffering, transformation, and continuity all meet, leading to connections of past, present, and future through movement and sound.
My collaborators are dance, music, sound and design artists. Together, we use partnering dance, live music, and layered design to bring our diasporic experience into dialogue with mythological inheritances and intergenerational memory. We embody Shinto-Buddhist realms—gods, humans, animals, hungry ghosts, and demons—each realm carrying both struggle and vitality. Costumes and props evoke landscapes of Japanese Canadian origins and folklore, weaving memory and myth. We yearn to turn grief into hope, lust into love, and fear into courage. Tea with Mara is my invitation for audiences to join me in this embodied journey and be together in this space of honouring ancestral pasts as we envision futures still unfolding. Videos/Photos by GM Creative. Supported by the Toronto Arts Council, Canada Council for the Arts and the Japanese Canadian Legacy Fund. Tea with Mara | Citadel + Compagnie Get Tickets – Tea with Mara Show Credits: Choreographer: Suzanne Liska Co-Creators/Performers: Gibum Dante Lim, Suzanne Liska, Mateo Gallindo Torres, *Mika Lior - not performing, part of initial research Composer: Heidi Chan Musicians/Performers: Heidi Chan and Young Park Costume and Set Designer: Jennie Simm (Vallis) Stage Manager: A.J. Morra Lighting Designer: Gabriel Cropley Dramaturg/Outside Eye: Maxine Heppner |
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