YENSA Festival returns to Toronto for its third edition, August 20–23, 2026, at the Betty Oliphant Theatre. Produced by Lua Shayenne Dance Company, this international biennial celebration of Black women in dance brings together five choreographers for the Black Flames showcase, three Africa Vibes movement workshops, the communal ATSIA Circle, and the YENKA Social. Under the theme AS I AM, YENSA honours Black women artists claiming space on their own terms.
Something is building at the corner of Jarvis Street. This August, YENSA Festival returns to Toronto for its third edition, and the energy arriving with it is hard to miss. Produced and presented by Lua Shayenne Dance Company (LSDC), YENSA Festival's mission is to highlight choreographic work by Black women choreographers around the globe, alongside the research and creative process that shapes their practice. Its driving principles are solidarity, sisterhood, and artistic excellence.
Since its inaugural edition, YENSA has grown from a visionary idea into a full-scale international platform rooted in a simple, urgent premise: Black women's artistry deserves its own stage, its own audience, and its own conversation. The festival was born out of meaningful exchanges between Artistic Director Lua Shayenne and leading Black female dance practitioners in Toronto and its surroundings, exchanges that prompted Lua Shayenne Dance Company to take the lead in developing a biennial festival that elevates the voices of Black women in dance.
Three editions in, that instinct has proven exactly right. The festival has received programming support from the Canada Arts Presentation Fund, administered by Canadian Heritage, in recognition of its cultural significance within Canada's performing arts landscape.
This year, YENSA plants its flag under the theme AS I AM, a declaration that feels both personal and political. The works, workshops, conversations, and community rituals this festival curates all speak to Black women dance artists claiming their creative space without apology or qualification.
As Artistic Director, Lua Shayenne put it in the festival's announcement: "What began as a vision to carve out space for Black women's artistry, inventiveness, and bold imagination has grown into a dynamic platform, one that continues to evolve in response to the needs of a thriving, interconnected dance community." That evolution is visible in every corner of the 2026 programme.
Where it all happens
The Betty Oliphant Theatre, located on the campus of Canada's National Ballet School at 404 Jarvis Street, is a training and performance venue and a central home for small and mid-sized dance and theatre companies. Opened in 1988 and named after NBS co-founder Betty Oliphant, the theatre serves as both a professional training and performance space, with seating for 265-280 audience members and excellent sightlines that keep every seat close to the stage. It is an intimate venue, and that intimacy suits YENSA perfectly. This is a festival built on proximity, on the audience feeling the breath and intention of the artists in front of them.
Black Flames — two nights of fire
The centrepiece of YENSA's performance programme is Black Flames, the showcase that has become the festival's signature event. The performance features Black women choreographers who fearlessly experiment, reimagine, and disrupt conventional dance norms. For the 2026 edition, five artists and companies bring new works to the Betty Oliphant stage across two showcase nights, August 21 and 22. Each performance evening begins with a pre-show conversation at 7:30 p.m., giving audiences a window into the choreographic thinking behind what they are about to witness.
The five Black Flames artists performing this year represent a remarkable breadth of practice and aesthetic range:
- Ayodele Drum & Dance — a vibrant community that celebrates and supports women and girls through the study and performance of diasporic African drum and dance, combining weekly classes with live drumming in a space built for joy and connection.
- E.R.N In Motion — an emerging company bringing forward new choreographic work rooted in its own distinctive movement language.
- Liyah Simbulan — an independent artist whose practice draws on personal and collective memory as a creative foundation.
- Holla Jazz — an award-winning Toronto dance company, founded in 2016 by Artistic Director Natasha Powell, that explores soulful and funky approaches to jazz dance and aims to reinvigorate the form through its sister dances, including hip hop and house.
- Lua Shayenne Dance Company — the festival's founding producer, whose work blends dance, music and storytelling rooted in West African culture with contemporary art forms and social commentary.
Together, these five voices make for an evening of work that is unlikely to feel predictable at any point.
Africa Vibes workshops — moving with intention
Beyond the stage, YENSA builds its sense of community through direct participation. The Africa Vibes workshop series invites Black women dance artists and guest instructors to open up their movement practices to the wider community, sharing expertise rooted in the African diaspora through hands-on sessions. Three workshops are scheduled across the four festival days, all at the Betty Oliphant Theatre, with sessions on Thursday evening, Saturday afternoon, and Sunday afternoon.
These are active, embodied experiences designed to place participants inside the tradition rather than simply observing it from a seat. Whether someone comes with years of dance training or no formal background at all, the workshops create a space for genuine engagement with diasporic movement practices.
The ATSIA Circle and YENKA Social — where community deepens
Sunday afternoon closes the festival's formal programming with two of its most distinctive features. The ATSIA Circle is a communal gathering where rhythm, improvisation, and collective expression take over. Drum and dance meet in a shared space where the boundaries between performer and participant dissolve, and the energy of the full festival weekend finds its natural culmination.
Following that, the YENKA Social steps in as the festival's parting gesture. YENKA, which translates loosely as "let's talk," is precisely what it sounds like: an opportunity to sit with the artists, carry the conversations started in performance and workshop settings further, and build the kinds of connections that outlast a single weekend. It is the moment the festival turns from an event into a community.
The full festival schedule
Here is the complete programme at a glance:
Thursday, August 20
- 7 p.m. — Africa Vibes Dance Workshop #1
Friday, August 21
- 7:30 p.m. — Pre-show Chat
- 8 p.m. — Black Flames Showcase #1
Saturday, August 22
- 2 p.m. — Africa Vibes Dance Workshop #2
- 7:30 p.m. — Pre-show Chat
- 8 p.m. — Black Flames Showcase #2
Sunday, August 23
- 2 p.m. — Africa Vibes Workshop #3
- 4 p.m. — ATSIA Circle
- 4:30 p.m. — YENKA Social
Built on a clear purpose
YENSA Festival is committed to the practice of empowerment of Black female dance artists and represents a direct response to the systemic exclusion of Black female dance artists from Canada's historical record, the denial of their contribution to the arts, and the rejection of misogynoir. That purpose is present in every programmatic decision the festival makes, from who performs to who leads workshops to how audiences are invited to engage. YENSA Festival invites audiences to witness and celebrate the incredible evolution of Black dance and have conversations about the diversity of African diasporic aesthetics, its histories and politics, from a female perspective.
Lua Shayenne herself has become one of Toronto's most recognized dance voices. A finalist for the 2025 Johanna Metcalf Performing Arts Prizes and the 2024 Toronto Arts Foundation Muriel Sherrin Award, she is a dynamic creator who intertwines contemporary narratives through dance, song, and storytelling, with an artistic practice inspired by her African heritage and the Baha'i Faith. The festival she built carries that same quality: purposeful, grounded, and genuinely alive.
Four days' worth of making space for
YENSA Festival 2026 runs August 20–23 at the Betty Oliphant Theatre, 404 Jarvis Street, Toronto. Tickets go on sale on June 17.
Tickets and the full schedule are available at yensafestival.com. Follow the festival on Instagram and Facebook at @yensafestival.
This is a festival that rewards showing up. The performances, workshops, drum circles and conversations during the closing social hour — each piece of the programme is designed to leave participants more connected than when they arrived. For audiences in Toronto who care about Black dance, the creative traditions rooted in the African diaspora, and the artists pushing those traditions forward, this is four days that belong on the calendar.
The theme AS I AM carries a quiet defiance in it. It says: This stage was made for us, this work is ours, and you are welcome to witness it. YENSA Festival has earned the right to say that over three editions. This August, it says it again, louder than ever.
