Mirrors, music, and daring props reshape how audiences watch dance. A Toronto-based choreographer pairs stagecraft with joy, entrepreneurship, and Ghanaian roots.
The last week of August saw Toronto audiences encounter something unusual on stage: dancers moving with mirrors, ski boots strapped to boards, and reflections bouncing back into the house. At dance: made in canada/fait au canada (d:mic/fac), choreographer Vania Dodoo-Beals and collaborator Carleen Zouboules premiered Fragments of Perception, a piece that pushed audiences to question what they were really seeing. While the show has already closed, its ideas continue to resonate—about perception, play, and presence.
For Vania, the timing of the premiere carried extra significance. Only days later, on August 30, 2025, the Toronto production of Disney’s The Lion King concluded its celebrated run at the Princess of Wales Theatre. For her, that closing marked the end of a transformative multi-year chapter in her career, just as Fragments of Perception signalled the beginning of new explorations.
Reframing perception through dance
The seed of Fragments of Perception came not from a rehearsal studio but from the gallery world. Vania and Carleen were drawn to visual art installations that used mirrors to bend and multiply sightlines. The question became simple and generative: how might a stage behave like a gallery, where the spectator’s vantage point is part of the art?
They experimented with mirror placements, even flirting with reflective floors and wearable panels, before landing on a mobile, physical mirror that performers reconfigure live. At one point, frames combine to form a clear, three-sided box. A soloist moves inside while audience members watch body, reflection, and refracted space from multiple angles. The device becomes dramaturgy. It breaks the fourth wall twice—dancers catch the auditorium in the mirror, and audiences glimpse themselves watching. The effect is intimate, almost conversational, without a word spoken.
Ski boots, a carpet, and a plank: turning limits into flight
Before the show, you might have clocked an unusual prop: ski boots bolted to a plywood board, set onto a carpet. The setup radically restricts range, but that is the point. Once strapped in, the dancer finds a surprising flow within limits—pitching forward, hinging back, sliding laterally to sketch arcs and edges that free feet could never trace the same way. What seems like an obstacle becomes a kinetic instrument, expanding choice through constraint and inviting the audience to adjust their expectations in real time.
The sound that guides the body
Composer Laith Hakeem and multi-instrumentalist Santiago Rosso first worked with Vania in 2022. Back then, choreography came first, and the score followed. This time, Vania and Carleen flipped the order. They sent a time map and a handful of prompts—“spiral,” “ambient,” “exciting,” “driving”—and gave the musicians room to invent. What returned was a fully original soundscape that the choreographers could lean into physically, letting tone and rhythm pull new textures from the dancers. The result, Vania says, is among their strongest collaborations.
Creative chemistry with Carleen Zouboules
Vania and Carleen share a lineage of partnering, physical risk, and story sense. Their process is fast and curious: get material out of the head and onto the body, live with it, then edit without sentimentality. Because they know each other’s instincts, timing, and spatial habits, they can push harder. The rehearsal room becomes a place for friction that produces form, not anxiety. That synergy powered earlier projects such as “Beyond the Line,” a work that grew from an intimate duet into a filmed piece for a cast of 30 at Toronto Metropolitan University. Translating stage ideas to camera taught them how scale and framing change meaning—and gave them confidence to expand small ideas into durable, larger works.
Open meanings and shared discovery
Unlike message-driven pieces, Fragments of Perception welcomes ambiguity. There is no single storyline to decode. Instead, the piece keeps returning to a simple prompt: something onstage will keep altering what you see. The artists want attention rather than consensus—eyes and ears sharpened to bodies, music, and light. In that sense, the audience becomes co-author, tracking—and sometimes catching—the illusions as they loop and mutate.
A transformative chapter: The Lion King
While Fragments explored new territory, Vania was also closing a formative chapter. On August 30, 2025, the Toronto production of The Lion King ended its acclaimed run at the Princess of Wales Theatre. For Vania, who joined the cast three years ago, the show was life-changing.
It was her first major theatre project, introducing her not only to singing on stage but also to the rigour of a long-running, large-scale production. Each performance was a reminder of why she pursued the arts. Beyond artistic growth, the experience gave her a second family within the ensemble.
Performing such an iconic production in her hometown deepened its meaning. “It constantly reminded me of the why,” she explained. “The detail, the artistry, the message—it was all so inspiring.” Although the curtain has now fallen, she is eager to continue exploring theatre, now with the support of representation from 10 Talent Management.
Lessons from mentors
Time with Siphesile November and Peggy Baker gave Vania the tools she uses every day. From Siphe came a principle of reciprocal energy: if you keep pouring into the people in the room, inspiration keeps moving. From Peggy came a method built on intention. Prompts like “dynamic, reach, fold” unlock more honest, dancer-led choices than mapping a right-left sequence. Both approaches honour dancers as active collaborators.
Buttrmlk: an entrepreneurial extension of the art
In 2019, while reconnecting with family in Ghana, Vania noticed the everyday flow of shea butter moving across households. With a BFA from TMU and a minor in marketing, she began experimenting with formulations during the pandemic. She tested whipped body butter, lip balm, and hand cream. Launching was nerve-racking—she worried about reception and doubted her skills as a “cosmetic scientist.” But feedback was overwhelmingly positive, particularly for the lip balm, which quickly became a bestseller.
Over time, she realized that Buttrmlk was not separate from her artistry. Like choreography, it involved design, experimentation, and storytelling. Today, she sees it as an extension of the same creative impulse that drives her work in dance and theatre.
Explore Buttrmlk at buttrmlkco.ca.
Looking ahead
As September begins, Vania is navigating what comes after. She and Carleen are considering an extended version of “Fragments of Perception,” building on its success at d:mic. With The Lion King chapter closed, she is seeking new theatre roles that let her sing, move, and act with the same fire. And with Buttrmlk growing, she continues to balance the demands of performance with the responsibilities of entrepreneurship.
Her advice for emerging artists is clear. Keep the calendar rolling by looking ahead. Reach out. Start conversations. Let people know what you want and why. Curiosity and courtesy beat hesitation. The same rule applies to entrepreneurship: ship the idea, then perfect it. Momentum invites opportunity.
Final thoughts
“Fragments of Perception” is built from simple materials—mirrors, boots, a board—and an elegant idea: seeing changes by doing. As surfaces slide and angles multiply, the audience's perception feeds back into how the dancers move. That loop is the show. It is playful and exacting, conceptual and visceral in equal measure, and it expands the vocabulary of contemporary dance without abandoning joy.
The Lion King gave Vania a foundation in theatre and community. Buttrmlk, her shea butter–based skincare line, shows that her creativity travels fluidly from stage to marketplace.
Taken together, these projects show an artist not afraid to try, to leap, to see what emerges when you let perception shift. Whether on stage, on screen, or in a jar of body butter, her work carries the same conviction: that discovery is worth the risk, and sharing it is worth the effort.
Explore her products at buttrmlkco.ca, and keep watching for the next chapter in a career already spanning mirrors, musicals, and markets.
