Porch View Dances returns for 2025, running from July 16 to 20 in Seaton Village. The popular public dance series produced by the award-winning Kaeja d’Dance company. PVD takes porches, alleyways, and sidewalks, and transforms them into a stage for dance.
The family friendly event brings together professional choreographers and members of the community in performance.
The theme for this year’s PVD is “The Surprise of the Unknown”. Audiences are invited to come along for a journey of not only dance, but hidden vignettes, interactive installations, and real people dancing in real spaces.
The featured artists this year are:
- KINAJ (Kin Nguyen & AJ Velasco) — Vignette Co-Choreographers
- Pulga Muchochoma, Nicola Pantin, Diana Lopez Soto — Porch Choreographers
- Kunji Ikeda & Allen Kaeja — CoTour Guides
- Mio Sakamoto — Installation Choreographer / Flock Landing Lead
- Katie Adams-Gossage, Sophie Dow, Yui Ugai — Flock Landing Dancers
- Jim Adams — Land Gratitude Address
- Edgardo Moreno — Composer, Flock Landing
We spoke to Karen Kaeja, Kaeja d’Dance Co-Founder/Artistic Director, and Mayumi Lashbrook, Co-Curator, about this year’s Porch View Dances.
Porch View Dances: The Interview
Did Kaeja think the dance series would be running 14 years after its inception?
“It’s a miracle,” she says.
There are a lot of reasons for its appeal. “I think it’s that it’s family oriented, it’s easygoing, it’s entertaining. People seeing themselves,” Karen adds. “There’s a sense of community and belonging.”
That feeling only grows as the event goes on.
“I think that it’s built in to how it’s created as well as how it’s experienced,” says Lashbrook. The audience tends to pull in people who wouldn’t necessarily go to a formal dance performance — just as the performance pulls in non-dancers along with professionals.
As she points out, it’s also about cultivating a love of the arts.
Kaeja has noticed a difference in the audiences and their approach over the last few years, before, during and after the pandemic. “It’s interesting,” she says of the progression. “They want to connect.”
Indirectly, it’s a way of potentially introducing them to the notion that art and performance offers connection and healing. “It eases into art. It is dance specific, but it’s also art for in general.”
Both Lashbrook and Kaeja worked on the theme together.
The Surprise of the Unknown
“The Surprise of the unknown, it can be really scary,” Mayumi says. It can spark a negative reaction, and have a polarizing effect. PVD plays with the idea.
“It creates an opportunity to sit with fear in a way that’s fun,” Lashbrook says. “It allows us to be a little more resilient to change.”
Audience members can choose which route to take through the event, and depending on that choice, there are situations and events that will appear seemingly out of nowhere, beyond the porches where the specific dance performances take place. “They may walk by, they may stop and witness it,” Kaeja says.
Guides lead the crowd from one dance to the next.
“For the first time in Toronto, we have two tour guides,” Kaeja says. She reports that the duo are collaborating on putting together “something surprising” for the event. “They’re going to lead the audience and tour them through the neighbourhood.”
Allen Kaeja, Co-Artistic Director of the company, has served in the role of tour guide. This year, he’s joined by dance theatre artist and artistic director of Cloudsway Dance Theatre Kunji Ikeda.
“Their energy is electric,” Lashbrook says.
“Underneath that, there is a level of care for the audience,” Karen points out. The guides also keep an eye out for the audience as they make their way along what is essentially a tour.
The Tour
“There are three porches, and then there are three vignettes, and then there is one installation,” Mayumi explains.
The event incorporates many places to stop and engage.
“Three porch choreographers, and a duo does the vignettes — it’s a very full evening,” Lashbrook adds.
“This year we have an installation that’s new,” Kaeja notes. This year’s commissioned installation will last the whole five days of the event.
Without giving too much away, it’s an installation the audience moves through as they come together for the performances.
“They are a really diverse group,” Mayumi says of the choreographers, Pulga Muchochoma, Nicola Pantin, Diana Lopez Soto for the porch dances, and KINAJ for the three vignettes.
They represent different styles of dance, and each brings their own crew of dancers to perform with them — with the stipulation that they’re not professional dancers.
“What that has done as well is opened up the festival beyond community centric and made it Toronto wide,” Karen points out.
“I think one of the things that we really worked on this year was having the choreography come out of public space, or private spaces as well,” Lashbrook says. That means the dances will emerge from unexpected spaces.
“I get to be into the secret,” Mayumi says. “Witnessing audience members be truly surprised — I think that there will be a lot of joy in that.”
Final Thoughts
Kaeja says that many people in her base team have been working with her and PVD for years, including the technical assistant.
“Part of what i’m working forward to it having this base, and really being able to hold space for everyone,” she says. “I feel this sort of earth base with my team.”
Choreographers are given basic guidelines, with a lot of freedom to do with the format as they wish.
“We don’t know what people are creating, we really give them free rein,” Karen says. “They’re very excited.”
The dance tour ends with the Flock Landing, which takes place at a local park. “For me, the Flock Landing is always such a heart warmer.” After the tour, the vignettes, the surprises, the crowd pours into the park for the finale.
“It’s beautiful.”
- Find more details, where to meet, and other details [HERE].
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