Artist-in-Residence
Announcing Esie Mensah as FFDN Artist-in-Residence 2025
The FFDN Artist-in-Residence is a newly expanded, paid, one year position that offers mid-career professional artists full scope to develop professional skills across:
- Choreography
- Curation
- Community Engagement
Housed within an international festival, the program uniquely offers the Artist-in-Residence the opportunity to contextualize their work in the current global landscape. They will build community across festival programming and expand their artistic following.
I’m deeply honoured to serve as Artist-in-Residence for Fall for Dance North this season—an opportunity to grow in conversation with Robert Binet and the brilliant team. This space invites me to deepen my process, trust the rigor of the studio, and pursue my most honest work.
Community remains the heartbeat of my practice—a constant reminder of who I create for. Curation that uplifts extraordinary artists—each a beacon in their community—allows us to offer audiences an experience rooted in purpose, passion, and shared resonance.
- Esie Mensah, FFDN Artist-in-Residence 2025
About Esie Mensah
Esie Mensah is an award-winning choreographer, director, dancer, movement director, educator, and TEDx speaker whose powerful voice shapes the future of performance across dance, theatre, opera, and film/TV. A Dora-nominated artist, she has worked with global leaders Rihanna, Nelly Furtado, Kenny Ortega, Canada’s Got Talent, AGO, and the Toronto Raptors. Her work has toured internationally to the U.S., U.K., Ghana, Nigeria, France, and more. She has created for Soulpepper, Obsidian Theatre, and Shaw Festival, and directed Serving Elizabeth at Theatre Aquarius. This season, she makes her Stratford Festival debut with Ransacking Troy and is choreographer for Scott Joplin’s Treemonisha: A Musical Reimagining, premiering in Chicago in May 2025.
Esie collaborated with FFDN on her film TESSEL (2021) and as an original advisor to 8-Count. She is the Afrodiasporic Movement Program Lead & Afrofusion teacher with Canada’s National Ballet School.
Esie Mensah is one of Toronto’s most extraordinary choreographers and an artist who inspires me deeply. She weaves together many styles of movement into Afrofusion to tell beautifully universal stories and builds powerful community in her creative process. The Artist-in-Residence position is intended to further develop the skills necessary for a sustainable career in dance. Working across choreography, curation and community engagement is what has allowed my career to develop and I want to pay it forward by giving others the opportunity to work across the same spectrum, but in their own way.
- Robert Binet, FFDN Artistic Director & Co-CEO
Past FFDN Artists in Residence:
Anne Plamondon (2018-2019)
Natasha Powell and Kimberley Cooper (2021-2022)